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Michelle Lordi

On her critically hailed 2015 album Drive, Michelle Lordi joined forces with pianist/arranger Orrin Evans, who produced the project and accompanied her on a program of emotionally taut ballads featuring an all star Philadelphia band. With her new album Dream a Little Dream, she delivers an intoxicating set of beloved standards with an illustrious cast of Philadelphia jazz veterans, including the storied tenor saxophonist Larry McKenna and guitarist Sonny Troy (who have played together since they met in South Philadelphia in Frankie Avalon's band in the late 1950s).

A singer blessed with a sumptuous voice, Michelle Lordi turns each musical encounter into an emotionally charged communion, creating an exhilarating circuit between her voice, her collaborators and the audience.

Whether she’s performing with Philadelphia or New York jazz legends, exploring experimental soundscapes, or delivering taut, mesmerizing pop ballads with pianist Orrin Evans, Lordi is looking for those moments of discovery when the unfolding musical narrative reveals something new and unexpected.

“An emotionally insightful performer with an arrestingly beautiful sound”-Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Chronicle.

“Singer Michelle Lordi has released a notable CD in Drive…She is Julie London intimate, Straight forward, clear and appropriately dreamy. Even so she builds up tension…The backing is perfect across the board and Orrin Evans does some wonderful, almost haunting, reharmonizations on “I Fall In Love Too Easily”. A very pleasant and understated album.” -Robert Rusch/Cadence Magazine July 2015

“Lordi’s singing is reminiscent of Chet Baker’s minimalist style, allowing for exceptional rapport between her and her instrumentalists. She is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the finest singers on the circuit today, and Drive is a further illustration of her remarkable talent.” -Victor L. Schermer/ All About Jazz March 2015

Michelle has performed at the Birchmere ( Alexandria, VA) BluJazz ( Akron, OH) Bop Stop (Cleveland,OH) Cliff Bell's ( Detroit, MI) Chris’ Jazz Café ( Philadelphia, PA) DazzleJazz (Denver, CO) Harlem Jazz (Barcelona, Spain) The Kimmel Center ( Philadelphia, PA) The Mann Music Center (Philadelphia, PA) Maureen's Jazz Cellar ( Nyack, NY) The Metropolitan Room (NYC) South Jazz Parlor ( Philadelphia, PA) SMOKE Jazz & Supper Club (NYC) and many other fine jazz festivals, art centers and musical venues.

Michelle is passionate about bringing generations of jazz fans and musicians together and has run one of Philadelphia’s best attended and successful weekly Jam Sessions at Vintage Bar & Grill in Abington, PA since September of 2014 with equal doses humor, professionalism and wonder.

Michelle Lordi: Two Moons

Read "Two Moons" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
March 1, 2024

The art of the jazz diva does not shy away from the dark and mysterious. From putting a spell on somebody to helplessly falling under that old black magic, the tradition always seems to include some small touch of witchery, and Michelle Lordi, for her part, does not let a modern-day sound obscure those roots. The mood of Two Moons sits somewhere between a late-night set in a small jazz club and a round of spooky stories around the campfire. ...

Play This!

Michelle Lordi: Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by John Chacona
October 16, 2023

"Only Love Can Break Your Heart," a minor 1970 Neil Young hit, was ostensibly written for Graham Nash after the latter's split from Joni Mitchell (a claim Young later walked back), a breakup song then. It's a lilting waltz with a simple melody more sweet than sad. Cycling eight-bar verse and chorus sections without a bridge don't give a jazz singer a lot to work with, but rather than adding heft to thin material, the arrangement strips the song down ...

Year in Review

C. Michael Bailey's Best Releases of 2020

by C. Michael Bailey
December 16, 2020

We are experiencing an existential fold in history, one where we do not even realize its gravity because it has been so cheapened by ourselves. The only thing that rises above all of this is art, and in particular, music. It is but grace that these artists provided us a gift we could never possibly warrant. Michelle Lordi Breaking Up With The Sound Cabinet of Wonder Productions Gemma Sherry

Interview

Michelle Lordi: Career Evolution

by R.J. DeLuke
May 12, 2020

Some artists are blessed to be born into situations where opportunities are at the ready. Education and training are easily obtainable. Maybe they have connections to the professional world, via their lineage or other friends. Even so, it's still up to them to produce and deal with the inevitable vagaries of their choice to pursue music as a career. For others, the process can be more gradual. The germ of being an artist is there, but it simmers and comes ...

Album Review

Michelle Lordi: Break Up With the Sound

Read "Break Up With the Sound" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 22, 2020

Vocalist Michelle Lordi's house burned down at the end of 2017. That is a bracing life event from which one may find oneself at a brutally curious fork in the road. Lordi's Break Up With the Sound makes it seem that she blazed through Kubler Ross's five stages of loss and got to work on something so new, it smelled of white-hot creation. Lordi's modus operandi has been addressing the Great American Songbook, as evidenced by her densely competent Dream ...

Live Review

Michelle Lordi at Philadelphia Museum of Art

by Victor L. Schermer
June 10, 2018

Michelle Lordi Trio Friday Nights Philadelphia Museum of Art June 8, 2018 I've always appreciated Michelle Lordi's singing through her fine recordings, but I'd never heard her in person, so I seized this opportunity to hop over to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to catch her show, especially because her trio included two of the finest musicians on the scene today: Jim Ridl on piano and Matthew Parrish on bass. Ridl ...

Album Review

Michelle Lordi: Dream a Little Dream

Read "Dream a Little Dream" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer

by Victor L. Schermer
November 16, 2017

Michelle Lordi graces the Philadelphia area with her singing, and her album releases and club dates in New York and elsewhere are gaining her wider recognition as she continues her regular local gigs. She sings clearly, straight ahead, and with panache. In this album, she brings together a septet of outstanding instrumentalists for a nostalgic set of standards from the American Songbook with “small big band" arrangements by saxophonist Larry McKenna reminiscent of those which Bill Holman did during his ...

"Michelle Lordi sings in a way that is uncommon today: simple, straightforward, direct, and conveying the emotions in the way we all do: in our voice inflections. No gimmicks. This is a style that emerged in the swing and cool jazz eras, a strict adherence to the tune that virtually vanished as singers began to add embellishments, scat, and too often a hysterical emotionality where personality crowded out the melody…Cool uncorrupted understatement that swings is a way to describe Lordi's vocal style in a nutshell. Her voice is clear and never shrill, her diction is flawless, and she uses almost no vibrato. So what you get is the pure unadulterated song." —Victor Shermer, All About Jazz