Nicolas Bearde Quintet

Nicolas Bearde earned an avid following as a solo act crooning sophisticated R&B before evolving over the past decade into a captivating jazz singer who brings easy-going authority to ballads and swaggering mid-tempo standards. He made his Stanford debut in 2024 with a program drawn from his album I Remember You: The Music of Nat King Cole, and will broaden the repertoire for this performance.

Bearde first gained widespread notice in the late 1980s as a founding member of Bobby McFerrin’s innovative, improvisation-steeped a cappella ensemble Voicestra. He spent much of the 1980s and 1990s pursuing a dual-track career as a musician and actor, working on stage and television. Thankfully, music has been his primary pursuit in recent years. Whether navigating Billy Strayhorn’s rueful “Lush Life,” Eden Ahbez’s beatific “Nature Boy,” or Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane’s impetuously grooving “Come Back to Me,” Bearde finds the emotional core of every lyric.

Nicholas Bearde Website

Personnel:

• Nicolas Bearde, vocals