Singer makes ‘Giant Steps’ back to Kansas for Wichita Jazz Festival

As one of five finalists in the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, April May Webb stood on stage in line with the other singers up for the title at a performing arts center in Newark, N.J.

“The music didn’t go exactly the way I wanted it to go,” she recalled of her performance that night in November. “When you’re on stage and you hear every mistake, and it feels like it’s amplified when you’re on the stage.”

The judges deliberated before bringing the vocalists back on stage.

“At that point, I was just happy with what I had done,” she said. “And then they called my name as the winner, I kind of had an out-of-body moment. And I did what you call the ugly cry.”

Webb, who had garnered second place in 2021, had her choice of three songs to perform, and she selected “Giant Steps,” a vocal interpretation of a John Coltrane sax classic.

“I was like, what is a really difficult tune, what’s one of the hardest tunes that I could do and ‘Giant Steps’ is one of those songs that came to mind, which is a notoriously difficult, not only for vocalists, but for instrumentalists as well,” she said. “And I was like, you know what, let me try to tackle this tune.”

While “Giant Steps” worked for her on stage, it’s also indicative of the bounds that the North Newton native has made in her jazz career.

The latest is a return to performing in Kansas, later this month at the Wichita Jazz Festival, where she last sang when she was a singer in a group at Newton High School.

Webb will be on stage for the grand finale concert April 26 at the Orpheum Theatre, alongside her personal and professional partner, Randall Haywood, and backed by her brothers, Jacob Webb and Nathan Webb.

“When we heard April had won the Sarah Vaughn vocal competition, I immediately got a hold of her brother, Nathan, and told him to get his sister to call me, and she did,” said Dee Starkey, historian, development and artist relations director for the festival. “I was just thrilled that, gosh, we’ve got an opportunity – because I’ve got a feeling we won’t get to afford her in future years.”

Starkey, a musician and retired music retailer, said he was glad to get the Kansas natives back on stage.

“They’ve all had accomplished careers of their own besides doing this thing that they do,” he said.

Jazz is April Webb’s claim to fame, but the concert will show all of her musical roots.

“The repertoire that we do is a lot of different genres and music that we grew up listening to,” she said. “Randall and I, we both love country music. We love R&B. We love gospel. And we also like to write our own original compositions. So, it’s definitely going to be a variety of music. And I’m really excited to actually perform.”

Webb and her brothers grew up in North Newton, the children of Stanley, a machinist for BNSF Railway, and Felicia, a nurse, now both retired.

She started taking music lessons at Bethel College in Newton when she was 9, and by the time she was in high school, she received education and encouragement from Keith Woolery, now retired band director (she played clarinet and was drum major), Donna Woolery, now retired vocal director, and Greg Bergman, the current band director.

After a year at Wichita State, she decided to follow her brothers to William Patterson University in Wayne, N.J., where the head of the jazz department was legendary pianist Mulgrew Miller.

“I wanted to study under his leadership with my brothers,” Webb recalled. “And they were like, you need to get down here and learn and immerse yourself in the culture and so we all ended up graduating from William Patterson University.”

The siblings already had their own family band, Webb Three, while still in Newton, also performing at Second Missionary Baptist Church.

“When you’re going to a Black Baptist church, you have to get involved in something and our parents were heavily involved in church,” she recalled. “It was like, OK, let’s just join the choir. But when you join the choir, then you have to be at church all the time.

“I actually was probably the one that least enjoyed it just because I felt like I was forced to do it,” Webb continued. “But then, you know, you kind of have fun and you’re having fun with your siblings and we’re going all these different places. So, music grew on me in that way.”

Webb graduated from William Patterson in 2015, and for a few years taught at a private school.

In 2013, she met Randall Haywood, a trumpeter from Jacksonville, Fla., who joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, under Wynton Marsalis, at age 15. They began performing in clubs in New York and New Jersey as the Sounds of A&R.

A personal collaboration began shortly after the professional one.

“We actually met at a jazz club; it was called Moore’s Lounge in Jersey City. And we were both going there because there was a jam session,” she recalled. “We happen to both be on the same tune, which is called ‘September in the Rain.’ And we were sharing some moments there musically that pretty nice. That’s kind of how it all began.”

In a joint Zoom interview with Webb, Haywood said he was immediately impressed with her vocal talents.

“April has a wonderful tone and is very unique in her ability to project that beauty of her tone, her timbre of her voice really sits well with a lot of the material that she writes and the material that we arrange as a group — we have a combination of doing arrangements and as well as original compositions,” he said. “One of the things that I’ve always found with vocalists all throughout the years, the greats, everybody from Bessie Smith to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington. Keep going all the way down — Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, you know, the tone, the pitch and the center of the tone is something that all of these legendary artists were consistently brilliant at doing.

“April is following in those footsteps.”

Even though they’re partners on and off stage, the two say it’s beneficial in all aspects.

“It’s good because we’re able to work things out on and off stage because we have different ideas about what we want to do musically, and it’s all about give and take and seeing each other’s perspective,” Webb said. “I respect Randall as a musician, and I hope he respects me as a musician as well.”

Their concert at the Wichita Jazz Festival will include the original song Webb had in her set during the Sarah Vaughan competition, called “Under the Cottonwood Tree,” reminiscing abut her time in Kansas.

“So growing up, specifically in North Newton, Kansas, my parents really cultivated a really warm and loving environment for my brothers and I to really thrive and have a wonderful upbringing,” she said. “We had a huge backyard where we play go-karts and slip and slide and we had all . . . all the fun things you like to do as a kid.

“And right in the middle of our yard was a ginormous cottonwood tree. I just remember it providing a lot of shade and beauty for our yard,” Webb continued. “When I moved from Kansas to New Jersey, I found myself being very homesick. And so, I would just go home from time to time and when I was home one of those times, I was sitting under the cottonwood tree, and it was a fall day and the leaves were falling all around me. And I had my journal with me, and I just thought to myself, ‘Man, I’m finding what I need.’ Sitting under this cottonwood tree. And in my mind, I was like, ‘Oh, that could be a song.’ So, I wrote that down.”

Webb recorded “Cottonwood Tree” in 2023 and hopes to release it as well as other songs later this year, with hopes for an entire album in early 2026.

She said it’s a program highlight no matter where she’s performing and looks forward to singing it in Kansas.

“It seems like every time I put this song either in our set list or I apply for something with a song I end up getting a good response from it,” she said. “So, I’m just really excited to actually be home and perform this song because being home is where the inspiration came from.”