Kate Kortum at Jazz In July, 92NY

Kate Kortum and the Aaron Diehl Trio
92NY
Jazz In July
New York NY
July 22, 2026

Casual jazz fans likely may not yet recognize her name, but the growing reputation of Kate Kortum within the jazz community clearly preceded her appearance last week at the 92nd Street Y Jazz in July Festival. The show became one of the hottest tickets of the festival, with the performance selling out more than a week in advance.

For the 24-year-old Texan, the show at 92NY's Buttenwieser Hall was her highest-profile appearance yet in the world's jazz capital. It is hard to imagine a better artistic coming-out.

The singer's 85-minute set, supported by a trio led by Aaron Diehl, demonstrated not only her vocal prowess but self-confidence that belied her years. The surprise bonus to her appearance was her skill as a songwriter; a good chunk of the set featured Kortum's own compositions, which proved to be as fine as her singing.

Kortum's age makes it irresistible to trace her artistic lineage, in search of how she developed so far, so fast. Like Samara Joy —arguably the break-out jazz singer of recent years—Kortum is a winner of the prestigious Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Prize. Unlike Joy, though, Kortum's voice shares little of the muscular improvisational approach of Vaughan. Rather, the Texan leans to a vocal intimacy and precision in diction that is more akin, at least among contemporary singers, to Cecile McLorin Salvant.

Tellingly, the late singers Kortum cited as leaving an artistic mark on her —and whose repertoires she drew from for the JiJ program—were women whose work deeply respected lyrics—and witty and conversational ones at that. Describing Blossom Dearie as a "big, big inspiration of mine," Kortum performed a song she first heard performed by Dearie, Rodgers and Hart's "Everything I've Got Belongs to You." Kortum's voice clearly channels some of Dearie's intimate and girlish tone, though it is more powerful and precise —more akin in some respects to that of Nancy Wilson.

She name-checked Wilson, too, when introducing "Now I'm Free," which she first heard on a Wilson album and soon learned was translated from the original French lyric. Kortum paired the song—which was also recorded by Barbra Streisand, in the mid-'60s—in a "bit of a medley" with an original of hers, "You Win." The result was the set's high point, ten minutes that demonstrated Kortum's multiple, gleaming gifts—as intelligent interpreter and accomplished arranger and songwriter.

The Kortum original was written, as Kortum introduced it, to be performed alongside the older song, so as  to introduce "the whole situation." A torch song, "You Win" was occasionally lyrically overwritten, even overwrought ("But it's true, this is not an ordinary meeting of two souls apart/And love knows not the bounds of a foolish mind." ) But Kortum never overplayed its emotions, and the refrain ("But you, bright and soft and warm, you captured me/And you always held the key to my world, to my life") was graceful and gorgeous.

Then, after a short and reflective interlude from Diehl, came a seamless segue into the older song. Here, Kortum's singing perfectly captured the dueling, roiling emotions of the song's narrator, half anguished and half defiant—with her nuanced repetition of both "I'm free again" and "I'm lucky" coming across as both proud and ironic. The rendition underlined Kortum's skill at projecting ambiguity, which she also demonstrated in the Rodgers and Hart song, which she described as being "about loving someone so much that you hate them a little bit."

Towards the middle of the medley came a solo from Diehl, an unfailingly elegant and sensitive pianist, that was as arresting and masterful as Kortum's singing. The excursion alternated between dancing arpeggios and gentle descents into pillowy chords, before venturing off again into yearning solo lines. It was the solo of the evening, if not of the entire year for this reviewer.

Equally elegant—all evening—was the impeccable and swinging support of Peter Washington, not least during a breakneck-speed unison passage with Kortum's singing late in the set. Drummer Aaron Kimmel was sympatico with his bandmates, providing clear and swinging timekeeping that never got in the way.