Local singer Eva Cassidy never achieved fame while she was alive. But fame was not something she was after.
Born in 1963, the golden-voiced chanteuse grew up in Oxon Hill and Bowie, Maryland, content with working by day at a nursery in Largo and doing some singing at night with various bands.
Those who were fortunate enough to hear her perform live could not help but be in awe of her undeniable talent.
Then, in 1996, Cassidy died from skin cancer. She was 33 years old.
Captivated by her voice and backstory, producers Alex Fegan and Malcolm Willis set out to produce a documentary about Cassidy.
“We like just had a real kind of interest in her music, and couldn’t really find much information about her because she was so private. And so that’s when Malcolm, my colleague, decided to reach out to the family,” Fegan, speaking from Ireland, told WTOP.
The result was “The Essence of Eva,” released in July 2025.
The documentary made the rounds at film festivals in the U.S. and around the world, and is making its broadcast debut this week on WETA.
“We’re delighted that the film is finally being screened to such a wide audience in her hometown, in her home area,” Fegan said. “This is where she used to play, and these are the people that knew her best. So it’s exciting for us as well to see what kind of reaction it’s going to get.”
The film uses archival footage — including a now iconic Blues Alley show from 1996 — and a never-before-seen interview with Cassidy. Plus interviews with Cassidy’s parents, siblings, friends and band mates as well as music legends Chuck Brown, “The Godfather of Go-Go,” who collaborated with Cassidy on the album, The Other Side, Sting and Mick Fleetwood who recognized Cassidy’s immense talent very quickly.
“She had a thing around her which was magical,” Fleetwood, founder of Fleetwood Mac, says in the film. “I have been around a band with two phenomenal lady singers, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks. She had that.”
Fleetwood, who in 1994 opened a blues club in Alexandria, Virginia, showcased Cassidy’s band and tried to help her move up in the world of music.
“He kind of did introductions for her to meet people, meet labels,” Fegan said. “And he would be kind of frustrated, you know, that she come back and say, ‘No, I’m not interested in that. I’m not. They want me to just do jazz, and I want to do other types of music.’”
“She wouldn’t dress the way people wanted her to, or sing, or be boxed in,” Fegan said. “She wanted to do what she wanted to do.”
In 1998, two years after Cassidy’s death, the compilation album “Songbird” was released. In 2000, BBC Radio started playing songs from the album, including Cassidy’s rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Album sales in Europe skyrocketed.
In the US, a 2001 episode of “Nightlife” profiled Cassidy, which had the same effect on album sales here, and her version of “Rainbow,” one of the most covered songs in the history of music, became legendary in music circles.
“It’s like you almost want to burst into tears,” Fegan said. “It’s very hard to describe. She wasn’t just singing this. She was reinventing it. She was doing this with all her songs. Like her gift was to be able to reinterpret these songs.”
“Fields of Gold,” as sung by Cassidy, blew away the man who wrote and first performed it. Sting, the former frontman for The Police, says in the film that he changed how he performed his own song at concerts based on Cassidy’s interpretation.
“She was turning these songs into something just completely different and much deeper, and something that really connects,” Fegan said.
One of the central themes of the film is how a singer could be so talented, yet be recognized and appreciated on a global scale only posthumously.
“I think she had much higher values than fame or money or any of those sort of material things, which nowadays are kind of the priority. I think her values were being true to herself, being authentic, being herself,” Fegan said.
“I think ultimately she was right because that’s why we’re still talking about her now.”
Fegan said he and Willis felt they needed to get the family’s approval of the finished product while balancing the need to produce an honest film.
Cassidy’s parents, Fegan said, ultimately gave the producers the “best compliment they could have given us … that we captured the essence of Eva.”
“The Essence of Eva” is airing on WETA this week (check local listings) and streaming on the WETA+ and the PBS app.
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