2024, Martin received the Berger-Carter Berger Fellowship from the Rutgers Dana Library Jazz Studies Department to research the Abbey Lincoln Estate. With a focus on Abbey’s Journals, Heidi composed 8 songs thru aligning with Lincoln’s spirit and philosophy. Resulting in a new album ATTUNEMENT official release: May 26th, 2026. Sharing production with Producer and Bassist innovator Michael Bowie.

She shared the stage with Raymond Angry, Tim Warfield, and George Burton; appeared on recordings with Russell Gunn and Dana Murray.

Reviews:

All About Jazz:

“A breezy stroll through the Civil Rights movement at a level deeper than the mere political. Martin has a vision—oneness with all—and she promotes it with her lyrics. She cuts to the chase with little conversation, more Hemingway than Faulkner. But there's stll a distinct Southern vernacular in her words.” All About Jazz

Wine is a mixture of spirits that stimulate the senses of sight, smell, and taste. The voice is a similar mixture of spirits—a fermentation of styles, shapes, and sounds. From the female perspective, Heidi Martin's voice has a heavy Rickie Lee Jones bottom with a suggestion of Joni Mitchell and Betty Carter and just a hint of Janis Joplin in the finish. From the male perspective, John Hiatt provides the tobacco, Ray Charles the mossy expanse, and Isaac Hayes the vinegar. The bouquet is distinctly Southern, and it deepens with subsequent listenings.

Hide is a biopic of the 21st Century American South: the sticky sensuality and dusty prejudice that endures, never changing. Musically, Hide is the same, but sparingly so, Muscle Shoals and Memphis distilled to the pure essence. The instrumentation and musical arrangements are like the drop of water added to the sacramental chalice, the vehicle for the lyrics to manifest in the aural sea of forgiveness. Hide is a demanding, inventive recording that pays the listener dividends in thoughtful consideration and insight.”

~All About Jazz

“Heidi?”

What a name for a soul singer...

Heidi is very much her own self and I’m responding to that sense of self ... deep enigma reveling in vulnerable openness. Singing some very, very personal experiences and emotions. You can almost see her heart pulsing. There is almost nothing here but voice and the barest cushion of music. In her voice one hears a someone laying it all bare for the world to stare at and pick over, or like Heidi perceptively says, if you’re telling the truth one word is worth a thousand pictures.

What is very, very clear to me is that Heidi has thought deeply about her self-identity and about her identification with black folk. She speaks and sounds from the inside, regardless of what she looks like (and, of course, we are wise enough to know that not only can looks be deceiving, but beyond deception,race itself is no absolute indicator of culture and consciousness).

Heidi’s music is deeply grounded in the black experience. It’s anchored bone deep…

I also really, really like her phrasing and how she uses the sound of her voice to augment the songs. Sometimes it’s not the words but the little moans, hums, croons and occasional hollers that uplift these songs to something you find yourself wanting to hear again. And again.

As a professional writer, I’m attracted to the poetry of her lyrics. The casual way she is intelligent…

…listen to Heidi surveying the contemporary territory with songs like “ISM” and “Your Life.”

—Kalamu ya Salaam, Review of HIDE

My influences extend beyond sound to include visual art, I was shaped by an early experience of an encounter with Miles Davis—meeting him in Finland and later traveling to Germany at his invitation—where I was able to witness his visual art practice firsthand. Observing Miles create his art by day and by night; his performances at Gasteig Philharmonie Munich, Germany. Witnessing his work with bold, colorful markers, and experiencing his relationship to visual art as distinct from his musical presence and performance, revealed to me how artists process, heal, and discover themselves differently across mediums.

  • DC Jazz Fest, Washington, DC

  • NOMAFEST, Omaha, NE

  • Mad JazzFest, Virginia

  • Black Arts Fest Atlanta, Georgia

  • Winter JazzFest, NYC

  • Pori Jazz Festival Pori, Finland and Hotelli Vaakuna Helsinki, Finland

  • Rick’s Café, Casablanca, Morocco (Concert & Master Class).