Friday, September 18, 2026, 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Vanessa Ruben
Mini-Festival: Celebration of International Day of Peace
Sept 18 & 19 special events @Soapbox Gallery, Brooklyn
Friday, September 18th, 8pm (Doors at 7:30pm)
One Breath Rising https://www.onebreathrising.org/ and Melchizedek Music Productions /Open Fortress https://www.melchizedekmusicproduction.com/
Vocalist Vanessa Rubin & her Trio featuring pianist Brandon McCune, bassist Kenny Davis , multi-percussionist Winard Harper & Poet Nancy Mercado
Revered as both a torchbearer and a storyteller, jazz vocalist Vanessa Rubin possesses a voice hailed with crystalline clarity, hearth-like warm, emotional depth and keen burnished wisdom she can deliver with playful lioness sass. The Cleveland native brings a wealth of diverse influences to her vocal performances. From swing to bossa nova to blues, ballads and contemporary covers performed with small and large ensembles, Rubin’s interpretive ability to move through the Great American Songbook to modern jazz composers/arrangers like Tadd Dameron and Horace Silver to contemporary composers as Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers and Sting is masterful. “The Great American Songbook continues to expand with songs by outstanding composers who can paint pictures of the life of our times with their unique melodies and lyric that also stand the test of time”, Rubin asserts.
Rubin’s passion for rich musical stories is evidenced throughout her nine recordings as a leader plus numerous guest appearances. A recipient of numerous awards and citations, she is most proud of a 2011 Kevin Klein Nomination for Best Actress in a Musical called Yesterdays: An Evening with Billie Holiday in which she performed a one woman show about the life and music of the iconic jazz singer. The Dream Is You, her most recent self-produced recording and the first all vocal tribute to another native Clevelander known as “the romanticist of the bebop period”, Tadd Dameron, enthusiastically garnered a 2020 nomination at the 51st NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Jazz Album. Rubin continues to be a favorite at jazz clubs and festivals here in the US and abroad. Her work as a performing artist, writer, producer, clinician/educator at educational institutions, as well as her most recent 2021 endeavor, curator and producer of Sundown Jazz @ V’s Place, an outdoor summer performance jazz series in Cleveland, Ohio is ongoing.
Nancy Mercado was recently named New York’s New Generation Beat Poet Laureate, (Lifetime Award) by the National Beat Poetry Foundation. She is also the recipient of the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Before Columbus Foundation and was named one of The Frederick Douglass 200 by the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center.
An award-winning poet, playwright, editor, and activist, Mercado has presented her work throughout the United States and internationally at the United Nations Committee on the Status of Women, Lincoln Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the University of Nantes, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Casa de las Américas in Cuba, The Public Theater, Town Hall, Symphony Space, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and numerous other venues.
Mercado is the author of It Concerns the Madness, Las Tres Hermanas, and seven stage plays. She is the editor of if the world were mine, a young adult anthology, as well as three digital anthologies. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared widely in literary and arts journals, including Tar Baby, and in anthologies such as Blind Persistence and Bigotry on Broadway, among others.
Throughout her distinguished career, Mercado’s work has reflected a steadfast commitment to artistic excellence, cultural memory, and social justice.
Visit: nancy-mercado.com
