Monika Ryan is an award-winning jazz vocalist, songwriter and recording artist whose music pairs classic jazz elegance with a warm, witty, contemporary voice — cool and clever intellectual reserve set against warm, unvarnished emotional honesty. She has spent more than two decades composing and releasing original jazz, building a songbook of her own that refreshes the jazz tradition for a new generation without ever losing sight of where it came from. Her latest album, Delightfully (Resensitize Records, 2026), features fourteen original compositions arranged by Adrian Galante and recorded with her quintet — pianist Steve Einerson, bassist Neal Miner, drummer Joe Strasser and saxophonist Keith Loftis — a band of longtime collaborators whose shared history is audible in every track. The songs are full of melodic charm, philosophical insight and modern clarity, each one built around Ryan's belief that art is service and music is medicine: an invitation to delight fully in whatever life has to offer, hard truths included. A native New Yorker, Ryan began studying as a teenager with jazz legends Sheila Jordan and Jackie Paris before going on to graduate from The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music — training that grounded her early in both the tradition and the freedom at jazz's core. She has since built an international career, headlining the Montreal International Jazz Festival and performing across Japan, Hong Kong, Ireland and the U.S. Along the way she has shared the stage with Jon Faddis, Al Grey, James Williams and Charli Persip, and was twice a rostered artist with Carnegie Hall's Neighborhood Concert Series. Audiences describe her live presence as mesmerizing, full of warmth, humor and joy — a reputation echoed in the press, where Bartek Music called her "a pure inspiration that every aspiring DIY artist should hear about." She is a voting member of the Recording Academy.   Her newest single, the original "Nothing Like a Bass" (Mandacaru Records, September 2026), brings together an extraordinary lineup: bass legend Ron Carter alongside Donald Vega, Toninho Horta and Nanny Assis.