Straight-ahead jazz vocalist Greta Matassa is a seasoned club performer with a bent toward Great American Songbook standards and often sings and improvises in a contemporary scat style. A Seattle native, Matassa was introduced to jazz by her parents, and by the time she was in high school was singing and studying her craft by listening to records. In her junior year, Matassa dropped out of high school and moved to Oregon, where she performed as half of a lounge duo with a pianist. Eventually, Matassa moved back to Seattle and, after a brief period performing with a few metal and rock bands, found her way into the jazz scene by performing at weddings and other events. It was during this time that Matassa met and performed with such local Seattle musicians as pianist Marc Seales and guitarist Michael Powers. In 1989, Matassa's singing earned her a spot replacing vocalist Ernestine Anderson in a Pacific Northwest Ballet production based on the songs of Kurt Weill. The show ran for a decade and helped establish Matassa as a local name.