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Kat Calvosa

Kat Calvosa writes songs that bring a refreshing sense of true innovation to the intertwining worlds of jazz and popular music. With honesty and insight, she writes and interprets lyrics with a wisdom beyond her years, creating beautiful, haunting, and charming stories that draw the listener in and take them on a journey they are not soon to forget.

Currently working on material for a new album of standards, covers, and original music, With a wonderful quartet of some of New York’s finest musicians, she is poised and ready to discover new ground and take the next step on what has already been a fulfilling journey.

As a girl growing up in rural Wisconsin, her father attempted and failed to interest Kat in jazz music. Oddly enough, in college, she began listening to Miles Davis. “The first jazz record I bought was Kind of Blue,” she remembers. “I think I’m on my fourth or fifth copy of that record….” It is with an ear towards such greats that Kat writes, always striving for a balance between writing music that is complex enough for her band to stretch out on, but with a lyrical and melodic sense that make her music accessible to even the most novice of listeners. Her most recent release, Chrysalis, holds many of these gems; Rufus, about her large and sometimes not so in-charge bed, See It Rise, linking the building of a house to leaving and moving on from a difficult space, and A Rose, a striking and beautiful love song.

Kat’s career has, and continues to move in an upward direction. Moving to NYC in the Fall of 1996 to attend the prestigious Manhattan School of Music, she began working with such noted musicians as Peter Eldridge, Jane Monheit, Chris Bergson, and Travis Sullivan and obtained a BM in Jazz/Commercial music. Kat continued to hone her craft in New York until 2005 when she moved to Miami to pursue and ultimately achieve, a MM in Jazz Pedagogy from the University of Miami, FL. While there, she had the opportunity to work with such noted artists as John Secada, Raul Midon, and Johnny Rodgers. Moving back to NYC was a joyous occasion and Kat hit the ground running, teaming up with dear friends to record and release Chrysalis. Kat then set her sights on finding people with whom she could make music with, enjoy, and form a band. In the Fall of 2009, she found them - “They are the cream in my coffee,” she says. “They are able to expand on the ideas I have when I write and arrange and play them with such sophistication and nuance, it’s as if they can read my thoughts.”

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