Jazz musician, writer, currently director of the Philadelphia Jazz Legacy Project: mission is to establish a city jazz archive.
Suzanne Cloud is an editor, writer, historian, and a jazz singer-songwriter who has appeared on area stages for many years with Philadelphia’s top jazz players. Since receiving her doctorate in American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, Cloud has authored four young-adult American history books, contributed to the African-American National Biography Project for the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University, and taught at area colleges. Cloud is a long-time contributing writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and executive director and co-founder of Jazz Bridge, a nonprofit that aids Philadelphia-area jazz and blues musicians in crisis and presents over 40 concerts and special projects each year. Her original play “Last Call at the Downbeat” was chosen for the 2013 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts and her music can be found on the Dreambox label. Recently, Suzanne Cloud's critically acclaimed, 1996 CD “With a Little Help from My Friends” was re-issued and a compilation of her work with the late pianist Eddie Green is due for release in the fall. Cloud was named a Commonwealth Speaker by the PA Humanities Council, a Creative Connector by Leadership Philadelphia, and won the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal in 2013 by Camden County.