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About

Jacqui Sutton

Musical Theater & Libretto Works

Jacqui Sutton

Jacqui Sutton is a vocalist, librettist and composer who loves jazz and bluegrass and doesn’t want to choose between them. So, she created her own genre called Frontier Jazz (where jazz meets the American frontier). By blending the styles vocally and instrumentally, and sprinkling in other influences as she sees fit, Jacqui created a home

Jacqui Sutton is a vocalist, librettist and composer who loves jazz and bluegrass and doesn’t want to choose between them. So, she created her own genre called Frontier Jazz (where jazz meets the American frontier). By blending the styles vocally and instrumentally, and sprinkling in other influences as she sees fit, Jacqui created a home base from which to produce her own brand of music. She is the founder and bandleader for the Houston-based Frontier Jazz Orchestra, and produced two commercial CDs of cover songs with them: Billie & Dolly (2010), and Notes from the Frontier (2012); both released on her Toy Blue Typewriter label, and debuted in the Top 20 CMJ Jazz charts.

Notes from the Frontier marked Jacqui’s arrival as an arranger, garnering high praise.


From the success of Notes from the Frontier and leaning into her 20+ years as a stage actor in straight and musical theater, Jacqui has embarked on two creative works. The first is an album of original songs titled Bald, which is currently in pre-production. When she started losing her hair to alopecia in 2013, and finally shaved it off in 2021, the emotional landscape brought a vulnerability that led Jacqui to unexpected musical terrain. While still rooted in Frontier Jazz, Bald incorporates musical theater, rap, psychedelic and dance music. The 11 songs on Bald cover topics ranging from overwhelming desire, depression, sex positivity, gaslighting, female bodily autonomy, and self-realization. There is an informed joy in her current singing style, despite the weight of the subject matter. Bald is uncategorizable but should feel accessible too. Tired of the usual music videos that accompany new releases, Jacqui has teamed up with visual artist Torreyanna Barley to release Bald with a graphic novel component. 


Jacqui is a Fellow of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, with two composer residencies (2019 and 2023), where she worked on the early drafts of her musical in progress, Turnstiles. Before all of this, Jacqui performed for years as a theater actor, alternating between Shakespearean, contemporary, dance and musical theater. Her vocal training includes somatic, contemporary commercial music and classical.Jacqui was a 2024 cohort member of the Beth Morrison Projects Producer Academy and is a full member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Jacqui currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two rescue dogs. She gardens when she has the energy, and knits, sometimes neurotically, to unwind. Jacqui loves to wear flamboyant eyewear.

Music Reviews

Musical Theater & Libretto Works

Jacqui Sutton

Notes from the Frontier marked Jacqui’s arrival as an arranger, garnering high praise.

“Sutton opens with a ‘Summertime’ that serves as splendid introduction to the steel of her pipes and the majesty of a voice that marries the earthiness of Cassandra Wilson to the warmth of Dianne Reeves. … Sutton also appreciates when dramatic re-imagini

Notes from the Frontier marked Jacqui’s arrival as an arranger, garnering high praise.

“Sutton opens with a ‘Summertime’ that serves as splendid introduction to the steel of her pipes and the majesty of a voice that marries the earthiness of Cassandra Wilson to the warmth of Dianne Reeves. … Sutton also appreciates when dramatic re-imaginings are neither appropriate nor required: She keeps the tender lullaby ‘Jenny Rebecca’ true to its delicate folk roots and exercises her considerable acting skills across the vintage pop-culture collage of ‘Better Than Anything.’”

—Christopher Loudon, Jazz Times (feature)


“Jacqui Sutton takes the term "organic" to a whole different level in one of the most artistically creative releases for the year. … Sutton is a sonic time traveler of genre, form and functionality and has found an incredibly diverse musical landscape from which to work.”

—Brent Black, Critical Jazz


“Notes From The Frontier is melting pot music with a heavy emphasis on the heartland, as seen through modernistic eyes.”

—Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz

“In any language [“Nature Boy” is] a tour de force. … In Sutton's world everything is not always as it seems on paper, but it's exactly right when heard.”

—Rad Bennett, Soundstage Experience


“These Notes From The Frontier can define any and all frontiers … This one is Grammy-worthy.”

—John Books, This Is Books Music

What Is Frontier Jazz?

Musical Theater & Libretto Works

Musical Theater & Libretto Works

Frontier Jazz is where Jazz meets the American frontier. Jazz, bluegrass, some classical, some musical theater, some R&B. It's a sound that may be curious on paper, but makes complete sense once you hear it!

Musical Theater & Libretto Works

Musical Theater & Libretto Works

Musical Theater & Libretto Works

During her 2019 residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Jacqui dreamed of writing a musical with operatic sequences, which has only recently found its narrative and musical form. The working title is Turnstiles. 


Set in 1897 and 2008 Wilmington, North Carolina, Turnstiles became a time-traveling vehicle to re-envision the event

During her 2019 residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Jacqui dreamed of writing a musical with operatic sequences, which has only recently found its narrative and musical form. The working title is Turnstiles. 


Set in 1897 and 2008 Wilmington, North Carolina, Turnstiles became a time-traveling vehicle to re-envision the events leading to the 1898 Race Massacre and to ask: Can Americans escape the predictable cycles of whitelash that come with multiracial progress? 


The 1897 setting, one year before Wilmington’s bourgeoning Black community was wiped out, is an opportunity to tell a story that offers a theatrical off-ramp to the 1898 tragedy. Turnstiles is in the development stage, with Jacqui writing the libretto and composing the music. 


All this progress stems from Jacqui’s dogged pursuit of grants, commissions, residencies and fellowships. In 2017, Jacqui was awarded a $10,000 grant by the Houston Arts Alliance to compose original Frontier Jazz works. The result was the 2018 two-day world premiere of Un-Cross Talk, a multimedia experience of Frontier Jazz through songs, instrumental scores, on-stage sculptures, projected images, and audio interviews with music historians and jazz musicians. 


During this performance, Jacqui was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the City of Houston for her contributions to the city’s music culture.


In 2022, Jacqui was commissioned to write an original libretto for the First Congregational Church of Houston to express the church’s origin story and ethos of openness and inclusion. The result was Open Source (a theology built on the voices of many). Open Source, written for string quartet and bass-baritone, was brought to life by composer Karl Blench, supported musically by The Axiom Quartet, and sung by Timothy Jones. It premiered in 2023 at the First Congregational Church of Houston, and received additional funding for a repeat performance in 2024 at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Houston. Open Source had its third performance in July 2025 at FCC Houston. Karl Blench received second place in the 2024 Charles Ives Award in Chamber Music in the American Prize in Composition for his Open Source score.


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