Stella Heath Sextet at Blue Note

Vocalist Stella Heath performs songs from the Great American Songbook, focusing on traditional jazz and swing spanning the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s on Thursday, Feb. 1 at 8 p.m. at Blue Note. Heath grew up in the North Bay steeped in her mother’s eclectic music collection. Some of her early musical influences were Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Buena Vista Social Club, Billie Holiday, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Ella Fitzgerald. Her education was primarily in acting and she spent many years as an actress in New York City, where she began to sing jazz with Marjorie Eliot in Harlem. She returned to her home state in 2014 and began playing music full time, starting the Bay Area-based band Bandjango Collectif, which mixes French jazz manouche, New Orleans hot swing and eclectic global folk, allowing Heath to explore and play in vocal improvisation, different languages and song interpretation. In 2019 she debuted The Billie Holiday Project, a historically centered musical tribute to the great Lady Day. Blue Note, 1030 Main St., Napa, www.bluenotejazz.com.