Sy Smith

“Sy Smith has proven throughout her career that an R&B artist can be progressive while remaining firmly rooted in tradition. Foremost a singer with a vocal range spanning five octaves, Smith began an unending succession of background gigs with Whitney Houston in the late '90s, and has since worked closely with Grammy-winning trumpeter Chris Botti and Grammy-nominated group the Foreign Exchange, among dozens of other artists. After a brief period signed to a major, Smith established an independent label of her own, an outlet for compositionally solid and sonically adventurous albums including The Syberspace Social (2005), Conflict (2008), Fast and Curious (2012), and the entirely self-produced Sometimes a Rose Will Grow in Concrete (2018). She's consequently known for being a leading force…