Centrum is honored to welcome vocalist, teacher, lyricist, Grammy-nominated arranger, and Grammy award-winning ensemble singer, Kim Nazarian to our 2015 Jazz Port Townsend festival and workshop!  Just try and fit a ball of positive energy like Kim into a category and you will break the box!

Kim Nazarian is the soprano and one of the founding members of the New York Voices, the only vocal group in recent memory to win two Grammys for live concert recordings (one of Brazilian music with Paquito D’Rivera, the other for Big Band Jazz with the Count Basie Orchestra). She has recorded, performed and toured the world with this outstanding vocal ensemble for the past twenty years. Her voice is featured on several MCG Jazz releases (mcgjazz.org), among them “Afternoon In Rio” with Joe Negri, (yes, Mr. Rogers’ Handyman Negri!) “The 21st Century Swing Band,” the highly acclaimed “A Nancy Wilson Christmas,” and “Long Ago and Far Away,” her original, interactive children’s concert, which has grown into a radio show now available on CD through MCG Jazz.

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Aside from her work with MCG, Kim was a featured vocalist alongside Ray Brown and Stanley Turrentine in the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s production of “Indigo In Motion” and has appeared with the Pittsburgh Children’s Festival Chorus. She has taught at Duquesne University and the Ellis School, recorded with the Big-Band at Slippery Rock University and continues a busy schedule in her private teaching at home in PA. Kim has also recorded “Red Dragonfly in New York” for JVC in Japan. The album contains Japanese folk songs translated into English and western musical contexts. As a singer and lyricist for such artists as Masahiko Osaka her work has won the “seal of approval” by Japan’s Swing Journal.

Always passionate for Latin Music, Kim performs and records with Boston-based El Eco, whose album “Two Worlds” was recently featured on NPR’s JazzSet. Other collaborations include her work performing and recording with Mark Shilansky, her vocals featured extensively on his most recent recording “Join the Club.”

A more recent recording opportunity for Kim was her work on Bobby McFerrin’s critically acclaimed Vocabularies.