Grammy-winning jazz musician Cassandra Wilson has died aged 70, passing away at her home in Jackson, Mississippi, on Wednesday, September 2.
Her longtime manager, Robert Torre, said Wilson died peacefully surrounded by family, close friends and her manager. Her family has asked for privacy, with details of a memorial service to be announced later.
The Hinds County Coroner’s Office confirmed to People that Wilson died from natural causes.
Wilson won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album twice — for New Moon Daughter in 1997 and Loverly in 2009. She was also named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2022, one of the highest honours in American jazz. ([arts.gov](https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/cassandra-wilson?utm_source=openai))
Known for her rich contralto and adventurous approach, Wilson moved between jazz, blues, folk, country, R&B and popular music. Her collaborators included The Roots, Elvis Costello and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.
Born and raised in Jackson, Wilson began learning the piano at six and took up guitar at 12. She later studied at Millsaps College and Jackson State University before developing her career as a singer in the mid-1970s.
After moving to New York in the early 1980s, she became one of the founding members of the M-Base Collective, an influential group of musicians associated with an experimental approach to jazz. She signed with Blue Note Records in 1992 and released Blue Light ’Til Dawn, an album widely regarded as a defining statement of her distinctive style.
Her recorded work also included Coming Forth By Day, released in 2015 as a tribute to Billie Holiday to mark the centenary of Holiday’s birth. Wilson’s career included more than 20 recordings as a leader, while she also appeared on Wynton Marsalis’s Blood on the Fields, the first jazz work to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. ([arts.gov](https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/cassandra-wilson?utm_source=openai))
Reflecting on her choice of jazz in a 2017 interview with the Harvard Gazette, Wilson said the genre demanded resilience and a willingness to search for a personal connection with its traditions.
“You choose it because you have a longing and you’re searching and you also feel some sort of connection to that tradition,” she said.
Tributes followed news of her death, with musician Jon Batiste recalling the impact of Wilson’s voice and her ability to combine folkloric, R&B and diasporic influences with experimental music.
“She sounded like the South,” Batiste said, highlighting the Mississippi heritage that remained central to Wilson’s work.
Jackson mayor John Horhn said Wilson had carried “the sound, spirit and history of Mississippi” wherever her music was heard.
“Jackson has lost an extraordinary native daughter, and the world has lost a singular musical voice,” he said.
