dolores scozzesi

Dolores Scozzesi was born in New York City, spent her first five years in Atlantic City and then her family settled in Astoria N.Y. in an Italian/Irish neighborhood. Her father was Mexican and her mom was Irish. This rich cultural heritage was a strong contributor to her curiosity, and intense interest and experiments with music and sounds from diverse cultures at a very young age.

As a young girl she worked as a coat model in New York City and studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute.

Though she loved the theater and improvisation, Dolores sought an outlet for a different creative expression, singing. This led her to study performance with vocal coach Phil Moore who worked with Bobby Short, Lena Horne, Marilyn Monroe and Dianne Reeves. While studying with Phil, Dolores explored music from the Great American Songbook. She was consistently drawn to obscure and unusual songs such as “Strange Feeling” by Billy Strayhorn, and feel in love with the music of Jon Lucien. Dolores studied Improvisation with the Groundlings, continued to study acting with Aaron Speiser and the Actor's Lab, and jazz improv with Rhiannon of Bobby McFerrin's “Voicestra”.

She began her professional singing career at Budd Freidmann's Improvisation room, singing in between the comedy acts of up and coming new talent: Robin Williams, Richard Belzer, Larry David and Jay Leno. Scozzesi developed and produced her own cabaret acts and appeared throughout Los Angeles and at the Rose Tattoo, Cafe Melrose, Belage 1020, Cinegrille, and the Gardenia.

She eventually met and married a French restauranteur and traveled to France where she formed a jazz troupe and sang traditional American Blues and jazz (and some Lucien) throughout Lyon. On her way to Paris with her band, Dolores discovered she was pregnant with her beautiful daughter Sophia and returned to the states. She took a hiatus to focus on her family and raising her daughter.

In 2005 Dolores returned to the stage and revived her passion for singing by continuing to develop and produce her musical journeys in “Stuck in the 60's”, “From Sting to Sondheim”, “Songs My Mother Taught Me” and “November's Eyes”.and the jazz driven, “Sondheim Swings” (an interesting take on one of Broadway's most beloved composers).

Some of her recent performances were at Hollywood Studio Bar & Grill, Catalina's,The Mbar, Vitello's, The Gate, Vicky's (with the Desert Cities Jazz Band) and is slated to appear @Vicky's 4/9 through the American Jazz Institute.

Dolores Scozzesi is proud to introduce “A Special Taste” produced by Mark Winkler, with stunning arrangements by Eli Brueggemann and Gary Fukushima. In this project she has picked songs from some of her favorite composers, Bob Dylan, Johnny Mercer and Jon Lucien.

She is currently working on her new CD, “Intuition