Kate McGarry with Keith Ganz, Gary Versace & Clarence Penn at SFJAZZ Spring Festival

Kate McGarry’s show was one of the highlights of our 2012 Spring Season, and she returns in the midst of a creative streak that puts her firmly in the first rank of jazz singers. The new album Girl Talk is the latest collaboration with her husband, guitarist Keith Ganz, keyboard ace Gary Versace, and the remarkable drummer Clarence Penn. McGarry’s been winning avid fans locally for the past decade, a campaign boosted when pianist Fred Hersch brought his ambitious project Leaves of Grass to the Bay Area in 2005. The little-known McGarry more than held her own along with vocal dynamo Kurt Elling, delivering Walt Whitman’s stanzas with a startlingly vivid presence...

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Kate McGarry’s show was one of the highlights of our 2012 Spring Season, and she returns in the midst of a creative streak that puts her firmly in the first rank of jazz singers. The new album Girl Talk is the latest collaboration with her husband, guitarist Keith Ganz, keyboard ace Gary Versace, and the remarkable drummer Clarence Penn. McGarry’s been winning avid fans locally for the past decade, a campaign boosted when pianist Fred Hersch brought his ambitious project Leaves of Grass to the Bay Area in 2005. The little-known McGarry more than held her own along with vocal dynamo Kurt Elling, delivering Walt Whitman’s stanzas with a startlingly vivid presence. Her 2009 Palmetto release, If Less Is More… Nothing Is Everything, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Vocal Jazz Album and she’s won Rising Star Vocalist honors in the DownBeat Critics Poll three times. Kate McGarry is an artist with a captivating vision, steeped in jazz technique, who creates sparse settings for songs by everyone from Joni Mitchell to Bjork, The Cars, Jobim and the Gershwins.

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