Nina

“Nina Mya is a highly talented Finnish jazz singer, who already attracted the attention with unusually mature sense of style, sound and natural skills for improvising at the age of 18. Within a few years, she has elevated as a singer and as a performer already fully to an international level”, -Jari Perkiömäki, Saxophonist/Educator/Doctor of Jazz Music

With the first release of “You've Got To Learn”, the celebrations for Nina Simone's 90th birthday will continue on July 21st. The never-before-released live recordings were made at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966.

Nina Simone has penned unforgettable protest material, covered jazz, folk, rock, and pop with equal flair, and created a body of work that's kept her popularity high. While this title is hardly accurate, since it only covers RCA material from 1967-1972, there's plenty of anthemic fare among The Essential Nina Simone's 16 selections. These include "Mr. Bojangles," "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black," "Seems I'm Never Tired Lovin' You," and "Since I Fell for You." While the absence of "Baltimore," "I Wish I Knew How It Feels to Be Free," and "Here Comes the Sun" (to name only three) is sizable, and the weighting of this compilation toward well-known rock types (Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, George Harrison, two Bee Gees cuts) debatable, there's still no way it can be dismissed.

Verve's "Finest Hour" collection of Nina Simone's work compiles 60 minutes of career highlights, including 'Wild Is the Wind', 'I Put a Spell on You', 'Four Women', 'I Loves You, Porgy', and 'My Baby Just Cares for Me'. Though it's by no means a definitive compilation of Simone's music, it does provide a welcome overview of her Verve years.