When Tiffany Austin arrived in the Bay Area in 2009, she’d decided to put music on the back burner. After about five years supporting herself in Japan singing pop and soul, she was ready to pursue a different path via a scholarship to UC Berkeley School of Law. While the Los Angeles native wasn’t closing the door on the arts—“I went to law school with an eye to be an advocate for artists,” she said—she seemed set to trade the bar for a career singing in bars.
Since graduating from Berkeley Law in 2012, Austin has indeed become an advocate for artists. But instead of putting down the microphone, she’s become one of the Bay Area’s most potent cultural advocates by raising her voice. More than one of jazz’s most soulful vocalists, she’s a highly effective organizer and educator with an array of projects and pursuits spanning the entire region.
Beyond serving as music director, composer and arranger for the Healdsburg Freedom Jazz Choir, she, along with co-director Kenya Moses, has turned Albany’s Juneteenth Festival into the East Bay’s flagship celebration of the holiday. She also launched Art & Song, a monthly concert series at the Abrams Claghorn Gallery in Albany. Presenting some of the Bay Area’s finest singers in an intimate duo context, the program is slated to start up again in the spring.
But her most visible undertaking is the Oakland art space Wyldflowr Arts, which has quickly become an essential hub for several overlapping musical communities—classical Indian musicians, experimental jazz improvisers and singer/songwriters. All this is amidst a regular rotation of gigs performing her own music at leading San Francisco venues like Keys Jazz Bistro, Mr. Tipple’s and the SFJAZZ Center.
“For me, half of it is inspiration and the other half is gravitation,” Austin said during a recent phone conversation from her studio near Lake Merritt. “I’m always looking for ways to synthesize the skills I have and grow them. The overarching idea is to connect people and make them feel and think and empathize. That’s what all my projects have in common.”
No collaborator has enjoyed a closer view of Austin’s evolution from law student to mover and shaker than Marcus Shelby, the San Francisco bassist, composer and bandleader with an even more expansive bailiwick of responsibilities. He first met Austin in Tokyo in 2009 while working with the Grammy Award-winning R&B star Ledisi during her stint as featured vocalist with the Basie Orchestra.
Back in Japan for a vacation after starting law school, Austin was invited by some friends in the Basie band to an after-show jam session. Duly impressed by her performance, Shelby exchanged contact info with her, and they connected stateside.
He was in the midst of a long-running monthly residency at the Union Square eatery Café Claude, and she became a regular on the gig. Before long, he was calling her for dates with his quintet and orchestra, “and she became a reliable and astute collaborator,” he said.
When Shelby took over as the Healdsburg Jazz Festival’s artistic director in 2020, he promoted Austin to music director for the choir. But her willingness to take creative leaps is what has made her an invaluable ally. Commissioned in 2021 to write an opera by Opera Parallèle, Shelby composed Harriet’s Spirit working with librettist Roma Olvera. He brought in Austin as the lead vocalist to create the role of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
“She was amazing,” he said. “What she’s doing now, she’s not only a very inspirational artist—she’s become an important organizer. I love seeing her build her own world and projects. I’ve been here going on 29 years, and worked with a lot of people. She’s the one I’ve collaborated with the most.”
Born and raised in South Los Angeles, Austin grew up in a house filled with music. Her parents listened to soul and pop masters like Donny Hathaway and Stevie Wonder, while her Louisiana Creole grandmother introduced her to jazz. She credits her grandmother for “teaching me what soul was about,” adding, “She had a great sense of herself, and didn’t let anyone make her feel less than herself. When I sing the blues or jazz, I draw on that Grandmama place.”
After graduating from the Los Angeles High School of the Arts, Austin went on to major in creative writing at Cal State Northridge. During the year she spent studying in the U.K., she began sitting in at jazz sessions around London. After graduating in 2004, she set out for Tokyo with the plan that she’d look for work as a singer and spend a year in Japan. A flood of work came her way, and Austin ended up staying through 2009. During her first grueling year of law school, she turned to music as a source of balance and sanity.
Working with Shelby, she quickly started making a name for herself. A series of prestigious gigs and residencies introduced her as the most exciting new voice in the region. She received a major vote of confidence when the Mission District’s Red Poppy Art House, an essential talent incubator for the past decade, selected her for a yearlong residency in 2014.
She took the opportunity to develop her Creole Project, which focuses on recasting songs associated with Creole accordionist Amede Ardoin, who made groundbreaking recordings with the great Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee in the 1920s. Austin found her way to Ardoin by beginning with her love of the Harlem Renaissance and working outward to explore other regions where African American culture flowered in the 1920s.
Working with tenor saxophonist Howard Wiley on a program of songs associated with Hoagy Carmichael led to her 2015 debut, Nothing But Soul, the album that catapulted her into national prominence with a glowing review on public radio’s Fresh Air. She followed up with 2018’s Unbroken, a soul-powered meditation on African-American culture’s extraordinary resilience, produced by Grammy Award-winning jazz champion Richard Seidel.
Throughout her various pursuits and projects, Austin always had her antenna out for a place of her own, an opportunity she seized when she connected with saxophonist Nora Free, who’d converted a West Oakland storefront into a cozy, living room-like salon, Wyldflowr Arts.
“The arc had always been a brick-and-mortar,” Austin said. “Nora and I were on the same page right from the start. We want a space where people can come and commune, not only over music, but over the arts in general. Nora and I are both versed in jazz and soul music, but we’ve hosted rock and hip-hop groups. The RootStock Arts residency is a perfect example of what we want to do.”
Programmed by percussionist Sameer Gupta, RootStock has presented a series of classical Indian artists at Wyldflowr. A mover and shaker himself who spearheaded the influential Brooklyn Raga Massive collective before he moved back to the East Bay in 2023, Gupta’s been impressed by Austin’s “intense interest in building different communities,” he said.
“She takes her work seriously, and she wants to put it at a higher level,” Gupta said. “I think her vision is shaped by her history of studying law. A lot of people in the arts want to leave things in a gray area that doesn’t work out for artists. She wants to hash out the details.”
Austin is just getting started. She and Free are looking to expand youth programming, including a jam session for young musicians. Workshops on basic web design and tax preparation for artists are also in the works.
“We’re in expansion mode,” Austin said. “We’re seeking funding, trying to figure out ways where everybody feels welcome. I always think about leveraging. Eventually I want a whole arts center.”
For more info about Tiffany Austin, visit tiffanyaustin.com. For info about Wyldflowr Arts, visit it at 809 37th St., Oakland, or go to wyldflowrarts.com.
