Winning a Grammy Award might seem like landing a dream golden ticket that opens every door.
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The reality is a good deal more complicated.
Though Nicole Zuraitis’ 2024 album “How Love Begins” earned the Best Jazz Vocal Album Grammy, the Connecticut-based singer is still introducing herself to West Coast audiences. She followed up with a 2025 Grammy nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album for “Bianca Reimagined: Music for Paws And Persistence,” a project inspired by the canine rescue movement by the Dan Pugach Big Band, which is fronted by her husband.
More than a vocalist, Zuraitis is an arranger, pianist and award-winning songwriter with a warm, enveloping voice that wins her new converts wherever she performs. Her Montgomery Theater show Aug. 8 at San Jose Jazz’s Summer Fest, which runs Aug. 7-9 at venues around downtown, is by far the biggest Bay Area stage she’s played so far.
“I’m full of gratitude,” Zuraitis said. “I feel like jazz is finally catching up. When I won the first Grammy there was a year when I didn’t get acknowledged, like it must have been a fluke. Now I feel like I’ve cracked through the ceiling, and people are coming to shows like, who is this
chick?”
It’s not a question with a tidy answer. She isn’t the product of jazz’s higher education industry. “I fell into jazz from singing classical music,” she said. “It was my outlet to the extreme structure of that world, and at 20 I always insecure singing jazz, swallowing all the words, terrified people would think the songs are autobiographical and could see inside my brain.”
Zuraitis made her Summer Fest debut back in 2019 with her female-centric Generations of Her program, which evolved into her two-volume 2025 project “Siren Songs,” which features her interpretations of material by women songwriters including Abbey Lincoln, Carole King, Stevie Nicks, Peggy Lee and Bobbie Gentry.
Her latest album, “The Devil I Knew,” is a sweeping, orchestral song cycle that unfolds in five acts, with each movement introduced by a brief verse of poetry. Zuraitis wrote or co-wrote all the songs (except for the Hoagy Carmichael/Jane Brown Thompson standard “I Get Along Without You Very Well”), and co-produced the album with Larry Klein, the bassist responsible for a deep body of work with women artists, including his former wife, Joni Mitchell, and current wife, Brazilian jazz vocalist Luciana Souza.
“His track record producing women is amazing, and I loved his work on ‘The Joni Letters,’” she said, referring to the 2007 Herbie Hancock tribute to Joni Mitchell that won the album of the year Grammy. “I’m obsessed with his production on the Melody Gardot record ‘Currency of Man.’ It’s the best gateway drug to jazz.”
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For her Summer Fest concert Zuraitis is performing with her working quartet featuring her husband, drummer Dan Pugach, but she’s not planning on focusing on her new song cycle.
“I’m always thinking about how to best serve the audience,” she said. “Rather than hit them over the head with the record, which has a lot of darker themes. I’m an entertainer, not just a singer/songwriter, so we’ll be doing all the styles and arrangements of surprising covers.”
Her stylistic breadth has been one of her calling cards. Zuraitis sounds confident and poised belting R&B, crooning standards, or interpreting pop tunes. Her own pieces are impressive examples of songcraft, with narrative twists sets to supple, memorable melodies.
“I grew up doing musical theater and I love a through-line,” she said. “I think there’s been a trend of people not focusing on words a lot. Lyric writing is an art. I’m not saying the best, but I’m working on it every day.”
It’s effort that has paid off, even if it took a decade of accumulating recognition. She released her debut album, “Spread the Word” in 2008, and earned the first of her six Grammy nominations in 2019 for her dramatic arrangement of Dolly Parton’s classic “Jolene.” There was a lot of scuffling
before the 2024 Grammy triumph.
“Before that it was just Dan and me trying to book ourselves and losing money on every tour,” she said. “Why is this so hard? Year after year it’s not getting any easier. The Grammy was a true godsend. I never had an agent before. Now I have two. I’m doing 80 dates throughout the year. But the biggest thing was it gave me a little confidence.”
She has her sights set on SFJAZZ and the Monterey Jazz Festival next.
Contact Andrew Gilbert at [email protected].
NICOLE ZURAITIS QUARTET
When & where: 3 p.m. Aug. 8 at San Jose Jazz Summer Fest Montgomery Theater Stage, San Jose
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Tickets: $64.80-$644.80; summerfest.sanjosejazz.org
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