Sunny Ozell
Singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell sang in a Reno opera chorus as a child, moved to New York in 2004, and made the albums Take It With Me and Overnight Lows.
Photo: Sarah Stierch, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized and converted to WebP.
The Reno Opera Chorus
Sunny Ozell grew up in Reno, Nevada, in a house where music education was taken seriously by parents who did not perform themselves. She told Songwriting Magazine in 2015 that she was playing violin from the age of four. The two accounts of what came next differ slightly: that magazine puts the start of her vocal training at 11, with an opera coach from 13, while The Star says her classical training began at 10. The Star adds that she was the only child in the adult chorus of the Reno Opera Company.
English Literature and Funk in Boulder
She went to university in Boulder, Colorado, and majored in English literature. Neither interview names the school. In her spare time she sang in blues bands, and she described one group from those years to The Star as "a 10-piece Afro-Cuban funk mess."
New York Clubs From 2004
Ozell moved to New York in 2004 and joined the club scene there, working across jazz, blues and American roots music. She made EPs before her first album and does not count them as her debut. "I've made quite a few EPs and I've worn other musical hats in the past," she told Songwriting Magazine. "Let's just say I'm a late bloomer!"
Among her influences she cites Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, for their simplicity, and Cassandra Wilson's 1993 album Blue Light 'Til Dawn: "Is it Americana? Is it jazz? Is it blues? I just kind of lump it all into a soul music catalogue." Speaking to Marie Claire, she gave her reason for admiring Wilson: "The clarity in her interpretation and her confidence to take an old Leon Russell tune and say, 'I think this material is valid and I want you to hear why I think it is.'"
Lake Tahoe, 2013
She met the actor Patrick Stewart in New York while he was performing in Macbeth. They married beside Lake Tahoe in Nevada in 2013. Ian McKellen officiated. "I got him ordained as a Universal Life minister, making sure of course that an atheist could be a minister and he did a beautiful job of the ceremony," she told The Star. AP, in a report carried by CSMonitor, said Stewart shared the news on Sunday, September 8, 2013, by tweeting a photo of the couple buried to their necks in plastic balls.
Take It With Me on Man In The Moon Records
Take It With Me, her first album by her own count, came out on Man In The Moon Records. The band was Aaron Lee Tasjan on guitar, Andy Hess on bass, Andrew Sherman on keyboards, Jon Graboff on pedal steel and Nicki Richards on backing vocals. Teddy Thompson also sings on it. The covers include Randy Newman's Louisiana 1927 and Howard Jones's No One Is To Blame. The record reached Europe first and premiered in the United States on April 1, 2016.
Asked about her writing, she put words ahead of tunes: "My strength as a writer is certainly lyrical, first and foremost, and good, catchy melodies."
A Marie Claire piece published on April 2, 2016, was written by Sally Kohn, who says she has been Ozell's friend for over a decade. It calls Ozell a foodie on the side and has her recommending the album with rosé and toasted bread with unsalted French butter and anchovies. That spring she toured the UK, supporting Teddy Thompson with Kelly Jones, with a date at the Sheffield City Hall Ballroom on Sunday, May 22. On UK trips, she told The Star, she is "more inclined towards old churches and dusty museums."
Village Studios and Overnight Lows
A release from the publicists SRO PR, dated February 24, 2020, announced Overnight Lows as her second album, due out on Friday, February 28, 2020. The release is the only source here for its details: ten songs, recorded at Village Studios in Los Angeles and engineered by Mike Piersante, with players including Jay Bellerose, Tyler Chester, Andy Hess, Adam Levy and Rich Hinman. It listed album-release shows at Rockwood Music Hall in New York on February 29 and at Hotel Cafe in Hollywood on March 10.
In the same release she says the title arrived before the songs did: "OVERNIGHT LOWS came to me more or less before I'd composed a single complete lyric, and I knew it was perfect. It encapsulated so many possibilities of what I'd hoped to say, and it steered the writing process that followed. The title was a kind of lighthouse, guiding the way."
A Bar Singer on Star Trek: Picard
In 2022 Ozell played a bar singer, performing one of her own songs from Overnight Lows, in an episode of the second season of Star Trek: Picard on Paramount+. Entertainment Tonight previewed the scene on April 12. "My appearance as a bar-band singer in Patrick's show was entirely his idea, and when he first proposed it to me, I have to admit I was a bit reluctant," she told Entertainment Tonight. "I like that our professional lives don't overlap, even though we're both performers."
The Guardian reported that Patrick Stewart died at home at 86 on Wednesday, October 28, 2026.
Sources
- Introducing... Sunny Ozell - Songwriting Magazine
- EXCLUSIVE: Yorkshire 'homecoming' for Star Trek legend's musical Lady - Sunny Ozell plays Sheffield City Hall
- Sunny Ozell Interview with Sally Kohn About Debut Album "Take It With Me" - Review | Marie Claire
- Sunny Ozell and Patrick Stewart get married - by Ian McKellan - CSMonitor.com
- SUNNY OZELL'S "Overnight Lows" Due Out February 28; Single Premiered At 'American Songwriter' - SRO PR
- Watch Patrick Stewart's Wife Sunny Ozell Make a Cameo on 'Star Trek: Picard' (Exclusive) | Entertainment Tonight
- Patrick Stewart | The Guardian
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