Katie Bull

Top 50 Indie Pick - Singer/Musician Magazine.
#1 MOST LISTENED TO DOWNLOAD: 10,0000 downloads on AllAboutJazzz.com (Love Spook) in the last 30 days!!!! (July '06)
Jazz, Drive, Force, Risk, Fun, Funk, Blues, World Influences - weave it together into a totally unique and playful jazz fusion - the heart of Bull's music is from a spirit of freedom - nothing "slick" - the music is born out of ensemble, and it's about improvisation...it's a truly wild ride of visceral musical spontaneity. "Bull is turning around the notion of just what a singer does and can do." (AllAboutJazz-N.Y.) Katie Bull, is a jazz vocalist and composer, was born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York City. Her father was a jazz piano player who studied and worked with Lennie Tristano; there always a jam session happening in the house with musicians coming around from be-bop all the way to the avante garde "out" world. She grew up singing the American Song Book, and all the crazy and wild notes in-between: "Jazz standards live in the inner chambers of my heart, and the out-edge pumps through my veins." So, where has she been? Well, she's also a cutting-edge downtown multi-media performing artist, published playwright, and post-modern improvisational dancer -- all these talents inform her music. She travelled to Europe and Africa as a child, and again, to the Middle East in her teens - "Sounds from other parts of the world have altered my sense of tonality and time, and moved my bones in all directions!" Her jazz mentors were the great jazz divas Sheila Jordan and Jay Clayton. Other influences include Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Nina Simone, Meredith Monk, Elvin Jones, Buddy Rich, Charlie Parker, Lee Konitz, Art Pepper, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Elliot Sharp, Lou Grassi, Jane Ira Bloom, and all the big bands from Glenn Miller and Mel Lewis, to the most recent Peter Apfelbaum. Katie also loves Modeski, Martin, and Wood, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the fusion sounds of the Dave Matthews band. She now works with the best of the veteran jazz musicians who can swing in the pocket, and can flow to the edge of the envelope and back. "The musicians I work with are all composers and the way we work is totally collaborative, so what you hear is all of our voices - the places we've been, the lives we've lived - this is not about me dictating ideas, it's about letting the songs breathe through all of us collectively in a new way - each night. Like Sonny Rollins recentlyl said -- jazz is improvisation." "I write songs from real life that communicate something about love, loss, and discovery. Those are also the kinds of jazz standards that I respect so deeply. The standards are like the finest gemstones; already so beautifully "cut", one keeps excavating their beauty which seems limitless - they must be honored, their integrity must be protected, and also -they must be allowed to shine in the present moment, so they can be keep reflecting new light."