Eva Marie Cassidy (February 2, 1963 – November 2, 1996) was an American singer and musician known for her interpretations of jazz, folk, and blues music, sung with a powerful, emotive soprano voice.

Two years after her death, Cassidy's music was brought to the attention of British audiences, when her versions of "Fields of Gold" and "Over the Rainbow" were played by Mike Harding and Terry Wogan on BBC Radio 2.

Following the overwhelming response, a camcorder recording of "Over the Rainbow", taken at Blues Alley in Washington by her friend Bryan McCulley, was shown on BBC Two's Top of the Pops 2.

Her father, Hugh Cassidy, is a teacher, sculptor, musician, former army medic, and world champion powerlifter of Irish and Scottish descent, while her mother, Barbara (née Kratzer), is a German horticulturist from Bad Kreuznach.

[4] At age 11, Cassidy began singing and playing guitar in a Washington-area band called Easy Street.

[4] During the summer of 1983, Cassidy sang and played guitar six days a week at the theme park Wild World.

[8] In 1986, Cassidy was asked by Stonehenge guitarist and high school friend, David Lourim, to lend her voice to his music project, Method Actor.

[16] For a brief period that year, Cassidy signed a deal with Blue Note Records to pair up with pop-jazz band Pieces of a Dream to release an album and tour the country.

[10] After having a potential contract with Apollo Records collapse when the label went bankrupt, Biondo and Dale decided that she should release her own live album.

[8] The Washington Post commented that "she could sing anything — folk, blues, pop, jazz, R&B, gospel — and make it sound like it was the only music that mattered.

In the liner notes of Eva by Heart, music critic Joel E. Siegel described Cassidy as "one of the greatest voices of her generation.

Three years later, during a promotional event for the Live at Blues Alley album in July 1996, Cassidy noticed an ache in her hips, which she attributed to stiffness from painting murals while perched atop a stepladder.

[20] On September 17, 1996,[20] at a benefit concert for her at The Bayou, she made her final public appearance, closing the set with "What a Wonderful World" in front of an audience of family, friends, and fans.

Additional chemotherapy was ineffective, and Cassidy died of melanoma on November 2, 1996, at her family's home in Bowie, Maryland.

[2][11][21] In accordance with her wishes, her body was cremated and the ashes were scattered on the lake shores of St. Mary's River Watershed Park, a nature reserve near Callaway, Maryland.

"[21] Before Christmas of 2000, BBC's Top of the Pops 2 aired a video of Cassidy performing "Over the Rainbow", which resulted in Songbird climbing steadily up the UK charts over the next few weeks.

[23] Alexis Petridis in The Guardian wrote, "There's an undeniable emotional appeal in hearing an artist who you know died in obscurity singing a song about hope and a mystical world beyond everyday life".

[32] In December, a nine-minute segment on NPR resulted in a similar sales surge, with five of the top seven spots going to Cassidy.

[34] Together with word of mouth and internet fan sites, online commerce has played a large role in Cassidy's success.

[35][36] This point was further affirmed when in 2005, Amazon.com released a list of its top 25 best-selling musicians, which placed Cassidy in fifth position, behind the Beatles, U2, Norah Jones and Diana Krall.

[39][40] In an interview with The Independent, Cassidy's former bandmate and arranger Chris Biondo shared, "Eva had a fantasy of one day having a full orchestra back her up [...] to her, that was the greatest place you could be musically.

"[41] Audio restoration technology developed by filmmaker Peter Jackson was used to strip Cassidy's voice from her original recordings, with the orchestrations being produced in 2021.

[48] To mark the 20th anniversary of the Blues Alley concert, Blix Street Records released Nightbird, a 32-track double CD album, in November 2015.

Nightbird comprises the complete Blues Alley concert recordings, including eight previously unreleased songs, from the night of January 3, 1996.

[50] A number of filmmakers have proposed films based on Cassidy's life and have worked with her family to greater or lesser degrees, but to date none of these projects have progressed past the early development stages.

[51][52] In an interview a year earlier, Cassidy's parents suggested Kirsten Dunst and Emily Watson as possible actresses who could play their daughter.