The Pfister Sisters

Together since 1979 — Based in New Orleans

Neither Pfisters nor sisters — as they like to say — Holley Bendtsen, Yvette Voelker and Karen Stoehr, with pianist Amasa Miller, have spent more than four decades carrying the torch of New Orleans’ own Boswell Sisters, whose innovative vocal jazz harmonies began in 1925. From Jazz at Lincoln Center to the Angola State Penitentiary, they remain one of the city’s most beloved traditions.

Never heard the Pfister Sisters before?

🎙 Signature

Boswell-style three-part harmony

📀 Essential Album

All’s Well That’s Boswell (2000)

🎬 Screen Cameo

Played themselves on HBO’s Treme

Their voices melt together, their band really kicks, and they get the audience smiling and swaying in the timelessness that is the joy of music.

— Jazz Fest review

Why We Love the Pfister Sisters

The Pfister Sisters are proof that the most modern thing in music can also be the oldest. For more than four decades they have kept the Boswell Sisters’ daredevil 1920s harmonies — the ones that changed American singing forever — alive, joyful, and swinging in the city where they were born. They’ll follow a note-perfect Boswell chart with a Motown tune or one of Holley Bendtsen’s originals like “Down at the Jazzfest,” and the audience eats it up every time. They’ve sung in Berlin cabarets and Louisiana prisons, on Lincoln Center’s stage and on HBO’s Treme — and through it all they remain, in the truest sense, a New Orleans tradition.

Biography

The Boswells’ Heirs

Since 1979, the Pfister Sisters have been bringing traditional vocal jazz from New Orleans to the world. The trio — Holley Bendtsen, Yvette Voelker and Karen Stoehr, joined by pianist Amasa Miller — took its name and its mission from the Boswell Sisters, the New Orleans-born vocal group whose innovative harmonies, beginning in 1925, became the template for every female singing group that followed, from the Andrews Sisters to the McGuire Sisters. As the Pfisters cheerfully admit: in truth, they are neither Pfisters nor sisters.

"The Pfisters do an excellent job of bringing back the spirit and the tricky arrangements of what was arguably jazz’s greatest vocal group."

— AllMusic, on All’s Well That’s Boswell

Their first gig came courtesy of the New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra, and the band has backed them ever since. To mark their 20th anniversary, they recorded All’s Well That’s Boswell (2000), a Boswell Sisters tribute featuring Miller on piano alongside New Orleans stalwarts Tom Morley on violin, Tim Laughlin on clarinet, and Charlie Miller on trumpet. Earlier lineups included Suzy Malone and Debbie Davis; the group’s catalog also includes The Pfister Sisters (1995), Change in the Weather (2006), and Puttin’ It On (2008).

"They are a girl group that’s been around for 30 years — a grown girl group."

— NPR’s Michel Martin

The Pfisters have toured the US and Europe, performing in venues as diverse as Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Ascona Jazz Festival, and the Angola State Penitentiary, and they starred in an original show in Berlin’s premier cabaret venue. They played themselves in an episode of HBO’s Treme, and they’ve shared stages with everyone from Linda Ronstadt and Irma Thomas to Maxine Andrews of the Andrews Sisters. Through it all, they remain festival favorites — easy with Bendtsen’s upbeat original “Down at the Jazzfest” — and can be heard both locally and around the world.