Veronica Swift Swings the Rochester Jazz Fest

Songbook standards are secure in the hands of rising singer Veronica Swift. The daughter of the late pianist Hod O’Brien & wife Stephanie Nakasian (a persuasive interpreter of American song herself), Ms. Swift, still only 23 years old and a half-year past her graduation from the jazz vocals program at the University of Miami, has been enjoying a whirlwind career in clubs in New York City, Boston and elsewhere. She has appeared at showcases like Dizzy’s, Kitano, the Deer Head Inn, and Scullers and is currently in the middle of a second month-long Saturday-night residency at Birdland, where she has also recently been the musical guest of John Pizzarelli and the Django Reinhardt New York Festival All-Stars. She issued two juvenile CDs (backed by Richie Cole on the first and Harry Allen on the second, as well as by her parents) and this year released a mature effort, Lonely Woman, available on her web site (two tracks with her father at piano may represent the last recorded efforts by the great Hod O’Brien, who died in November). This photographer caught the young chanteuse opening (with her quartet) for Catherine Russell at Birdland in February, joining her mother and the Tardo Hammer Trio at Kitano in March (a program they repeated at the Deer Head Inn in June), and on opening night of the nine-day Rochester International Jazz Festival at the end of June. In Roche