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Kitty Margolis

Kitty Margolis is widely recognized as one of the most innovative and inspired singers in jazz today. Her imaginative improvisations, dynamism, and inventive scat have redefined the art of jazz vocals. Jazz Times has praised her "visionary approach to melody and rhythm," and noted New York writer Stanley Crouch observes, "Kitty Margolis is an original who has made the heritage of all the great jazz singers her own. Beyond her virtuoso technique, she has an epic feeling, a willful breadth of emotion that is artfully focused on the details of life. She is not afraid to be as intimate as a diary or as athletic as necessary in order to stand up to the power of her band. Like all true artists, Kitty Margolis adds something good to the world that it did not possess before she came along. She is, as they say, "the real thing."

To celebrate her 15th year as a Mad-Kat artist, she brought her recording career full circle, taping live in front of a packed house at the old On Broadway Theater in her hometown of San Francisco, only a few doors down from the legendary but now defunct Jazz Workshop, where she made her debut album. It is a rare event when a recording captures the excitement of a live concert. With Heart and Soul: Live in San Francisco, Margolis has done just that--it is brimming with the raw energy, subtle beauty and unpredictable excitement of the singer's club set, down to her dialogue with the audience and off-the-cuff humor.

But then, despite her reputation as an artist who creates complex, cutting edge music in the recording studio, Margolis is most comfortable live in front of an audience. As the Los Angeles Times' Don Heckman wrote in his review of a recent concert, "Margolis offered a performance that was a brilliant reminder of the great pleasures of jazz singing when it is delivered by a mature, gifted, creative artist. Her set dispensed multileveled layers of pleasure. There was, first of all, the sheer sense of joy in performing that was a palpable presence in everything she did. Completely centered, completely in the moment, Margolis' total involvement in the enjoyment of making music reached out to embrace her players. Underlying and enhancing all her other extraordinary qualities, there was Margolis' sophisticated musicality--an ear for harmony, an improvisational imagination and a buoyant sense of rhythmic swing that place her at the very top level of the jazz vocal art."

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149
Album Review

Kitty Margolis: Heart and Soul: Live in San Francisco

Read "Heart and Soul: Live in San Francisco" reviewed by Andrew Rowan


Kitty Margolis has a solid reputation and an enthusiastic fan base, and this recording shows why. A rock-solid singer with great chops, Margolis ranges through the Great American Songbook, throwing in a couple of curves on this live session. In her notes, Margolis states that improvisation is at the core of her art. The air of spontaneity comes across in this setting and it is invigorating. The scat chorus on “Summertime lifts it above many of the ...

242
Album Review

Kitty Margolis: Heart and Soul: Live in San Francisco

Read "Heart and Soul: Live in San Francisco" reviewed by Rich Friedman


Wow, this woman can sing. Recorded live on her home turf, Kitty Margolis’ fifth disc, Heart and Soul: Live in San Francisco , skillfully whips her audience into an appreciative frenzy, and most of the excitement carries over to those listening to the disc. Live recordings tend to be either very good or bad—make a mistake on stage, and it’s impossible to patch over it in the recording studio. This disc is good—very good. Margolis writes in the ...

179
Album Review

Kitty Margolis: Evolution

Read "Evolution" reviewed by William Grim


This is an amazing album. There are few jazz singers with the range of expression of Kitty Margolis, a singer equally at home in bop, blues and ballads. Possessed of unerring pitch and flawless enunciation, Margolis can also scat with the best of them. Indeed, her versatility brings to mind Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae. In this album we hear Kitty Margolis in almost every style imaginable.

Margolis begins bop anthem “Anthropology” unaccompanied and at a breakneck speed ...

5
Interview

Kitty Margolis and Life on the Road Less Traveled

Read "Kitty Margolis and Life on the Road Less Traveled" reviewed by Mathew Bahl


The difficulty in writing about a genuinely original jazz musician is vocabulary. The old labels, those shorthand phrases jazz writers use to categorize everything, don't really apply.So what word do we use to describe Kitty Margolis? The San Francisco based vocalist does not sound quite like any other jazz singer past or present. One might be tempted to describe her work as 'groundbreaking,' and in many respects it is, but that label misses how much of her work ...

143
Album Review

Kitty Margolis: Left Coast Life

Read "Left Coast Life" reviewed by Jim Santella


Jazz has a long history in San Francisco. Kitty Margolis, who grew up hangin' at the Keystone Korner, sings about the people who make the Golden Gate city unique. Settled by the Spanish centuries ago and shaken unequivocally by the Gold Rush of 1849, the city has harbored all kinds of people. The last 50 years have seen radical changes that affected its music dramatically. The singer's program allows her to demonstrate the wide variety that exists in San Francisco ...

125
Album Review

Kitty Margolis: Left Coast Life

Read "Left Coast Life" reviewed by Dave Nathan


If the major purposes - - or at least some of them - - of a jazz singer are to inject a fresh breath into standards and to make sense of newer material, then San Francisco singer Kitty Margolis sits at the top of the class for achieving these noble goals. The West Coast vocalist is well known for her insightful interpretations of standard and pop material, a reputation she solidly established with her previous three releases for her Mad-Kat ...

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129

Performance / Tour

Left Coast Jazz Vocal Sensation Kitty Margolis Makes Long Awaited Return To New York

Left Coast Jazz Vocal Sensation Kitty Margolis Makes Long Awaited Return To New York

Source: All About Jazz

Critically recognized as one of the most innovative and inspired singers in jazz today, Kitty Margolis returns to the Blue Note for her first New York performance in seven years on Monday, September 30. The San Francisco-based singer will be supported by a trio, featuring, pianist Paul Nagel, bassist Gerald Cannon, and drummer Willie Jones III.

Her fourth release, Left Coast Life, which celebrates the award winning singer's youthful adventures during the freewheeling Bay Area music scene of the 1970's ...

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Music Industry

Kitty Margolis will launch LEFT COAST LIFE at Yoshi's on Tuesday, November 20, 2001

Kitty Margolis will launch LEFT COAST LIFE at Yoshi's on Tuesday, November 20, 2001

Source: All About Jazz

KITTY MARGOLIS “ LEFT COAST LIFE" CD RELEASE PARTY !

Tuesday, November 20, 2001. Shows at 8 pm & 10 pm

Featuring: Eric Crystal - saxophones John Burr - piano John Shifflett - bass Jason Lewis - drums Steve Erquiaga - guitar Mike Spiro - percussion

This gala concert at Yoshi's is the official Bay Area party for Kitty Margolis' new CD, and an exclusive opportunity to catch this extremely popular singer live in her home town. On her provocative ...

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Music Industry

Kitty Margolis Webcast Live from Kennedy Center on GMN June 6-10

Kitty Margolis Webcast Live from Kennedy Center on GMN June 6-10

Source: All About Jazz

More excitement on GMN this week as their month long salute to Women in Jazz marches on!

San Francisco based Kitty Margolis is a true Jazz singer -- stylish, swinging, and in love with the risk of improvisation. Not only does she have a strong sense of swing and phrasing, but she attacks all her material with an improvisatory gusto. Listen to her delightful set from this year's Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz festival at the Kennedy Center and ...

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