Joyce Cooling

Joyce Cooling, born on December 31, 1969, in San Francisco, California, is a jazz guitarist and vocalist. Born into a musical family, she moved to California from New York in the early 1980s and began integrating polyrhythms of West African music with her passion for melody and harmony. She met keyboardist Jay Wagner on San Francisco's Brazilian jazz circuit and joined Viva Brasil part-time in 1988 as a guitarist and background vocalist. Cooling and Wagner formed a band in 1990, releasing their first collaboration Cameo (1989). In 1997, they signed with Heads Up International and released Playing It Cool. The duo's subsequent albums include Keeping Cool (1999) and Third Wish (2001), followed by releases under GRP/Verve Music Group and Narada Jazz. Cooling became a national advocate for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

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