The sounds of Luciano Pavarotti, Sade, Fela Kuti, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Ross, Patti LaBelle, Barbara Streisand, Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin tickled the earbuds of Ayo Awosika as she grew up in Northern Virginia outside the Washington D.C. area. It was obvious that at the tender age of 14 the music seed had been firmly planted in the right-side of her brain and that a music career was the only one she could choose to passionately pursue. The now classically trained vocalist has transferred her aptitude for opera and art song to the world of jazz and beyond. Ayo brings new life and interpretation to jazz standards heard many times over. She has aimed to be a musician with more substance, more ability and more originality than the typical Top 40 radio favorites. Ayo's influences include her surroundings and observations. She's an artist who has something to say, and with a heritage rooted in West Africa, and recent travels that reach Japan, Germany, England and France, she's been tweaking her style; mixing a love for the complexity and depth of jazz and soul with the honesty and familiarity of folk and roots music, working to find the place where these worlds meet. She has soaked in the jazz history of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Carmen McCrae, absorbed the songwriting knowledge of Joni Mitchell and Lizz Wright and carved a niche for herself as a vocalist with prowess beyond her 24 years. Welcome to the ever evolving world of Ayo… enjoy…