FIVE THINGS You SHould KNOW ABOUT
Kat Edmonson

September 7, 2021 | by Rusty Aceves

Kat Edmonson (photo © Glynis Carpenter)

We can’t wait for our 2021–22 Season to kick off on September 23. The artist whose performances will mark the resumption of live public concerts in the Joe Henderson Lab is the phenomenal vocalist Kat Edmonson. Here are five things you should know about her before joining us for this historic first week back at SFJAZZ.

1. She’s come a long way from her start in Austin to become a major international artist.
   A Houston native, Edmonson entertained herself as a child with her mother’s collection of 1940s and 50s musicals on VHS tape, stoking her love for the music of the Great American Songbook and the classic pop tunes of the era. She wrote her first song at nine.
   Settling in Austin to pursue music, she paid her dues on the club scene for several years and quit her day job in 2005 to concentrate on music full-time, recording her self-released debut album, Take to the Sky, in 2009. The album reached the Top 20 of Billboard’s jazz chart. From there, Edmonson’s star has risen steadily. She performed an NPR Tiny Desk concert in 2012, and in 2013, she received the Abe Olman Scholarship Award for Excellence in Songwriting from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
2. She’s released five superb albums.
   Edmonson’s 2009 debut, Take to the Sky, was a delightful mix of originals, fresh takes on standards like Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” and covers of material by John Lennon, The Chiffons, The Cardigans, and The Cure. The album led to an increased profile, building a network of fans large enough to raise the recording funds for her sophomore release, Way Down Low, through Kickstarter in a single month. The recording saw Edmonson stretching herself as a songwriter, and earned enthusiastic coverage from NPR, The New York Times, and the All Music Guide.
   By the time of her Mitchell Froom-produced third album, 2014’s The Big Picture on Sony Masterworks, the singer had fully established herself as a confident composer and lyricist, actively touring as a headlining artist.
   2018’s Spinnerette release Old Fashioned Gal was a further refinement of Edmonson’s old-meets-new aesthetic, mixing a feel of Hollywood romance with the sure-footed social commentary that would have made her hero Cole Porter proud.
   In 2020, Edmonson released her highly anticipated fifth recording, Dreamers Do.
3. he has shared the stage with an impressive number of greats.
   On the heels of Edmonson’s 2009 debut album, she was invited to open for master singer and songwriter Lyle Lovett on his 2010 Summer tour, and joined him in December of that year for a performance of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The pair recorded the song for Lovett’s 2012 album Release Me, and they collaborated again for Edmonson’s original song “Long Way Home” on her 2012 album, Way Down Low.
   She’s toured with Chris Isaak, Gary Clark, Jr., Shawn Colvin, and Jaime Cullum, and opened concerts for Smokey Robinson, George Benson, Amos Lee, Michael Kiwanuka, Asleep at the Wheel, Nick Lowe, and Willie Nelson.
4. Kat and her music have been featured numerous times on film, radio, and television.
   Appropriately, Edmonson appeared on Austin City Limits in 2012, and made several appearances on Garrison Keillor’s iconic Minnesota Public Radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion as both a performer and actor beginning in 2013.
   She reunited with Lyle Lovett onscreen for the 2013 holiday movie Angels Sing, and she performed the Jimmy McHugh standard “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” as a guest with Asleep at the Wheel on one of the final episodes of Late Show with David Letterman in 2015. In 2016, Edmonson appeared in Woody Allen’s 1930s-era romantic comedy Café Society as a cabaret singer, performing “Mountain Greenery” and “Jeepers Creepers” on stage at the fictional Les Tropiques Night Club.
   Finally, her music has been used in numerous settings including a 2014 Winter Olympics ad for Coca Cola, in the debut episode of the hit Netflix show Russian Doll, and in the soundtrack to Alex Goldberg’s 2018 film Closure.
5. She’ll be performing material from across her career, including music from her latest album, Dreamers Do.
   For this intimate piano and voice duo performance, Edmonson will touch on music new and old, including songs from her 2020 album Dreamers Do. Clearly a highlight of Edmonson’s career, the album is comprised of a masterful selection of mid-century songs from the Disney trove and gems from Great American Songbook, along with a pair of originals, that embody both the ingrained optimism of childhood dreams, and the anxiety of the nightmares that accompany them.
   Dreamers Do, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Chart, is something of a “concept” album that takes place in a single night, from bedtime till morning.
   In Edmonson’s words, “It's about our concepts around dreaming- all of the wonderful things, the fearful things, and the things that keep us awake in the middle of the night. It's also about the quiet power of merely having a dream.”
   Watch the official video for Edmonson’s take on Disney’s classic Peter Pan song “The Second Star to the Right” from Dreamers Do below: