Grace Kelly (musician)
Grace Kelly ( born May 15, 1992 as Grace Chung in Wellesley, Massachusetts) is an American jazz musician ( saxophone, clarinet, flute, piano, percussion, vocals) and composer.
Life and work
Grace Kelly has Asian roots; her parents immigrated from Korea. She grew up in Brookline (Massachusetts ); after the re- marriage of her mother, she took the surname of her stepfather. At age six, she had piano lessons; with seven she wrote songs first. In high school, she studied clarinet before switching to the saxophone. After her studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, and from 2008 at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she had studied with Lee Konitz, Jerry Bergonzi and Allan Chase, she worked with jazz veterans Phil Woods and Frank Morgan.
The age of twelve she had submitted a first album Dreaming on the family label Pazz Productions. At age 16, she had appearances in jazz venues such as Birdland, Scullers, the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, where she was with Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis, Hank Jones, Dianne Reeves and Phil Woods on stage. In 2008, she appeared in Marian McPartlands NPR broadcast Piano Jazz.
In addition to jazz standards like I'll Remember April, Stardust or It Might as Well Be Spring integrates them into their repertoire also cover versions of pop songs, such as Bill Withers Is not No Sunshine or Stevie Wonder's Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours. Their models on the alto sax, their main instrument, are Charlie Parker, Jackie McLean, Phil Woods, Sonny Stitt and Cannonball Adderley; on the soprano and the tenor saxophone can be heard influences of Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane and Stan Getz.
Awards
2007 Kelly was the winner of the Young Jazz Composers Award from the ASCAP Foundation for the first time. The Downbeat drew Kelly from the annually awarded Student Music Award; other prizes, she was the best saxophone soloist, Best Vocalist, Best Original Composition and Outstanding Performance. On the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, she was awarded as vocalist and Holzbläserin in her age group.
Disco Graphical Notes
- Times Too ( 2005) with Doug Johnson, John Lockwood and Yoron Israel
- Every Road I Walked (2006)
- Graceful -Lee (2008) with Lee Konitz, Russell Malone, Rufus Reid and Matt Wilson
- Mood Changes ( 2009) with Hal Crook