1.17 Kalia Vandever

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.

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.

The transcript for this episode can be found here.

Resources discussed in this episode:

Kalia Vandever, In Bloom
Kalia Vandever, “Token Girl”
Herbie Hancock Institute Peer-to-Peer Program
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz Academy
Kalia Vandever, Tesla Quartet, “Variation: Meditation”
Kalia Vandever, The Westerlies, “Calling Me Back Home”

For more information about Kalia Vandever, please visit her website, Instagram, and YouTube.