Multi-award winning Susan Winter is a singer’s singer. She has been most recently making a name for herself in the New York cabaret scene, but she has worked in and around New York clubs for many years. This native New Yorker has performed with her trio in intimate jazz spaces and has also sung with big bands, following the charts of the famous 30’s and 40’s singers.

She was a regular at Catch a Rising Star and went on the road to work in many of the popular Catskill Mountain resorts and jazz clubs in surrounding states; but she took a hiatus to raise her two sons and work with special needs adolescents. And now, she’s back! Cabaret Hotline’s Carla Gordon says, “Susan has a luscious, smooth delivery, but also has a way with a lyric.” Her style may have been born in a bygone era but it is unmistakably contemporary. Susan’s vocal prowess has been compared to some of the Great American Songbook’s finest vocalists, but her approach is a unique blend of pop, jazz and cabaret.
Susan was nominated for a coveted MAC award in 2008 for her debut show, “Million Dollar Matinee.” In 2009, Susan was the recipient of the Backstage Bistro Award for Outstanding Vocalist. In her second show, “Love Rolls On,” Susan sang Rick Jensen arrangements and presented a fun-filled evening that had a few surprises in its more tender moments when she unearthed her parents’ WWII love letters. The show was recorded live at the famed Metropolitan Room in NYC and the CD became the 2010 MAC-award winner as the Nancy LaMott Recording of the Year.

“Susan Sings Van Heusen,” was a show devoted to the favorite composer of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Susan returned to her jazz roots and made her debut at New York’s famed Iridium, taking part in the Jazz Vocalist Festival, accompanied by the Joe Tranchina trio. She is also a frequent guest artist for Joseph Macchia’s, Cabaret Cares, which has raised more than $60,000 for children with AIDS. She is currently at work on a program called, “Piano, Bass & Dreams,” which opens at the Metropolitan Room on November 30.

Recently, she was commissioned by the Arlene and Kenneth Kupferberg Center and Archives at Queensborough Community College, to develop a program for their annual fundraiser. Working with the in demand team of Alex Rybeck as musical director and Barry Kleinbort as director, Susan created “Rise Up Singing.” The theme profoundly affected her and she dedicated herself to studying a wide variety of material. Looking beyond the traditional, most obvious, oft-thumbed-through sources, Susan found more subtle parallels and reflections in material not usually associated to the times and themes associated with the period. Knowing that the Holocaust’s effects have resounded through the decades, Susan uses music and song as both a source of strength and window to view the past and future. She performed this concert at Queens College on October 30, 2011.

David Finkle of the Village Voice has written, “She’s one of those rare singers who triumphs by using no tricks. She just sings the song as the songwriter(s) intended it to be sung. She honors both lyrics and melody, implicitly indicating that she gets what the tunesmiths were after and solidly affirms it.”