Rachael Price


Rachael Price is the lead singer for the band Lake Street Dive and graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. She was born in Australia and grew up in Tennessee. She is the great-granddaughter of Seventh-day Adventist leader George McCready Price, the granddaughter of Hollywood actor John Shelton, and the daughter of composer and conductor Tom Price.

Early life and career

Price was born in Australia and raised in Hendersonville, Tennessee. When she was nine, she performed with The Voices of Bahá choir with her sisters Emily and Juliette. At twelve, she was a soloist. The choir toured in India, Europe, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Australia. Price said that she had a large personality as a child and accepted every opportunity to sing.
She was attracted to jazz at the age of five when she heard Ella Fitzgerald singing "The Lady is a Tramp". She recorded her first album when she was 17. She admires Bonnie Raitt and Nancy Wilson in part for their longevity in the music business.
In 2003, Price received an honorable mention at the Montreux Jazz Festival's International Jazz Vocal Competition. In 2004, she was a semifinalist and the youngest competitor in the history of the Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition. In August 2004 she made her U.S. jazz festival debut at Yale's Jazz On the Green, where she opened for Joshua Redman. She won the 2006 Independent Music Award for Best Gospel Song with her recording of "My God, My Adored One" with the Boston Praise Collective. She appeared in concert as a featured vocalist with the T. S. Monk Sextet.

Lake Street Dive

Price performs with Lake Street Dive, a five-piece band with Mike Olson, Michael Calabrese, Bridget Kearney, and Akie Bermiss that started in Boston in 2004. All but Bermiss, who was added in 2017, were students at the New England Conservatory of Music.
With help from an award by the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, Lake Street Dive recorded In this episode..., their debut album in 2006. They started touring soon afterwards. Nonesuch released the album Side Pony in February 2016. Their previous album, Bad Self Portraits, was released in February 2014.

Rachael and Vilray

Rachael Price and Vilray met at the New England Conservatory in 2003. Under the name Rachael and Vilray they sing jazz, pop, and Tin Pan Alley songs from the 1930s and '40s. Nonesuch released their self-titled first album in 2019.

Discography

As leader

With Lake Street Dive