Bob Anthony Colia

For the past forty years, Bob Anthony Colia has entertained audiences with his smooth, velvety baritone voice.  He attended Berklee College of Music as an arranging and composition major and also studied acting at the University of Massachusetts. While launching his career as a vocalist, he shared his love for music by privately teaching voice for more than a decade, starting in the early 1970s.


Bob’s range and versatility has allowed him to be featured with small jazz ensembles, pop groups, big bands and classical orchestras.  He recently was a soloist with the Parkway Symphony Orchestra in Boston.  His reputation as a seasoned and talented vocalist has given him the opportunity to sing across the United States. Bob has also recorded numerous television and radio commercial jingles.


When Bob isn’t singing with the Tom Nutile Big Band, he is Christian cantoring every Sunday at churches in Greater Boston, singing privately for small groups or large symphony events, or leading his 10-piece pop band, the Ovations. His newest endeavor is voice-over work, another way Bob keeps pleasing people with the gifts God has given him.


Linda Roberts

Versatile vocalist Linda Roberts is the newest addition to The Tom Nutile Big Band. Her warm, bell-like tone, perfect intonation and mastery of rhythmic nuance make her a perfect fit for the band’s full sound and great rhythmic precision and drive.


Linda floats on top of the light bossa nova rhythms of the band’s “Moonlight In Vermont.” She digs in and swings like there’s no tomorrow on “It Don’t Mean a Thing If it Ain’t Got That Swing.”


Linda has been singing professionally since her college days at Long Island University’s C.W. Post Campus in Greenvale, N.Y.  While enrolled there she toured Europe and Mexico extensively with the C.W. Post Chamber Singers and Madrigals. 


Although Linda’s voice was trained for the rigors of opera, her heart was in American popular music. Upon graduating with a double major in theater and vocal music, she immediately landed her first role in a Summer Stock production of “Godspell.” That fall, she moved to New York City and spent several years performing in Off Broadway, summer stock, dinner theater and national touring companies.


Linda later gravitated to folk music and began performing as a solo acoustic act at outdoor festivals and other folk venues. She often found her herself being compared to folk greats Judy Collins and Joan Baez because of the “bell-like quality” of her voice. Somewhere along the way someone coined the term “heartsinger” to describe the way she connected with her audiences “heart to heart.”


However, jazz was the music Linda grew up listening to and it wasn’t long before the jazz bug bit again.  She began playing with big bands in and around New England, and became a regular performer at the Acton Jazz Café in Acton, Mass., working with some of the best jazz ensembles in the region. It was there that she met Tom Nutile, who had come to hear her perform, based on her growing reputation as one of the best singers in the region. Not long after, she joined The Tom Nutile Big Band as female vocalist.

The Tom Nutile Big Band is one of the region’s most accomplished and wide-ranging big bands. Because of our professionalism and precision, we are the ensemble of choice for corporate functions, black-tie events, weddings and parties.


We are also on the must-have list for swing dances and concerts because we know how to swing!


As one swing-dance promoter told us, “The e-mails keep coming in about last Sunday’s Tom Nutile Big Band experience. Even people walking in were giving me the thumbs up within the first few minutes of their arrival….  One guy told me this is what music is supposed to do, and I very much agree.”


We believe that what “music is supposed to do” is entertain an audience, whether it’s a group of dancers who want to hear a lively swing beat  –  or a ballroom filled with people in formal attire, who want their music played with precision, but softly, so they can carry on a conversation while they are served dinner.


Our roots are in the swing era of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, but we are equally at home with more contemporary jazz, and we are expert in modern pop, Latin, and today’s swing-dance music. We can play waltzes, polkas and line dances. We have more than 600 big-band arrangements in our library.


A short list of the venues we have played includes the Ritz-Carlton, Museum of Fine Arts, the Hatch Shell on Boston’s Esplanade, and all three Big Dig tunnel/bridge walks in 2002 – where we played for more than 100,000 walkers at each event.


The Tom Nutile Big Band would love to play for your event, and we will tailor our performance to meet your exact specifications.