Trinidad-born singer Heather Headley won the Best Contemporary R&B Gospel Album at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California, USA, on Sunday night.
Acclaimed by Billboard magazine, Headley won the Grammy for her latest album Audience of One.
Headley, who grew up in Indiana, USA, received two nominations for Audience of One, her third solo recording following This Is Who I Am (2002) and In My Mind (2006), but her first album of gospel music.
She was previously nominated for two Grammys for This Is Who I Am, including Best New Artist.
Headley, who won a Tony Award in 2000 for her performance in Aida, made her Broadway debut as Nala in the original cast of The Lion King in 1997.
She also appeared as Lorrell in the 2001 Actors Fund of America concert staging of Dreamgirls at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts.
Heather Headley
On her website Headley said singing as a child in her father’s church in Barataria was the foundation of her career.
’My dad was a preacher, and my mother once told me that I should do a gospel album. I told her it would be amazing to do it one day,’ she said.
“That is where I learned to sing. I would close the windows and practise singing and playing the piano for hours pretending I was performing for a crowd of people, using a hairbrush as a microphone. I was singing to an empty church, and God was my audience, an audience of one.”
Audience of One is a collection of inspirational songs.
The first single “Jesus is Love”, a cover version of the classic 1980 song by Lionel Richie and the Commodores featuring fellow EMI Gospel artist Smokie Norful.
Heather added on her website: “I grew up singing that song in Trinidad. EMI Gospel President Ken Pennell suggested that I record it as a duet, and when he mentioned Smokie’s name, I immediately said yes. He’s an amazing singer and a great pastor. It was a joy to work with him, his choir, and musicians and observe the great respect and love they have for him.”
The singer and husband Brian Musso became parents to their first son, John David, on December 1 last year.
Source: trinidadexpress.com
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