CODY ENGLANDER
Staff Writer
Ahead of her performance tonight, jazz vocalist Kate Kortum reflected on what ignited her love of jazz music.
“I grew up with siblings, and we all shared one computer. We all had the same accounts; everything got jumbled up a little. One of my siblings accidentally downloaded a jazz listening assignment onto my account, which was Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘How High the Moon’ live in Berlin in 1960. I had no idea that jazz singing like that existed. It gave me the bug.”
Kortum, a graduate of The Juilliard School and winner of the 2025 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, will perform a vocal jazz music at 8 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater. She’s performed at a number of large venues, including Birdland, Blue Note, Mezzrow, Dizzy’s Club, South by Southwest and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Kortum has collaborated with numerous modern jazz musicians, including Cyrille Aimée, Bryan Carter, Peter Bernstein, Wynton Marsalis and the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
The 24-year-old originally began as a saxophonist and flutist in middle school and high school before exploring the world of jazz vocals, though she noted her time playing instruments as important to shaping the jazz singer she has now become.
“I think starting out as an instrumentalist was a really important stepping stone for me. It gave me an understanding, theoretically, of what’s happening,” Kortum said. “I think it gave me the tools to be able to communicate with other instrumentalists to be a singer. You don’t necessarily have to be proficient and literate in the jazz idiom or the musical idiom; you can just sing. That’s a beautiful thing, but it also can hold you back in some ways.”
Having a baseline understanding of reading and writing music gives Kortum a deeper understanding of the musicians she performs alongside and the music itself, especially when selecting pieces. She said she is particularly keen on choosing music with strong lyrics.
“When I’m picking music, the first thing I’m listening for is the lyrics. I think that’s why I became a singer as opposed to playing the saxophone or flute. I was so drawn to storytelling through words — that’s the first thing I listen for,” Kortum said. “Does this have a story? Does it have something that I feel like I can connect to and then convey through my lens?”
Kortum said she can occasionally tire of music quickly, which is why she values having a personal connection to certain songs she performs over and over.
“A song I have performed for many, many years that never gets old and feels like a song that tells a story that is so broad, but yet feels so specific to so many people is a song written by Dave Frishberg called ‘You Are There,’” Kortum reflected. “It’s kind of a heart-wrenching song about imagining someone who was once in your life in dreams and in real life.”
With a deep connection to the genre, she’s able to feel the power of the music as the intergenerational jazz gap widens, with young musicians now being drawn to jazz for the first time. As time has passed, the genre of jazz has transformed into an intergenre element to modern music.
“Jazz is an art form that, fortunately, is being passed down. It has been passed down from the original masters and through the new masters of this generation. I think I just try to pay as much respect and diligence to what the original art form was, while also carrying it forward to the new setting of the world. It’s a different climate than when jazz had its true heyday,” Kortum said.
