Tiffany Austin Septet

With a soaring, soulful voice and a contagious enthusiasm for jazz, vocalist Tiffany Austin has been delighting audiences here in the Bay Area and around the world. Her first appearance at the Stanford Jazz Festival last year won her lots of South Bay fans, and her story has captured even more hearts: Originally bound for a career in law, she took a leap and became a full-time musician, rather than taking the bar exam. Since that momentous decision, she’s performed to great acclaim on multiple continents with jazz artists such as Howard Wiley, Cyrus Chestnut, and Roy Ayers, and released two recordings: Nothing But Soul and Unbroken — the release of the latter Tiffany is celebrating at this concert. The explanation for her rapid rise on the jazz scene becomes clear when you hear her heartfelt description of the kind of jazz that moves her. “It’s got to be soulful,” she says, “It’s got to have fire, it’s got to have nuance, it’s got to have harmonic understanding. It’s got to have all of it!”