Paige Duggan is a vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist.
Her approach to jazz is raw and honest; revelling in jazz as an art-form with experimentation, improvisation and risk central to the approach of every song. Paige’s extensive and diverse experience as a contemporary singer naturally feeds into her unique jazz style. Her astonishing vocal skill and passion for jazz exploration equal an extraordinary and rare talent. She explores vulnerability and risk, crafting a truly engaging listening experience.
In late 2021 and early 2022 Paige was awarded the Creative Victoria Music Work Grant and the Regional Arts Victoria-Creative Victoria Sustaining Creative Worker’s Grant. Throughout 2022 she has been composing a new body of work titled Cosmos Made Conscious, has been collaborating with new musicians and stepping into the studio to record these new pieces. This will culminate in a tour, dates to be announced, in 2023.
This project sees Robbie Melville on guitar and effects, Zoe Frater or electric bass, Maddison Carter on drums, Gideon Brazil on saxophone and flute, and Paige singing, playing guitar and playing trumpet.
Paige has been performing professionally for 20 years, from the time she started writing her own songs for voice and guitar. Her professional music experience has been extensive: Performing as a solo artist with her originals, jazz standards and ‘interpretation of contemporary’ songs as well as a vocalist in jazz and blues groups; the front woman of former originals unk-soul band ‘Paige Five’; feature vocalist on hip-hop tracks with local and nationally recognised MCs; as well as various choirs and specialist choral groups, experimental and noise-core projects.
In 2015, soon after setting to sing jazz as her main genre, Paige received a grant from the Ballarat Arts Foundation to go towards recording a debut album to use to get gigs, as merchandise and for a record of her ‘starting point’. So in 2016, Paige together with her band of Ballarat musos over a couple of days laid out the tracks which would become her jazz debut album Indigo.
2018 saw Paige take her first formal steps as a Musical Director, MD’ing Christine Tammer’s ‘The Venue: A Singing’. This was an exciting new direction for Paige, and she took to it like a ‘duck to water’. Paige is looking forward to more Direction work and welcomes enquiries.
In May 2019, Paige released her first offering for her studio developed songwriting Stick with Love. This EP features two tracks she wrote, performed all instrumentation for and recorded in her home studio. Both songs were initially commissioned by the Ballarat Baha’i Community.
As well as her jazz album, Indigo, and her new EP Stick with Love Paige has also independently released an album of original songs titled The Cellante Recordings. She also performs her original music with Double Bassist Andrew Vincent and Drummer Lesley Williams with Mary Card on BV under the banner Paige & The Vinleys.
Paige and Mary Card also run a successful Bar Choir which prior to Covid included the career highlight of facilitating a mass choir on the MainStage at the Queenscliff Music Festival. Check out Bar Choir at http://www.barchoirvic.com
Paige Duggan 