Home » Jazz Musicians » Marianne Matheny-Katz

Marianne Matheny-Katz

Baltimore songstress Marianne Matheny-Katz releases a new album in May 2014. "Somewhere in Paradise" features engaging jazz standards with surprising new arrangements, performed with great style and nuance. Writing in the liner notes, jazz critic John Murph calls Matheny-Katz “a captivating singer who…possesses a quintessential jazz voice, which she enlivens with lissome, conversational phrasing.” The vocalist has a penchant for dressing her tunes in new and noteworthy arrangements. The disc celebrates Charm City’s fertile jazz scene by featuring some of its finest musicians, whose work Matheny-Katz has promoted and cultivated over the years. They include reed players Todd Marcus, Tim Green, Craig Alston; bassist Eric Wheeler; pianist Vince Evans; drummer Eric Kennedy; and triple-threat superstar Warren Wolf on vibraphone, piano and drums. Also featured is Philadelphia trumpeter Terell Stafford. Murph, a contributor to JazzTimes, Down Beat and NPR Jazz, says, “Matheny-Katz conveys just the right amount of sanguine optimism, borne out of personal struggles and triumphs.” Born in Staten Island, Matheny-Katz spent her teens singing folk music in coffeehouses on Staten Island and Manhattan. Although she loved their music, the young singer was not yet ready to follow in the footsteps of Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Bessie Smith. While their jazzier sound appealed to her, she remained focused on folk music for some time. She married young and left New York with her husband and two children, moving to Connecticut, Michigan, and Massachusetts. She gave up performing for a decade. After earning a degree in economics at the University of Massachusetts, she became an economic analyst, work that took her to the Mid-Atlantic region. (By day, she still works in engineering and public welfare economic analysis for large water resources and civil works projects.) She moved to Baltimore in 1988, after her first marriage dissolved, and soon returned to her first passion—music. She sang blues with Annapolis-based group Park House Jam for 11 years. They recorded the well-received CD Fully Exposed, and played many clubs and festivals throughout the region. In 2000 a colleague suggested she enter Baltimore’s annual Billie Holiday competition, and that was her first real move toward jazz. She took second place in the prestigious competition and repeated the feat in 2002. In 2009, the last year of the competition, she was invited to perform in a Billie Holiday tribute concert at Artscape 2010 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. How did she develop those pipes? In 2001, she made a pivotal connection with pianist and educator Vince Evans.

Read more

Tags

9

Event

Maryland Events Highlight Women Jazz Artists: Concerts And Panel Discussion Celebrate Women's History Month

Maryland Events Highlight Women Jazz Artists: Concerts And Panel Discussion Celebrate Women's History Month

Source: Jazz Beyond Borders

From its earliest days, women have played key roles in jazz. Vocalists Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday are legendary singers who exhibited a high level of musicianship. They mastered the technique of their instrument (the voice), learned their music thoroughly and were skilled improvisers like any other band member. Many more talented women have contributed to jazz as instrumentalists, composers, and bandleaders. Lil Hardin Armstrong (1898-1971) was a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, singer and bandleader whose music is ...

1

Recording

New Release From Marianne Matheny-Katz Celebrates Charm City's Fertile Jazz Scene

New Release From Marianne Matheny-Katz Celebrates Charm City's Fertile Jazz Scene

Source: The Phillips Agency

BALTIMORE, MD – Jazz lovers will soon have the opportunity to enjoy the new album Somewhere in Paradise featuring vocalist Marianne Matheny-Katz with many of Baltimore’s best-known jazz musicians. The CD, on the Indy label Jazzway, goes to radio in the United States and will be available for sale in May 2014. While most of her band members now figure prominently on the national jazz scene, the singer handpicked them over years of performances in the Mid-Atlantic region and watched ...

Performance / Tour

Joni Mitchell Tribute Concert - Marianne Matheny-Katz

Joni Mitchell Tribute Concert - Marianne Matheny-Katz

Source: The Phillips Agency

Award winning Baltimore jazz vocalist Marianne Matheny-Katz presents an evening of Joni Mitchell tunes at The Carlyle Club on Thursday, November 7. The event marks the 70th birthday for Mitchell who began her career as a solo folk singer/songwriter and grew into an internationally respected jazz and pop musician and composer. For this show many tunes are re-worked as straight ahead jazz arrangements, but with enough of the original melody intact to please nostalgic Joni Mitchell fans. Among the show ...

"Ms. Marianne Matheny-Katz riveted my attention from her first line reading. Like many memorable jazz singers, her voice has the flexibility of a beautiful horn. Think Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith and at moments like a slightly higher pitched Sarah Vaughn." —James Nash of Music Monthly "Marianne Matheny-Katz’s new CD, Somewhere in Paradise, comes as close to being perfect as any I have heard!" — John Tegler, review for Baltimore Jazz Alliance newsletter

Photos

Music

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.