“Veronica Swift” is an American jazz and bebop singer. Swift was raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, as part of a family of musicians. Her parents are late jazz pianist Hod O’Brien and singer Stephanie Nakasian. At the age of nine, she recorded her debut album, Veronica’s House of Jazz (2004), featuring Richie Cole playing with her father’s rhythm section. She began touring with her parents at this time as well. At age eleven, she appeared in the series Women in Jazz at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola; At the age of 13, she released her second album, It’s Great to Be Alive (2007), on which saxophonist Harry Allen also played.
Swift earned her bachelor’s degree in jazz voice in 2016 from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. While there, she composed a goth-rock opera entitled Vera Icon about a homicidal nun. Swift says she “needed an outlet for the anger” she felt at her father’s cancer, and needed a more dramatic genre to express the emotion. Her 2015 album, Lonely Woman, includes two songs with her father at the piano and may represent the last recording by Hod O’Brien, who died in 2016. Swift placed second at the 2015 Thelonious Monk Competition. Following graduation, she moved to New York City, where she played Saturday nights at the Birdland jazz club.
Veronica Swift’s new eponymously titled album, her third for Mack Avenue Records, is a masterful coming-out story. On her previous albums, Confessions (2019) and This Bitter Earth (2021), she ascended to the upper echelon of early 21st century jazz singers because of her virtuosic brilliance, interpretive ingenuity, bracing songwriting, and keen arrangements. Simply put, Swift is not only one of the most dazzling singers to emerge in her generation, she’s one of the most versatile.While her first two albums solidified her position in modern jazz, Veronica Swift shows that she’s more than a jazz singer, exploring French and Italian opera, European classical music, bossa nova, blues, industrial rock, funk, and vaudeville. She pulls the feat off without the results sounding callow or pastiche. Swift’s expansive artistic voice remains firmly intact regardless of genre.
Swift describes this personal artistic statement on her new album as “transgenre.” “I grew up immersed in the culture of jazz music, blessed to have had some of the greats as mentors, and I felt a deep familial duty to uphold that” she says, reflecting on her parents – jazz singer and educator, Stephanie Nakasian, and bebop pianist, Hod O’Brien. “But as rooted in jazz as I’ve been, there’s a uniquely visceral power in rock and soul music that’s always fuelled my creative passion, and rather than mask or confine that part of my identity, the people I admire most show themselves unabashedly and that’s the kind of tradition I want to be a part of.”
She forged and refined most of the material for Veronica Swift on the road. Much to her delight, audiences enthusiastically welcomed the new direction. “My live concerts have been the experiment by which I am seeing the readiness of the audience to embrace the full scope of who I am, and it’s encouraging to know I can continue to push myself creatively and invite people into the fold along the way.” “I remind people that any exploration of music outside of straight ahead jazz is an addition, not a subtraction,” Swift continues. “I just hope this album helps people embrace every aspect of who they are, and let it guide their own self-expression.” “Veronica Swift is a woman of many voices, and she uses every one of them to refract a dizzying kaleidoscope of moods” — DownBeat
She appeared with Chris Botti, Benny Green, and Michael Feinstein. She toured with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. She was involved in ten recording sessions between 2004 and 2019. In 2019, she went on tour with the Benny Green Trio. She has also sung multiple songs with Postmodern Jukebox, including a cover of Aerosmith’s “Rag Doll”. Since 2024, she has been performing as part of the hard rock band called DAME. Bill Milkowski said she has perfect pitch and phrasing. “She has a miraculous voice, musical ability and technique, as well as an innate gift for entertaining a crowd.” — Wall Street Journal
