Katie Bull

One of the most stimulating, adventurous and consistently surprising jazz singers on the scene today, Katie Bull is never predictable, even when melodically exploring a vintage ballad. Her work with multi-media productions has been innovative, she has recorded seven diverse and high-quality CDs, and she is enthusiastic about constantly stretching herself. "My whole body voice practice grounds me in the moment with my band...I love playing with consummate improvisors, the act of listening, the adventure of not knowing what is coming next..."

Artistic talent runs in Katie Bull’s family. Her father Richard Bull was a jazz pianist and a dance improviser, her mother Fran Bull - still alive - is a notable painter, and her stepmother Cynthia Novack was a dance anthropologist and improviser. Born in New York City, she grew up in upstate New York in Brockport, a small town. “I remember early on hearing my father playing jazz piano. We had a regular jam session in our home that ranged from bebop to totally out. I could always hear the melody in my head, even though it wasn’t being played!” She often accompanied her dad to his gigs and to events that he produced. After they moved back to Manhattan, a 15-year old Katie sang standards weekly at Walker’s in NYC with her father accompanying her on piano.

She danced, improvised, created multi-media events at a very early age, and played the alto-sax in high school. But Katie knew that singing would be her main focus, particularly after meeting jazz vocal mentors Jay Clayton and Sheila Jordan. “That pretty much changed everything. They are both very loving and really took me under their wing, nurturing me. I was part of Jay’s workshops, learning about improvisation and writing improvisational structures. Sheila focused on repertoire, talking about choices and the importance of always singing things that are truthful.”

Katie went to college at SUNY Purchase as a music major at a time when the jazz program was germinal - it is now a top jazz program in the nation - so she switched to theater arts and took private singing lessons instead. Her mother the painter, was also an opera singer and supported Katie's lessons. “I would take regular trips back into the city to hear jazz, and sing with Jay, doing her compositions.”
      After Katie was cast as the lead in the SUNY Purchase campus play and became involved in the theater program, she met speaking voice coach Chuck Jones. “He was the most extraordinary vocal mentor, teaching me whole-body vocal production which deals with the speaking voice. It is about using the whole body, breathing organically, and how the vibration of your body comes from a free breath. It is also about exploring the sensations of spontaneity and allowing the voice to flow naturally, without manipulation.” Katie has since become a whole-body vocal production coach working with performers who use their speaking voice, and singers.

After she graduated from Purchase and spent time traveling to Europe and Israel, Katie returned to New York and immediately gained work as an actor. But she quickly became disillusioned with the industry’s exploitation and sexism. After one of her own original plays was produced, Katie realized that it was up to her to create her own art. For many years she was the co-artistic director of the Improvisational Arts Ensembles, Inc, with Kelly Donovan and Meg Fry. She developed new hybrid-arts works in the downtown multi-media inter-arts scene, writing, producing and performing her own adventurous and often avant-garde productions which included music, art and sculpture. She founded her theatrical performance troupe, The Bull Family Orchestra, the same name used by her great aunt Sally and grandfather Hilliard, for their touring musical show in Alberta, Canada.

After reconnecting with Sheila Jordan and Jay Clayton, Katie Bull started making time to sing in jazz clubs and experimental theaters. She also began her recording career. “For Conversations With The Jokers, I sang songs that I had grown up with, the standards which are the family jewels of our culture. There was no mixing and fixing - we recorded it live to two track.” On that album ten standards and Katie’s “See Through You” are treated with respect for the lyrics, while including many adventurous moments and plenty of highly original scatting. Pianist Michael Jefry Stevens, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Lou Grassi are major assets on her stimulating debut.

Love Spook, which was recorded with two rhythm sections Katie played with at 55 Bar during her residency under Queva Lutz. Both trios include drummer Matt Wilson. The music is split between fresh versions of standards and Bull's originals. Highlights include a touching version of “I’ll Be Seeing You,” the sensuous “Love Spook,” the witty “No Connection Rag” and the indescribable “Strange.” The album's featured two trios:  Michael Jerry Stevens/piano, Joe Fonda/bass, Matt Wilson/drums & and Frank Kimbrough/piano, Martin Wind/bass, and Matt Wilson on drums. 

Cup Of Joe: No Bull is a set of spontaneous, intimate and sometimes wild duets with bassist Joe Fonda who has recorded on all of Katie's albums. Their musical relationship dates back to 2000 when Lou Grassi introduced them for collaboration on a downtown inter-arts theater piece Katie was producing at the Middle Collegiate Church. 

Katie Bull’s next recording, The Story So Far was a multi-media experience. The CD packaging displayed exquisite original art by Robert Lemon designed in response to the music and the story accompanying the album in the booklet. A companion DVD included a short movie by the choreographic film improviser Peter Richards, with the dance structure directed by Meg Fry. The dancers were a brilliant group of Katie's NYU/Atlantic Studio students who had been in movement improvisation training with dancer/choreographer George Russell as well as Suzuki Viewpoints mentor Kelly Mauer and Movement mentor Renee Redding Jones. Given Bull's family background in movement improvisation - her father Richard Bull had developed an approach to movement improvisation called Structured Choreographic Improvisation - the inclusion of movement in the multi media album was natural. The CD's music showcased Katie Bull swinging in her own way with an expanded musical ensemble  introducing a variety of diverse, thought-provoking and dramatic new songs dealing with universal issues.The album featured Frank Kimbrough and Michael Jeffry Stevens on piano, Harvey Sorgen and Matt Wilson on drums, David Phelps on guitar, and David CasT and Jeff Lederer on saxophones. 

Katie was then invited by the Innova label to join their roster for her next album, Freak Miracle. Pianists Frank Kimbrough and his protege Landon Knoblock both played on the album, and vocalist Ayelet Rose Gottlieb joined in on Bull's original song dedicated to her - "You Were There." The album again featured Joe Fonda on bass, Jeff Lederer on saxophones, and Harvey Sorgen on drums. Innova announced that Freak Miracle had garnered inclusion in the Grammy Nomination Consideration list. 
 

The next album was All Hot Bodies Radiate, on Katie's indoendent label Ashokan Indie. The album represents years of music developed in the band's live club gigs and featured Katie's core quartet of Landon Knoblock on piano and synthesizer (with backup vocals on track 4), Joe Fonda on bass, and Jeff Lederer on soprano and tenor saxophones. The album was inspired by "Love. Nature.The Nature of Love." In the booklet Bull quoted her inspiration for the album's title: "All hot bodies radiate, and the amount they radiate is a function of their temperature." Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes From A Catastrophe: Man, Natire and Climate Change. By then Katie was on the climate activism trail, focused on advocating for green energy and connecting to nature in new ways as a place and space for her own creative energy sources. 

The Katie Bull Group Project (KBGP) band has featured a pool of such creative and extraordinary musicians as pianists Landon Knoblock, Frank Kimbrough, bass players Joe Fonda, Martin Wind, and Hilliard Greene, drummers George Schuller, Harvey Sorgen, and Deric Dickins & reed-man Jeff Lederer, with special projects including artists such as the pianist Connie Cruthers, bassist Shayna Dulberger, bassist Cameron Brown, vocalist and composer Ayelete Rose Gottlieb and tenor sax-man, Ras Moshe. Pianist Knoblock went on to focus on his award winning film scoring and the late great icon Pianist Frank Kimbrough passed much too soon. Bull treasured her time with Frank and the recordings he appears on in her body of work echo his genius. In 2018-2019 the extraordinary Pianist Mara Rosenbloom joined KBGP as lead pianist. 
 

After a devastating flood in her home and then covid intervened to delay her next recording, Katie emerged post-covid with her most recent album released on the Canadian label Orchard of Pomegranates Records, founded by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb - The Hope Etudes - dedicated to her late great iconic jazz mentors Jay Clayton and Sheila Jordan. The album features a 9-song cycle of 6 originals and 3 covers, offering a non-linear "sonic hologram" of life, love, loss, grief and resilience, that is both gritty and buoyant, driven forwards towards community building - and light. The musicians include the band's new pianist Mara Rosenbloom joining the KBGP core, Joe Fonda/bass, George Schuller/drums, and Jeff Lederer/saxophone. 

Awards

2009 The Story, So Far (Album) Honorable Mention, All About Jazz

Katie's album Freak Miracle was released in June of 2011 on the Innova label and garnered a Grammy nomination consideration.

In 2015 Katie released the album All Hot Bodies Radiate (Ashokan Indie Label) and was #6 on the NPR Top Ten Jazz Critics Poll for Best Jazz Vocal Album of 2015, among many critical accolades.