Holly Cole (CA)

About

Also known as: Holly Core

Holly Cole has spent decades making jazz feel like a late night conversation, warm and a little unpredictable. The Canadian singer built her reputation with the Holly Cole Trio, the group she co founded in 1986 with bassist David Piltch and pianist Aaron Davis. Their 1993 album Don't Smoke in Bed went platinum in Canada, scored a Juno for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, and put their cover of "I Can See Clearly Now" into heavy rotation on MuchMusic. From there she kept pushing the sound around, blending pop into her jazz vocabulary on Dark Dear Heart and Romantically Helpless, then swinging back to core territory with albums dedicated to Tom Waits songs or classic holiday material. Her 2003 album Shade, which dug into Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Brian Wilson, won Jazz Recording of the Year at the Juno Awards. She reunited the original trio in 2019 for a run of shows in Montreal that became the 2021 album Montreal. Her 13th studio album Dark Moon arrived in January 2025, recorded with an emphasis on spontaneity and very little rehearsal, keeping the performances genuinely fresh.