Roxana Amed, Argentine Jazz Singer and Latin Grammy Nominee, Dies at 63

Roxana Amed, an Argentine singer, composer and producer who built a career joining contemporary jazz with Argentine folk music, rock and poetry, died Sunday, Oct. 25. She was 63. Her label, Sony Music Argentina, announced her death on social media, calling her an "extraordinary artist, composer and producer whose voice, sensitivity and musical vision left a unique mark on music." The Latin Recording Academy also posted a tribute.

No official cause of death has been announced. The Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación reported that she had been ill.

Amed was born in Buenos Aires on Oct. 5, 1963, and grew up in the suburb of Ramos Mejía, according to La Nación. She began piano lessons at four, and she told the paper in 2025 that hearing a Sarah Vaughan cassette at 18 set her on the path to jazz. Before her own albums, she worked as a songwriter in Argentine pop, co-writing "La última noche" for Diego Torres, and as a vocal coach on television.

Clarín reports that she debuted her own repertoire at the first Buenos Aires Jazz Festival in 2002. Her first album, Limbo (2004), was produced with the singer and bassist Pedro Aznar, and the two worked together again on Entremundos (2006). Clarín says she wanted a collaborator who understood her aim of singing in Spanish and building an Argentine identity within jazz.

In 2013 she moved to Miami with her family. There she earned a master's degree in jazz voice at Florida International University on a scholarship and taught jazz history and African American music, Clarín reports; La Nación says she had been teaching at the University of Miami.

Her later albums drew international attention. La Nación reports that Ontology (2021) and Unánime (2022) were both nominated for the Latin Grammy for best Latin jazz/jazz album. Los trabajos y las noches (2023), made with the pianist and composer Frank Carlberg, set poems by Alejandra Pizarnik, and Becoming Human (2024) was a bilingual album of original songs. Her last album, Todos los fuegos, released in May 2025, reworked songs by Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Fito Páez and Soda Stereo as jazz.

Clarín describes her as the first Argentine female singer and producer to win a Gardel Award for best jazz album. In 2025 she received a Konex Foundation Diploma of Merit as a jazz soloist.

Amed was married to Daniel Arano, a music and television producer, whom Sony Music Argentina named in its statement.