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Sheila Ford
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What is your profession?
Musician, Songwriter, Singer, Composer, Actor, Educator, Dancer
What Instrument Do you Play?
voice
Where Are you located?
Maryland
How did you find out about TGJN?
Tamm E Hunt
About Me:
SHEILA FORD

Cool, sexy, soulful and serene. With a voice that glistens like a string of pearls, musicianship beyond her years, and a lovely, irresistible stage persona, Sheila Ford is indeed a musical treasure. Vast experience as a vocalist and entertainer has equipped Miss Ford for nearly any challenge the music stage has to offer. Though Sheila has a special love for jazz (Ella Fitzgerald is one of her earliest and best loved influences), she has dazzled audiences in nearly every musical style-jazz, funk, r&b, blues, classic soul, pop, house, rock, Latin, even rap. No stranger to the studio, Sheila is a highly sought after session vocalist and songwriter. Producers and songwriters love her range, tone, versatility, and ear for harmony. Whether she's jazzin' it up or rockin' the house, Sheila has what it takes and is loved by audiences and musicians alike.

Sheila is a graduate of the elite Berklee College of Music, Boston Massachusetts, where she majored in Music Education. In addition to exceptional vocals, Sheila plays the piano, organ, and has studied several woodwind, brass, string and percussion instruments. In 2004, she was added to the staff of The Maryland Conservatory Of Music as a vocal instructor. Sheila has also served as a juror for the Billy Holiday Vocal Competition in Maryland.

Sheila has performed in concert halls, hotels, resorts, at festivals and clubs across the U.S. and around the world with some of the finest musicians and ensembles around. Some highlights include The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Caesar's Pocono Resorts in Pennsylvania; S.O.B.'s and the Dean Street Cafe" in New York; The Loft in London; The Southport Weekender, which is a huge festival in Southport, England; The Bluebird Cafe in Moscow; The General Walker Hotel in Germany; The Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California; Le Disco in Greece; The Top of the Rock Club in Iceland; Schinnen AB in the Netherlands; and Kleine Broegel AB in Belgium. Other highlights include Blues Alley, The Mandarin Oriental, One Step Down, and Takoma Station in Washington, DC; The Flamingo Hilton and Casino in Kansas City, MO; various cruise ships; The Myerhoff Symphony Hall, The Lyric Opera House, Pier Six Concert Pavilion, The New Haven Lounge and Caton Castle in Baltimore, MD.

Sheila has toured with the Washington Jazz Ensemble performing in Russia and Greece to sold-out audiences. Numerous concert tours have taken her all over the world to Iceland, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Asia and beyond. Sheila has performed, recorded, and shared stages with renowned artists such as Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Frank Foster, Kim Waters, Gary Bartz, Bobby Watson, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Gary Thomas, Cyrus Chestnut, Antonio Hart, Ben Vereen, Alex Bugnon, Rachelle Farrell, Art Sherrod, Jr., The Midnight Movers (Wilson Pickett’s band), ” Wolfman” Jack, The Village People, Maysa, Robin S., Nona Hendryx, Angie Stone, Bobby and the Believers, Trylogy, The Fabulous Fantoms, Ultra Nate', Barbara Tucker, Michael Watford, Marc Evans, Josef Saddler, Marti St. Michaels, Juanita Dailey, and numerous others. She has also worked with several internationally renowned producers including, Charles Dockins, DJ Spen, The Muthafunkaz, Thommy Davis, Abicah Soul, DJ Pope, and DJ Oji. She is currently the vocalist for Raggs and the All Stars, a top-notch big band with strings led by trombonist Scott Ragsdale. She also has her own band, Sheila Ford and Friends.

Sheila also brings to the stage years of musical theatre experience, having performed prominent roles in a number of professional productions. Highlights include Dreamgirls, Purlie, Tap Dance Kid, Big River, The Wiz, Bubblin' Brown Sugar, Showboat, and Ain't Misbehavin’. She has also sung jingles, provided voice-overs, and appeared in national and regional commercials. Highlights include a "Just Say No To Drugs" public service announcement, a jingle for Calico Corners Fabric Stores, a commercial for Cookies Men's Clothing Stores, and numerous voice-overs and station identifications for radio stations all over the world including KISS F.M. in London and WEAA F.M. in Baltimore, MD.

Sheila has performed on numerous recordings, which have enabled her to exercise her exquisite vocals (lead and background) as well as her superb songwriting and instrumental skills. Her most recent recording, “ALWAYS”, with DJ Spen and the MuthaFunkaz, was released on Code Red Recordings/Defected. Other recordings include "LIFE’S SO MUCH BETTER (Abicah Soul Mix)", which is included on The CODE RED SUMMER VIBES SAMPLER 2008, "BEAUTIFUL DAY (THANK YOU)" , “SPIRITUAL JOURNEY”, and “L.O.V.E.” on Poji Records, “MAGIC(Terry Thompson)”, on Code Red/Defected, “FEEL THE SAME (Groove Armada featuring Angie Stone – Muthafunkaz mixes (keyboards and bass))”, on Strictly Rhythm, “LOVE HANGOVER (Joey Negro-DJ Spen mixes (background vocals and operatic chant))” , on Z Records, "MOODY (STATE OF MIND)", on Blackvinyl Records, "IT’S ALRIGHT" (which was used for a television show on the British Broadcasting Company), on Slip ‘n Slide Records, UK, "JOURNEY", on Slip ‘n Slide Records, UK, "CHARLES DOCKINS PRESENTS THE BLACK-CUBAN CHRONICLES OF LOVE", on Slip 'n Slide Records, UK; and "HIGHER LOVE", on 157 Shelter Records, to name a few. Sheila is currently working on a jazz cd and a dance music cd, which will be released in the very near future (for a partial list of recordings, go to http://www.discogs.com/artist/Sheila+Ford ).

If you thought music was enough, think again. Sheila is also an exceptional dancer. She is currently a member of and an instructor for The Charm City Dancers (The New Baltimore Hand Dance Association), a very prestigious organization that specializes in hand dancing, line dancing, cha-cha, the bop, and much more. She is also a highly skilled jewelry and fashion designer. Actors on television shows including the CBS daytime drama, THE GUIDING LIGHT, have worn her designs.

Highly prized by bandleaders, sought-after by producers and songwriters, loved by audiences and musicians, and admired by singers, Sheila is a complete vocalist. She's equally at home in the studio layin' down hot tracks or on stage heatin' up an audience. Be sure to experience Miss Sheila Ford-the lady with a voice like a string of pearls.

Website:
http://www.myspace.com/sheilafordjazz
Discography

Sheila Ford's Blog

Sheila Ford

The Sheila Ford Quintet At Caton Castle On Saturday, February 28th!!






For advance tickets please click on the link below.

caton castle

Posted on February 21, 2009 at 4:45am —

Sheila Ford

Sheila Ford Performance This Saturday, November 29th!!

Posted on November 24, 2008 at 2:12pm —

Sheila Ford

Sheila Ford Performance This Saturday, July 12th!!

Posted on July 11, 2008 at 1:52pm —

Sheila Ford

Sheila Ford Performance This Saturday, June 14th!


Sheila Ford performs at Caton Castle this Saturday!

Posted on June 11, 2008 at 6:00pm —

Sheila Ford

Sheila Ford Performance This Friday, May 23rd

Posted on May 19, 2008 at 2:30pm —

Comment Wall (22 comments)

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At 4:30am on December 2, 2009, favour said…
favour.davids@yahoo.com
Compliment of the day,how is your health including work and business over there, guess fine.
My name is favour, in search of a man who understands love as trust and faith rather seeing it as a way of fun but a mature man with good sense of humor after reading your profile at (www.theglobaljazznetwork.ning.com) ,in fact,i derive interest on you so contact me directly with this email address and here is it(favour.davids@yahoo.com) i believe we can start from here, awaiting to hear from you to enable me send my pictures to you for further introduction.
kisses with love and cherish you.
At 8:47am on June 22, 2009, jay lewis said…
HI……I WANTED TO INFORM YOU ABOUT A NEW GROUP: ‘BOOKS & VIDEOS’…THE MISSION OF THE GROUP IS; “EXPLORE THE COMPLEXITY OF JAZZ & BLUES; MUSICALLY, HISTORICALLY, SOCIALLY & THEORETICALLY. BROADENING BETTER UNDERSTANDING AND GREATER ENJOYMENT!!
FURTHERMORE, I WOULD LIKE TO EXTEND A INVITATION TO JOIN AND MORE IMPORTANTLY PARTICIPATE,SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE AS BROADCASTERS AND HELP CREATE A PLACE WHERE GJN MEMBERS CAN GO TO FIND INFORMATION THAT WILL HELP IN THE PURSUIT OF A BETTER COMPREHENSION & MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE APPRECIATION OF JAZZ.

Check out BOOKS & VIDEOS ABOUT JAZZ & BLUES on THE GLOBAL JAZZ NETWORK:
http://theglobaljazznetwork.ning.com/group/bookvideosaboutjazzblues?xgi=0rQihhb


THANK YOU IN ADVANCE WITH THIS MATTER,
JAY LEWIS
At 8:13pm on September 17, 2008, Airborne said…

Airborne the Musical Peacemakers of Contemporary Jazz "Winds of Change" Video
www.airbornejazz.com
At 2:31pm on April 4, 2008, Arthur Schroeck said…
SAME TO AND FOR YOU. If you go to youtube and in search write Artie Schroeck when you have some time, you'll see some videos of me and my wife. there are 5 of them.
At 5:38pm on April 3, 2008, Arthur Schroeck said…
Thanks for the add
At 3:41pm on March 12, 2008, James Weidman said…
Sheila- Great to hear from you. I'll be in Baltimore 3/29 at An die Musik It's been along time since i've been in your ares. Keep swinging and the best of health. -James
At 7:38am on March 12, 2008, Everett Spruill said…
Shelia,
It is a pleasure to meet you......thanks so much for sharing your gift.
Hope we can be friends.
At 3:38pm on February 28, 2008, Dexter Graham said…
Sheila,
thank you so much for your response.I hope to do more recording soon.
At 9:06pm on February 27, 2008, Dexter Graham said…
Hi Sheila,
I just put my original song on.Let me know what you think of it.I hope you'll like it.

Dexter
At 6:30pm on February 25, 2008, doctorlum said…
thanks that is an old track im workin on some new stuff would love to sing one with ya
 
 

MEMBER NOTES


Dear Tamm E:

Just a note to tell you that it is nice to read about you!!!

You share so much great info about others and about the music, but nice to know that you are WAILIN' yourself and getting appreciation!!

Global Jazz Network is a really important way for all of us to keep hooked up and informed and to SLOWLY BUT SURELY SPREAD THE MESSAGE AND THE PHILOSOPHY of what Jazz is in its many different forms and what the styles are/is all about.

Just played for Paquito's honoring and received gold medal

John Faddis, save Brubeck, James moody and a bunch of KILLER YOUNG players and we all played and spoke about Paquito and jazz and all fine music

and Roberta Gamborini, who was excellent.

wish you had been there!

Through you, Donald Harrison hooked me up with Pittsburgh Jazz info and I feel like i am living there just reading about all the great happenings.

As Fall is here, I am back to my normal insane schedule, but wanted to write you back BEFORE The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS goes into effect. I am my own secretary, so I am dedicated but SLOW!

And I can't fire myself as my own secretary or I might get hit with an Age Discrimination Lawsuit (in case I decided to sue myself for clerical incompetence).

As of this moment, a new documentary film is being made about me, to be released a few months after my 80th birthday, which is coming up next year Nov. 17, 2010. (12 months from now).

The film will end with the videoing of the big 80th birthday bash at Symphony Space in NYC and then have snippets of films from the past, with all kinds of fun stuff from the 50's thru today.
It will be called "David Amram: The First 80 Years"

Fortunately, I don't have to edit the hundreds of hours of footage or do new music the score, since the film maker, Larry Kraman is also the founder of Newport Classics recordings and knows all my symphonic as well as operatic, theater, film and jazz and world music work, so I am in good hands!!

The same people at Newport Classics Recordings are also making a Spoken Word series for I-Tunes, with me reading from my three books Vibrations, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.

And they are also recording some of my chamber music compositions and a new jazz record,
Next Spring my opera "12th Night", with libretto by Joe Papp (all words of Shakespeare), is having its eighth production and being FILMED!! Even most dead composers aren't that lucky!!!

This last five weeks I have appeared all over the country at concerts of my music, conducting and playing, doing spoken word with music, jazz, folk and world music festivals, film festivals and readings from my books.

Just the first week of October, I played Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival in Lowell Mass, then the at midnight , following my last concert there , drove all night to Lagaurda Airport to catch the early Sunday mornng flight for the annual Farm Aid Concert in St Louis, where i played with Willie Nelson's band. The next morning (Monday the 5th , I flew bck to NYC in tme for my monthly concert at Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.

The next night (Tuesday the 6th) the memorial at Symphony Space for Frank Mccourt, and the next day Wednesday the 7th) the celebration of the new authorized biography of Thelonious Monk with members of his family and musicians I have known since I first arrived in NYC in 1955!!

The 11th i flew off to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates,( i got at least get a few hours sleep) and tried to catch up on over 200 e-mails during the 13 hour flight, before arriving there and performing a concert of global music in conjunction with the score I composed for Teri McLuhan's new documentary feature film The Frontier Ghandi.

Then back in the USA in time to do programs centered around a performance of my Saxophone concerto Ode to Lord Buckley, in Loudoun Virginia ..

Then I went off to Toronto Nov 1st for a concert and appearance at the Diaspora Film Festival .

Now i am back at home hiding out composing and writing!

I am starting my fourth book "David Amram: The First 80 Years", (the same name as the new doc film being made about me), which will be finished at the end of next year and will end, like the film, with the monstro birthday bash concert for my Big 80... 12 months from now....(Nov 17 2010) in New York.

And every day, still finding time to continue composing a new orchestral work, having been doing it while on the run, and now every minute when I can hide out at the Farm in between travels.

And performing whenever possible with my three kids, each of whom have their own bands.

So as the BIG 80 approaches twelve months from now, (2010) while I may be still shy, I am not yet the retiring type.

Most of my ever-changing my schedule info. when i can get my elderly secretary (unfortunately myself) to type it up, is posted on my web page www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events.

And my e-mail amramdavid@aol.com is always the best way to reach me as I carry my laptop with me everywhere, and Facebook, MySpace, etc., is hard to deal with and not always reliable!

You might find it fun to access an old performance of my 1971 Rondo a la Turca on the Internet for FREE!!!

The person who is conducting the Chicago Symphony and playing the middle eastern flute (who looks like my grandson) is actually a much younger looking me in 1977, recording for a PBS network TV show about my music. Pepper Adams and Jerry Dodgion are also playing.

In 1977, most of members of the Chicago Symphony who appear on the recording of this performance had never heard, much less ever played, very much music from the Middle East, and since I write everything out on paper accurately to indicate the way it should be played, that's what they were playing, and they actually began to sound like the Radio Beirut Orchestra, and suddenly as the piece went on, they started feeling something different than they had ever felt before, as they played.

It is really fun to watch their faces as they started getting ingo the old time magical groove that Middle eastern music creates and takes you into.

During the first few minutes of the piece, you can see the musicians all playing up a storm but looking as if they were thinking that I was an alien from another planet in outer space, and had brought some extra terrestrial music with me for them to play.

And then as the piece progresses, you can see, as well as hear, that by the end of the piece, the idiom of this music got them excited enough to be actually enjoying playing it!!

And playing it really well!

That's what music, like film, novels, poetry, painting, dance, language and good HOME COOKING does for all of us.

It takes you to that place from where it comes, and makes you feel that you now have a new home in a new part of the world.

I send cheers from that endless road and wish you joy and energy for all you do

David

Hi Tamm E!

I was just saying that you knocked this out of the park with TGJN. We have needed something like this for so long and I am telling my friends about this. I said that it is sort of like a myspace for jazz but it is actually so much more. This is real. The people here truly love jazz and we know people like that are not your average people.

I have felt for a long time that straight-ahead jazz has been slipping away from us. I have hope now that there will be a resurgence (or shall I say an insurgency:-) to bring this baby back full force!

You just knocked it out of the park. Thanks again.

xoxo,
Janie

JAPAN JAZZ NETWORK

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