A native and resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Suzanne Pittson is a risk-taking jazz singer and lyricist who often thinks like a horn player. In fact, she has cited sax greats Michael Brecker and John Coltrane as some of her major influences. Pittson (who can be a sensitive interpreter of lyrics or an intellectual, cerebral scat singer) was born Suzanne Haight in Oakland, CA, where her appreciation of jazz was encouraged by her mother Betty Haight (a jazz singer in her youth) as well as her uncle Bill Wilson (a jazz drummer) and her aunt Madge Wilson (a jazz pianist/organist). The Northern Californian began playing the piano at the age of eight and went on to study the instrument at San Francisco State University, where she studied with saxman John Handy and earned a masters in music. It was at that college that she decided to pursue a career as a jazz vocalist instead of a pianist. Pittson, who is married to pianist Jeff Pittson, recorded her first album as a leader, Blues and the Abstract Truth, when she was 39 in 1992 and, at 45, followed it up with the excellent Resolution: A Remembrance of John Coltrane in 1999. ~ Alex Henderson