Uninterested in the soul-crushing machinery of the music business, vocalist Eva Cassidy quietly made music on her own terms in Washington, DC, earning a devoted local following before her death in 1996 at the age of 33. For Bay Area jazz singers Amikaeyla and Trelawny Rose, Cassidy is both a potent source of inspiration and a shared passion that brought them together for To Eva, With Love: A Celebration of Eva Cassidy, an emotionally soaring live album recorded at Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, California.

Released on San Francisco trombonist Wayne Wallace’s Patois Records, a magnet for the region’s most creative artists, To Eva, With Love celebrates Cassidy’s boundless spirit, which found expression in an unusually broad array of material, from American Songbook standards and contemporary pop tunes to traditional Irish melodies and R&B anthems. It was only after she was stricken down by cancer, when her posthumously released album Songbird became a huge hit, that Cassidy attained international recognition as a singular, jazz-tinged artist. Sharing her expansive creative vision, Amikaeyla and Trelawny explore a disparate set of songs associated with Cassidy, evoking her emotional commitment to her repertoire rather than her silken sound.

“We started with Eva’s original recordings and arrangements,” Trelawny says. “We would jam with it, play with it, and let it flow into new places. We wanted to capture the way she was at home in so many different styles. She had a hard time getting a record deal, because she was into so many different genres. She really did follow her heart. She can sing the heck out of a gospel song, deliver a lilting Irish tune, or get a pure, almost classical tone.”

From the opening track, a sumptuously harmonized version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold,” Amikaeyla and Trelawny establish their modus operandi, subtly referencing Cassidy’s beatific interpretation while making the song their own. Both singers possess conspicuously beautiful voices, and each tune they share is an enthralling dance revealing their abiding love of Cassidy’s music and their inability to repress their own startlingly individual sounds. Where Cassidy brings out the anguished yearning in “Over the Rainbow,” Amikaeyla and Trelawny render the standard in earthier tones, making it a daydream rather than an escapist fantasy. Another highlight is Paul Simon’s “Kathy’s Song,” a piece that can’t help but bring to mind the original Simon and Garfunkel recording as much as Cassidy’s on Time After Time, an album released in 2000.

Amikaeyla and Trelawny conceived the project with a stellar cast of musicians equally versed in jazz and Latin idioms, including Grammy-nominated trombonist Wayne Wallace, whose big, burnished sound often serves as a striking foil to their vocals, and four-time Grammy Award-nominated percussionist John Santos, who also contributes a soul-stirring solo on his original “Prayer for Eva,” an Afro-Cuban invocation. Veteran bassist David Belove, drummer David Flores, guitarist Vince Mellone, and keyboardist Simon Rochester round out the ensemble.

Part of what makes To Eva, With Love such a rewarding introduction to two very different artists is that both singers perform two pieces solo. Amikaeyla captures all of the wistfulness and melancholy of “Autumn Leaves,” and deftly reveals the desolation of Cassidy’s signature song “Nightbird” (by bluesman Doug MacLeod). Trelawny wrings all the sentiment out of the beloved Irish “Danny Boy” without getting sentimental, and cuts right to the gospel roots of Curtis Mayfield’s Civil Rights–era anthem “People Get Ready.”

Their mutual love of Cassidy’s music is what brought them together. Amikaeyla and Trelawny immediately struck up a warm friendship when they met in 2007 at Jazz Camp West, and started talking about the possibility of doing a project together. A few weeks later at a Los Angeles gig, Trelawny performed several songs that she attributed to Cassidy’s inspiration, and afterwards someone suggested that she consider recording an album of Cassidy material.

“Driving back from LA that night, I was completely alive,” Trelawny recalls. “Ami and I had never really sung together before but I called her that night from the road. What do you think about doing an Eva Cassidy tribute concert? She jumped into it and the project became a speeding bullet. We talked about it constantly, planned rehearsals, got a band together. Then we realized if we’re going to do this amazing tribute, we should record it.”

While To Eva, With Love marks Trelawny’s recording debut under her own name, Amikaeyla (b. 1968) is a veteran vocalist from DC whose creative path in many ways paralleled Cassidy’s. Unwilling to be confined to any one genre, Amikaeyla is a jazz artist who weaves together a dizzying array of influences, from bel canto, funk, and bossa nova to traditional Irish music, sacred chanting, and soul. Growing up, she absorbed classical music and jazz, as her mother is a conservatory-trained pianist, while her father, an amateur trumpeter and conguero, played informally with jazz legends like Mongo Santamaria and Miles Davis.

Guided by her love of jazz, Amikaeyla threw herself into a multiplicity of musical contexts as the lead singer for a 14-piece West African band, a horn-laden 10-piece R&B combo, a 12-piece classical south Indian ensemble, a Celtic sextet, a straight-ahead jazz quintet, and an Americana folk trio. She also studied sacred chanting, a passion that led to a heralded performance at the inaugural Festival of Sacred Chanting and Singing in India (2003) at the invitation of the Dalai Lama. During her early years, Amikaeyla was cognizant of Cassidy’s career, and often ended up playing on the same stages while never actually meeting.

“We’re from the same stomping grounds, and I remember hearing about Eva early on,” Amikaeyla says. “People who I really loved and respected as musicians would tell me that we sounded alike, that we needed to meet, but our paths never really crossed. It sounds like we were suffering the same fate at the same time. As multi-genre singers it was tricky for people to place us. We both became multi-band mamas.”

Before moving to the East Bay in 2007 Amikaeyla recorded her album Mosaic (2004), which earned her eight Washington Area Music Association Awards, or Wammys, including best jazz vocalist, best urban contemporary vocalist (three years in a row), best jazz recording, best world music recording, and best debut album. Now she’s working on her newest solo album, Being in Love, with powerhouse players like harmonica ace Howard Levy, founding member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones; world-renowned cellist Eugene Friesen, from the Paul Winter Consort; bass virtuoso and Best New Artist Grammy Award winner Esperanza Spalding; world percussion greats Glen Velez, Michael Spiro, and John Santos; and the celebrated drumming duo Peter Michael Escovedo III and his sister Sheila E.

Amikaeyla’s nonprofit organization, the International Cultural Arts & Healing Sciences Institute (www.icahsi.org), has partnered with the U.S. Consulate General’s Cultural Affairs office and U.N. affiliate organizations, promoting her “Music as Medicine—Healing with an Artful Purpose” programming, a multifaceted therapeutic approach through music, movement, and theater modalities that has taken her around the world working with at-risk communities and refugees and focusing on mothers, youth, and children. She was named DC’s best female composer in 2006 and 2008, and was recently honored with first prize for Best World Music Composition from the 2010-2011 Maryland State Arts Council.

Trelawny Rose, a rising force on the California music scene as a performer and vocal coach, is also working on a solo debut project. An album with the same eclectic breadth as To Eva, With Love, it features her jazz-steeped versions of songs by Pink Floyd, James Taylor, and Joni Mitchell, as well as standards like “Alone Together” and “Skylark” (a duo with jazz guitar master Mimi Fox). Raised on her father’s collection of albums by 1970s singer/songwriters and her mother’s jazz and soul records, Trelawny sees the CD as a return to her musical roots.

Born in Berkeley (1975) and raised in Oakland and Santa Cruz, Trelawny caught the singing bug early. Demonstrating precocious talent, she started attending Jazz Camp West at 12. Jazz Camp was where she first met Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir (OIGC) director Terrance Kelly, jazz singers Faye Carol and Madeline Eastman, and vocal improvisation guru Rhiannon, who continue to be her most significant mentors. By age 17, Trelawny was a member of OIGC where she developed as a soloist, recording several albums with the choir and touring Israel and Australia. During those formative years with OIGC, she had the opportunity to sing in all kinds of venues, from small churches and homeless shelters to outdoor festivals and amphitheaters. Along the way, she sang for world leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev and Bishop Tutu; met (and sometimes shared the stage with) childhood icons like Bonnie Raitt, Joan Baez, and Sheila E.; and recorded at Skywalker Ranch and Fantasy Studios with Carlos Santana.

After ten years with Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir and earning a degree in vocal performance from Holy Names University, Trelawny moved to Los Angeles and quickly established a successful business as a vocal coach. She had been in L.A. for five years when she met Amikaeyla, and their collaboration was one major factor in Trelawny’s return to the Bay Area.

She first became aware of Cassidy’s music when her godmother gave her the album Live at Blues Alley. But with so much music coming at her in college she lost track of the album and didn’t think of it again until years later, when it resurfaced in the summer of 2007 when she met Amikaeyla. Trelawny started including several songs from the album on her gigs, which led to the suggestion about recording a Cassidy project.

“You could say that Eva brought us together,” Trelawny says. “If we hadn’t decided to go down that road together, she may have just been another nice person I met at Jazz Camp.”

Instead, Amikaeyla and Trelawny Rose are jazz’s most exciting new vocal duo, artists who sound destined to make significant contributions, working together and independently. *