Roxana Amed

Roxana Amed was born on 5 October 1963 in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires and grew up in Ramos Mejia, in Greater Buenos Aires. She was an only child, and her family, of Italian and Middle Eastern descent, had no connection with the music world. In a 2022 interview with La Nacion she recalled growing up in a simple setting.

She began studying piano as a young child and completed a course in classical piano at the Carlos Lopez Buchardo National Conservatory of Music. Between 1979 and 1988 she studied operatic singing with Lucia Boero and Laura Saccente, and she also studied contemporary harmony and composition. Between 1983 and 1990 she trained as a teacher of Spanish, literature and Latin at the Instituto Superior del Profesorado Dr. Joaquin V. Gonzalez, later taking a postgraduate course in contemporary Spanish language literary criticism. From 1991 to 1993 she studied film direction at the Fundacion Universidad del Cine and worked in film and television production.

From 1980 she sang with vocal ensembles devoted to contemporary music, folk, pop and experimental music, often as lead singer and arranger. In the early 1990s she became a regular on the Buenos Aires jazz scene, and in 1994 the pianist Horacio Larumbe invited her to share the stage at the Oliverio club. Between 1999 and 2001 she sang with Outsiders, a traditional jazz group. In 2002 she presented her own repertoire at the first Buenos Aires Jazz Festival at the Teatro Opera, and in 2003 she was nominated as jazz revelation in the Clarin awards.

She was also a successful songwriter. She co-wrote La ultima noche for Diego Torres, wrote Lucia for Luciano Pereyra, and wrote songs for Sandra Mihanovich. Her song for the series Vulnerables won a Martin Fierro award in 2001, and she later wrote the lyrics of Vida for Ricky Martin.

Her first album, Limbo (2004), was produced with Pedro Aznar and included versions of Luis Alberto Spinetta's Durazno sangrando and Joni Mitchell's Amelia. It was followed by Entremundos (2006), the concert DVD La voz mas alla, Cinemateca finlandesa (2010) with the pianist Adrian Iaies, Inocencia (2011), a tribute to Argentine folk music with arrangements by Guillermo Klein, and La sombra de su sombra with Frank Carlberg, a setting of poems by Alejandra Pizarnik.

After moving to Miami in 2013 she taught at Miami Dade College, Florida International University and, from 2021, the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, where she taught theory and voice and co-directed a Latin music ensemble. Ontology (2021) was nominated for two Latin Grammy awards and won the Gardel Award for Best Jazz Album, the first time in the category's history that the prize went to a female singer and producer. In 2021 she received a New Jazz Works grant from Chamber Music America. Unanime (2022) brought together Chucho Valdes, Nino Josele, Pedro Aznar, Chico Pinheiro and others and received another Latin Grammy nomination. Los trabajos y las noches (2023), again with Carlberg, earned four stars in DownBeat, and she followed it with Becoming Human (2024) and Todos los Fuegos (2025), jazz versions of songs by Charly Garcia, Spinetta, Fito Paez and Gustavo Cerati.

Amed moved to the United States with her family in 2013 and lived in Miami for the rest of her life. She spoke publicly about the years she spent caring for her father, who was ill for six years with a tumour and died in 2003. She put her own recording plans on hold during that time and made her first album after his death.

Roxana Amed died on Sunday 25 October 2026, aged 63. Her death was announced by Sony Music Argentina, which described her as an extraordinary artist, composer and producer whose voice, sensitivity and musical vision left a unique mark. La Nacion reported that she had been living with an illness, and no official cause of death was announced. Her death was widely reported in the Argentine press, including La Nacion, Clarin and TN.

Amed is remembered for bringing Argentine folk and rock repertoire into the language of contemporary jazz and for championing Latin American composers on international stages, including the Jazzahead! fair in Bremen, where she was the only artist invited to represent the United States in 2023. She was the first female singer and producer to win the Gardel Award for Best Jazz Album, was nominated three times for the Latin Grammy, and received a Konex Diploma of Merit in 2025. As a teacher in Miami she passed on her knowledge to a new generation of jazz singers.