Morgan James

Few performers move as easily between the Broadway stage and the jazz club as Morgan James, the American singer, songwriter and actress born Morgan Grunerud in Boise, Idaho. Her route ran through a Modesto high school and an operatic training at The Juilliard School, where she was admitted as the seventh singer in a class that usually held six. She earned her Bachelor of Music in Voice in 2003, and that classical grounding sits alongside the soul and R&B that now shape her original writing.

Her Broadway credits include The Addams Family in 2010, Godspell in 2011 and the role of Teena Marie in Motown: The Musical in 2013. Her 2014 first studio album, Hunter, released by Epic Records, featured a cover of Prince's "Call My Name", and in 2017 she released Reckless Abandon independently through her own Hedonist Records, with a national headlining tour that spring. She has also collaborated with Postmodern Jukebox since 2014. Her later work includes Memphis Magnetic, recorded on analog tape at Memphis Magnetic Recording Studio, Live at Antone's in Austin, Texas, in 2024, and Soul Remains the Same in 2025, which reimagines 80s and 90s rock and metal songs through soul and R&B.