Describing Aubrey Johnson as a state-of-the-art jazz vocalist is perfectly accurate and entirely inadequate. It’s not just that New York-based singer is also an acclaimed composer and educator. Wielding her silvery soprano with uncommon control and sharp emotional acuity, she’s become an essential muse for a dazzling constellation of colleagues in jazz, Brazilian, and creative contemporary music. 

While the release of her startlingly beautiful 2020 debut album Unraveled (Outside In Music) was largely preempted by the advent of the pandemic, the program of original compositions and arrangements introduced a singular artist already seasoned by dozens of intense collaborations. The Lively Air, her second album with her six-piece chamber jazz ensemble, is slated for online and CD release by Greenleaf Music on March 20, 2026 (the Core Port label is releasing both albums in Japan). Like her debut, The Lively Air was produced by Steve Rodby, who earned renown as the bassist for the Pat Metheny Group. 

Rodby was also in the producer’s chair for the final project by his late PMG bandmate Lyle Mays, Eberhard, which won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 2022. As the head of Mays’ estate, Johnson spearheaded the project as executive producer and self-released the work as a single track album. Mays, Johnson’s uncle, composed the 13-minute “mini symphony” in honor of German bassist Eberhard Weber for the 2009 Zeltsman Marimba Festival in Appleton, WI with a vocal part written for Johnson, and her wordless vocals are featured throughout the piece. 

Equally comfortable in stripped down settings, Johnson also released an intimate set of standards in 2022 with pianist Randy Ingram, Play Favorites  (Sunnyside Records). Rich Breen mixed and mastered all four albums.

Her relatively slim discography under her own name stands in sharp contrast to the daunting array of projects that have prominently featured her voice. In just the past year or so she’s played an essential role on a bevy of stellar albums, singing on all the tracks of lyricist and writer David Hajdu’s Lives of Saints (featuring compositions by Dave Douglas, Helen Sung, Renee Rosnes, and Johnson herself); trumpeter Alex Sipiagin’s Reverberations; and Randy Ingram’s upcoming album with Brazilian jazz legend Toninho Horta. Among several high profile dates she performed at the Kennedy Center with the Jamie Baum Septet in May as part of the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival.

Johnson currently teaches in the Jazz Departments at Montclair State University and The New School. She has also held faculty positions at New England Conservatory, Queens College, and Berklee College of Music. Her performing and teaching has taken her throughout North America, China, Taiwan, Europe, and South America. Most recently, she was awarded a month-long composition residency at the prestigious MacDowell artist residency program in New Hampshire, and the Chamber Music America Performance Plus Grant to compose and record a new album under the mentorship of Billy Childs (both of which played an important role in the creation of her 2026’s The Lively Air). A South Arts grant allowed her to perform across the West Coast with the Aubrey Johnson Group in 2024. She was a quarter finalist in the 2025 American Vocal Traditions Competition in Savannah, GA. 

In many ways Johnson’s creative path has been defined by eagerly embracing steep musical challenges. Born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin, she grew up in the midst of a highly musical family. A passionate jazz fan, her father exposed her to the music’s foundational giants. Her mother, a fine pianist and singer, directed music at the church the family attended for many years. Lyle Mays was her mother’s brother.

At the age of six, Johnson decided she wanted to be a singer, an ambition that never waned. Beginning piano lessons at seven, she advanced quickly on the instrument and started studying jazz, “but I became obsessed with singing pop music and was always recording myself and trying to improve my singing,” she recalls. When it came time for college, knowing she wanted to pursue music, she saw classical or jazz as her options, and opted for the latter at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, “which is where I really fell in love with jazz,” she says.

“The first jazz singer I ever saw live was Dianne Reeves when I was in high school and she blew me away. I love Ella like most jazz singers, and Sarah Vaughan really resonated with me. Once I found Betty Carter, though, I knew I wanted to arrange crazier stuff. She was a huge influence. And listening to all of the wordless vocal singing of Bobby McFerrin and the Pat Metheny Group’s music influenced my desire to develop in that direction.”

As an undergrad at Western Michigan University, Johnson studied classical and jazz voice and joined Gold Company, the university’s world-renowned vocal jazz ensemble, directed by Steve Zegree. She made her auspicious recording debut on 2007’s Essence of Green (Origin Records) by pianist Ron DiSalvio with legendary drummer Jimmy Cobb. Western is also where she first connected with piano master Fred Hersch.

“He came to Western every semester to do private lessons, and studying with him was kind of life-changing,” she says. “When I was graduating I wasn’t sure what was next for. me and he recommended the New England Conservatory, which was absolutely the right choice. Fred and I have stayed in touch, and I even had the chance to do two concerts with him subbing for Jo Lawry with his Pocket Orchestra.”

Starting her NEC master’s degree in jazz performance in 2007 Johnson studied with Danilo Perez, Jerry Bergonzi, Dominique Eade, Allan Chase, George Garzone, and Frank Carlberg. Upon graduating with honors she was awarded the Gunther Schuller Medal for “making an extraordinary contribution to the life of the school,” and won her third Downbeat Magazine Collegiate Student Music Award (for outstanding performance in jazz voice).

It was during her college years that she forged a deep musical connection with her uncle. While she grew up attending Mays’s concerts and listening to his albums, Johnson didn’t get to spend much time with him during her childhood because he was always on tour. But when he heard that she was studying jazz he reached out and made time to mentor her.

In 2009 and 2010, she contributed wordless vocals and auxiliary keyboards for Mays, including concerts at the Zeltsman Marimba Festival and the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, where she performed several world premieres of pieces he composed with her voice in mind. By the time she made the move to New York City in 2011 Johnson had recorded with Bobby McFerrin on his Grammy-nominated album VOCAbuLaries (EmArcy). 

While commuting to Boston to teach at Berklee she quickly became an essential new voice on the scene, performing with a daunting array of artists and ensembles, including Sara Serpa’s City Fragments, John Zorn’s Mycale Vocal Quartet, Joe Phillips’ Numinous Ensemble, Andrew Rathbun’s Large Ensemble, Rose and the Nightingale, and Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra. She’s forged particularly deep ties with fellow vocalists, recording extensively with Manhattan Transfer veteran Janis Siegel, and similarly intrepid peers such as Sara Serpa, Sofia Rei, Allegra Levy, and Michael Mayo.

As her reputation as a masterly vocalist spread, she turned into a source of inspiration for her colleagues. In regular demand, she’s contributed to a series of distinctive projects that make canny use of her singular skill set, like Janis Siegel’s and Yaron Gershovsky’s The Colors Of My Life: The Music of Cy Coleman, guitarist Randy Napoleon’s The Door Is Open, composer/arranger Anthony Branker Songs My Mom Liked, flutist Jamie Baum’s What Times Are These, and Arturo O’Farrill’s Grammy Award-winning Four Questions.

Among several recent highlights, Johnson was the vocal director and conductor for the already storied US premiere of Carla Bley’s landmark 1971 jazz opera Escalator Over the Hill at the New School, a production featuring Arturo O’Farrill with the New School Studio Orchestra (“the students were amazing,” she says). Anchor Music is publishing Johnson’s vocal arrangements commissioned by university and high school jazz choirs, and she’s featured on an upcoming album by Swiss trumpet great Franco Ambrosetti with arrangements by Alan Broadbent. With her kaleidoscopic range of activities it might seem like Johnson musical gift is infinitely pliable, but her core identity centers on her original music. It’s with her own group that Johnson is most fully herself, and with The Lively Air she continues to define her own sonic space, a realm of startling and unapologetic beauty.