In this episode, vocalist and songwriter Lizz Wright shares the inspiration behind her song “Sparrow,” the opening track from her 2024 album Shadow. The song’s message of perseverance, hope, and retaining one’s roots is beautifully expressed through her performance captured on the Miner Auditorium stage in September of 2023 during the opening week of our 2023-24 Season.

ABOUT LIZZ WRIGHT
With a luxuriant voice redolent of the red soil that sustained her growing up in Georgia, Lizz Wright sanctifies every song she sings. While the vocalist first gained attention delivering Swing Era standards associated with Billie Holiday, she’s continued in recent years as a singular singer/songwriter whose music eludes definition. A quartet of albums on the Verve label, beginning with 2003’s Salt and concluding with the gospel-infused “Fellowship” from 2010, established Wright as a major artist whose reach wasn’t bound by the limits of any one genre. Wright has been continually working in varying settings with several sublimely talented women including drummer Terri Lyne Carrington’s GRAMMY-winning Mosaic Project and a touring tribute to Miriam Makeba, Abbey Lincoln and Odetta featuring fellow vocalists Dianne Reeves and Angelique Kidjo. After Wright’s GRAMMY-nominated 2015 Concord Records album Freedom & Surrender, the 2017 follow-up Grace and the 2022 live date Holding Space on her own Blues & Greens Records imprint, Wright’s new album Shadow is her most personal and accomplished recording to date.