Dubliner Stella Bass studied singing and piano accordion from a young age; later, she took up the piano through the RIAM Dublin and is currently studying for a Masters Degree in Jazz Performance.
Studying is one thing, but music is best honed through performance. Many years of singing in musicals, various band styles and cabarets helped her finely-tune her craft; combining study and performance has generated a versatile repertoire crossing over jazz, classical and musical theatre, although Stella is still most at home singing her beloved jazz standards. All through 2017, she is touring with guitarist Hugh Buckley, to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Ella Fitzgerald. The concert focuses on the period later in Ella’s career, when she collaborated with acclaimed American guitarist Joe Pass, with whom she produced four studio albums, including the Grammy-winning, “Fitzgerald and Pass…Again”.
In 2014, Stella released her first album “Too Darn Hot" - featuring songs from Porter, Kern as well as newly-arranged songs by Amy Winehouse and Robert Palmer – to critical acclaim; indeed, upon hearing Stella's album cover of her daughter's song Back to Black, Amy Winehouse’s mother got in touch with Stella directly to say how much she loved the version, indeed that Stella's album was being played non-stop in her house! The album gets regular radio airplay in Ireland – it was Album of the Week on the national station on its release - and has made some waves on jazz stations in the UK, the USA, Germany and Switzerland. Indeed, the album has been selected by Aer Lingus, Ireland’s national airline, for inclusion on its in-flight entertainment schedule since April 2016.
In January 2015, in conjunction with Arts Council, she toured Ireland and Northern Ireland performing her jazz-inspired take on the music of Broadway's Stephen Sondheim, twice selling out the John Field Room in Dublin’s prestigious National Concert Hall.
No stranger to the art of the big band, Stella sings with Ireland’s Hot House Big Band, has recorded with the Dublin City Jazz Orchestra, while she is also into the seventh year of her own quartet's residency in Dublin and has played several jazz festivals in Ireland, north and south. She also completed an Irish tour of her own one-woman show, "Smoke & Sound" – again self-produced - a tribute to the music and cabaret of inter-war Berlin, featuring the music of Kurt Weill, Berthold Brecht and Marlene Dietrich
