April 14, 2021
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Jazz trombonist and composer Kalia Vandever joins us to chat about conceptualizing her album In Bloom, funding this project through touring and crowdsourcing, identifying a recording engineer and studio, and developing her compositional voice throughout the process. We talk about her start in community education through the Herbie Hancock Institute Peer-to-Peer Program and the importance of encouraging students to connect with one another through community engagement initiatives. Kalia shares about her experience working in a historically male-dominated industry, her article “Token Girl”, and how to support women and artists of ALAANA backgrounds in professional and educational settings. And she offers strategies for developing jazz skills after being trained in a non-jazz idiom.
ABOUT KALIA VANDEVER:
Kalia Vandever is a trombonist, composer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. She released her debut album, "In Bloom" in May, 2019 which features all of her original compositions written for quartet and duo with guitar. She has toured and performed nationally with her quartet, as well as her solo project. She has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Preservation Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, The Jazz Gallery, The Blue Whale, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, SMOKE Jazz Club, the Blue Note, and the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Kalia moved from Los Angeles, CA to New York City in 2013 to study at the Juilliard School where she received her Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies. She has played with the following musicians whom she admires greatly, Ingrid Jensen, Herbie Hancock, Tyshawn Sorey, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Fabian Almazan, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Joel Ross, Maria Grand, and others. She is also known for her work as a composer and arranger. She has been commissioned to write pieces for the Tesla Quartet, Metropolis Ensemble, Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim, and more.
She is also experienced as an educator, having traveled to Boston and Memphis, as a part of the Thelonious Monk Institute’s Peer-to-Peer Program; driven to inspire and motivate the younger generation of musicians. She’s also traveled to New Orleans with a group of 18 students from the Juilliard School to teach at local schools, perform for the community, and build houses with Habitat for Humanity. She worked as an Academy Assistant for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Educational Program called the Middle School Jazz Academy in 2016-2017. In summer of 2017, Kalia traveled to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia to work with students in a youth orchestra. Kalia currently works as a private trombone instructor at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.
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Transcript