Shana Tucker

Lyrical storyteller. Soulful cellist. Dynamic singer-songwriter. That’s SHANA TUCKER. Her unique genre of ChamberSoul™ weaves together jazz, roots folk, acoustic pop, and a touch of R&B, into melodies that echo in your head for days. She’s the rare performer you’ve never seen the likes of before—and one you’ll never forget.

Shana’s ChamberSoul is equal parts dynamic storytelling paired with rich, deep music that sits down next to you and puts its arm around your shoulders. “I’m intrinsically drawn to acoustic instruments because of their resonance, warmth, and intimacy,” she says. “ChamberSoul is all about the conversations music ignites…it brings musicians and audiences closer, and makes the music tangible, no matter how large or small the room is.”

A sought-after collaborator, Shana has performed and recorded with legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Bennie Maupin, jazz flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell, and Grammy-nominated artists The Foreign Exchange (NuSoul/R&B), Nnenna Freelon (jazz) and Pierce Freelon (children’s). Recent composition/dance collaborations include When We Were Queens and They Are All, structured improvisational performance experiences presented with Culture Mill’s Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan; Noula by Gaspard & Dancers; and Continuing To Tell, a multidisciplinary public-space performance by Proxemic Media highlighting the history of Civil Rights in Durham, NC. Cello performance credits include Overland, The History of White People in America, American Masters: Decoding Watson and Paul Robeson: Here I Stand on pbs.org. Currently, Shana has also served as co-host and contributing songwriter for Rootle’s Block Party Live! @ Home! on pbsnc.org.

Other compositional highlights of Shana’s career involve scoring music for television and theatrical productions, including OWN Network’s The Legacy of Black Wall Street; I Love My Hair When It’s Good: & Then Again When It’s Defiant and Impressive by Chaunesti Webb; Just Another Lynching: An American Horror Story by Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins;; Make/Believe by Murielle Elizeon and Tommy Noonan; The Amazing Adventures of Grace May B. Good by Andrea Woods; and “Surrender” from Suddenly I See by Kristin Taylor.

Shana is a recipient of several grant awards for artistry and arts administration leadership, including United Arts Council (Raleigh, NC); two Nevada Arts Council grants, one of which is the prestigious Artist Fellowship for her exemplary work as a Performing Artist; as an arts leader/nonprofit organization leader from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the William R. Kenan Charitable Trust, Triangle Community Foundation, and more. She has served on several nonprofit arts organizations’ board of directors or advisory boards, including Blair Publisher, Washington Women in Jazz, and North Carolina Presenters Consortium.

A front-line advocate for arts education, Shana believes that approaching academics from an artistic perspective encourages innovation, critical thinking, and self-confidence. She recently completed a three-year tenure as Executive Director for Kidznotes, an El Sistema-inspired, music-for-social change organization that provides free instruments and music lessons to K - 12th grade students attending Title I schools in the Triangle area of NC. Shana has worked with educators (Pre-K through college and beyond) to integrate the arts into existing curriculum, thereby transforming schools, knowledge retention, and students’ love of learning through her work as an A+ Schools of North Carolina Fellow, and a teaching artist with United Arts Council, Durham Arts Council, and Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts.