Mama Alto. Photo by Jacinta Oaten.

Mama Alto is a jazz singer, cabaret artiste and gender transcendent diva, and community activist. Drawing on legacies of vintage torch singers and her own identity as a queer person of colour, Mama Alto’s vocal and visual aesthetic transcend gender, disrupting and discomforting societal constructions of dichotomous boundaries.

Mama Alto will be performing a selection from her four recently released live-to-tape albums at MPavilion, presented by the Jewel Box Performances project. The albums were recorded on original vintage sound equipment—including a machine used by Nat King Cole and an RCA microphone of the kind favoured by Sarah Vaughan. Mama Alto will be accompanied by William Elm on keyboard and joined by some very special guests.