MN Jazz Vocalist Leslie Vincent - National Act!

Leslie Vincent is an award-winning jazz vocalist, songwriter, and bandleader with a warm alto voice and an electric live presentation shaped by years in theater. Blending jazz, swing, blues, pop, and singer-songwriter traditions, Vincent approaches songs as lived stories with sharply defined emotional points of view.

Vincent has performed on iconic stages around the country, including the Dakota in Minneapolis; the Mabel Tainter in Menomonie, Wisconsin; Noce in Des Moines; Café Coda in Madison; the Blue LLama Jazz Club in Ann Arbor; the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania; and Don’t Tell Mama in New York City. She has collaborated with pianist and music director Gregory Toroian, pianist and composer George Maurer, and indie darling jeremy messersmith.

Her evolution has culminated in 2026’s Little Black Book, Vincent’s third album and first full-length collection of original songs, released April 17, 2026 via Jazz Is Cool Records. Written across several years and recorded with her longtime working band — pianist and keyboardist Patrick Adkins, guitarist Blake Foster, bassist Matt McIntyre, drummer Ben Ehrlich, and trumpeter Mitch Van Laar. Guest contributors include jeremy messersmith, Stephanie Wieseler, Zach Marley, and Mary Alice Hutton, with a horn arrangement by Sam Charlton.

“I like to create transformative experiences for my audiences,” she says. “We can start as a group of strangers, but by the end, we’ve gone through something together.”

Over the past several years, Vincent has become one of the most recognizable jazz vocalists to emerge from the Minneapolis music scene while increasingly touring outside the state. DownBeat described her as “as much a storyteller as she is a jazz singer,” while The Big Takeover praised her “controlled and beautiful voice, one that sounds timeless.” Her 2023 album About Last Night mixed standards, vintage blues, and original songs, earning regional and national attention; Jazz88 named the original “Icetown Blues” among its Best Jazz Songs of the Year. At press time, Vincent has nearly 50,000 Instagram followers and 15,000 monthly Spotify listeners. In addition to many best-of lists, Vincent has been awarded an Everwood Farmstead residency for songwriting.