elizabeth shepherd is a canadian montrealbased singer songwriter pianist arranger and producer along with artists such as esperanza spalding and jose james she is often credited with invigorating and reinventing the jazz song and bringing jazz influenced music to a younger audience real detroit weekly called her a jazz virtuoso blessed with a pop sensibility while the london evening standard described her as an insightful singersongwriter of evident talent and originalityshepherd arrived on the international jazz scene when her debut album start to move was voted among the top 3 jazz albums of 2006 by the listeners of the gilles peterson show on bbc radio 1 this collection of mostly original material was nominated for a juno award canadas grammy equivalent in 2007 although start to move would be found in the jazz section at your local music shop elizabeths blend of jazzfunk soul blues and samba reaches far beyond just the jazz massive besides is a collection of dancefloor remixes b sides exclusives and unreleased gems designed to appeal to all music loversshepherds second album of new music parkdale released in may 2008 deals sympathetically with its toronto neighbourhood namesake which is known for its grit the album produced by londonbased producerdj nostalgia 77 was also nominated for a juno award in 2009 shepherds 2010 release heavy falls the night featured only one cover song a reworking of the 1970s softrock radio staple dannys song shepherd produced the album herself with the exception of the first single seven bucks which was coproduced by japanese dj mitsu the beats and climbed up to 37 on the tokio hot 100 chart the record was praised by jazz and pop critics alike and was long listed for the 2010 polaris music prize canadas most prestigious popular music prize2012 brought shepherd several changes not the least of which was news that she and her husband johan were expecting their first child as she wrote in the liner notes of her most recent record rewind the fears and anticipation surrounding imminent motherhood were largely the impetus to make this record i knew i needed to keep myself busy during pregnancy and i knew i had to make something that would connect me to an aspect of myself that wasnt changing as every other piece of my being was the album all cover tunes ranging from composers such as cole porter and gershwin bros to kurt weill and jose luis perales is dedicated to her daughter sanna and is nominated for the 2012 vocal jazz juno award