Maude Maggart

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Maude Maggart (born Amber Taleullah McAfee Maggart^[1]^[2]) is an American cabaret singer and recording artist who performs throughout the United States, but most often in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. She was born in New York City to Broadway veterans Brandon Maggart and Diane McAfee and is the sister of singer/songwriter Fiona Apple. At age 20, she changed her first name to Maude after her paternal great-great grandmother, Maude Apple.^[1] Her brother Spencer is a director and directed the video for Apple's single "Parting Gift". Her half brother Garett Maggart starred in the TV series The Sentinel. In addition, her maternal grandparents were Millicent Green, a dancer with the George White's Scandals, a series of 1920's musical revues similar to the Ziegfeld Follies, and Johnny McAfee, a multireedist and vocalist of the big band era; her grandparents met while touring with Johnny Hamp and his Orchestra. She went to high school at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. Her 2001 cabaret debut in Los Angeles prompted critic Les Traub to write that she is "destined to become a major cabaret star."

A strikingly beautiful and poised performer, she is widely praised for her vocal talent, her intelligent, emotional, witty interpretations, as well as for her taste in song selection primarily from the American popular song book featuring well-known and lesser-known work of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Vernon Duke, and Rodgers and Hart. She has paid vocal tribute in her concerts to such popular singers and predecessors as Helen Morgan, Annette Hanshaw, Ruth Etting, Alice Faye, and Helen Forrest. Her 2006 concerts have featured established standards as well as exquisite renditions of songs by Jackson Browne and Joan Baez.

Her first album Look For the Silver Lining focuses on songs of the 1920s. The selections on her second album, With Sweet Despair, range in era and style. Her third album features a repertoire of standards and unearthed gems and is titled Maude Maggart Sings Irving Berlin.

Embraced as a protegee and colleague of such other performers as Michael Feinstein and Andrea Marcovicci, she has been profiled on National Public Radio, in the New York Times and Time Out New York and has appeared on such shows as Prairie Home Companion. In 2005, she received the Backstage Award for Special Achievement, The TONY Award for Special Achievement in Cabaret and the M.A.C. award for Best Female Debut.