Spencer Day

Few jazz singers arrive with a résumé that starts on a television talent contest, but Spencer Day, born in 1978 in a small Utah town, has built a career on that unlikely route. Raised partly by his grandparents in Arizona and self-taught at the piano, he sang standards in bars and retirement homes before his voice carried him onto CBS. His sound leans on the jazz standard tradition, yet his own songwriting pulls in noir, Latin rhythms and Middle Eastern melodies.

His 2004 debut, Introducing Spencer Day, leaned on jazz standards, while the follow-up Movie of Your Life carried its title track to a 2005 best original song win at San Francisco Academy of Art University, and Dolby Laboratories later chose the video version for the global launch of the Dolby 7.1 system. The 2009 album Vagabond, released through Concord Jazz, reached No. 11 on Billboard's Jazz Albums chart, and its single "Till You Come to Me" became the Smooth Jazz Top 20 Countdown's No. 1 cut for 2010. Later records include The Mystery of You (2013) and Angel City (2018), and Broadway By Day, a meeting of jazz and musical theatre, is due in Fall 2021.