At the tender age of 20, New York vocalist Jane Monheit was the first runner-up in the 1998 Theolonius Monk Institute vocal competition, winning a $10,000 scholarship to further her musical education. Judges couldn't exactly place her sound, which blended natural elegance with potent yet impressively controlled presentation, and by 2000 Monheit had joined Diana Krall as one of the highest-touted female talents in jazz. That May she signed to N-Coded and released her debut, Never Never Land.