Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly (born Grace Chung; May 15, 1992) is an American jazz musician, composer, and arranger. Kelly has produced and released recordings of her own, scored soundtracks, and tours with her band. She was named one of Glamour magazine's Top 10 College Women in 2011; , she has been featured on CNN.com and on the NPR radio shows Piano Jazz with both Marian McPartland and Jon Weber, as well as on WBGO's JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater.

Working professionally since she was a preteen, Kelly was dubbed a prodigy in the jazz world. In 2014, she worked with the producer Stewart Levine on her EP, Working for the Dreamers, which was released in September of that year.

Kelly was featured in the December 2015 issue of Vanity Fair as a significant millennial in the jazz world. She was also named "Rising Star – Alto Saxophone" in DownBeats 2016 Critics Poll. Her Trying to Figure It Out (2016 PAZZ) release was voted the number-two Jazz Album of the Year in the 2016 DownBeat readers' poll.

Early life and education Born Grace Chung in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to Korean parents, she moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, when she was 2 years old. She briefly played clarinet and classical piano before finding her voice on the saxophone. Kelly stated, "Saxophone reminds me of the human voice. And I always felt this very compelling, this feeling, that someone was singing to me. The Girl from Ipanema was on repeat in my household when I was a little girl and thought: ‘I wanna learn this one day.’ It’s one of the instruments that’s closest to expressing the human voice.” Kelly counts it a major breakthrough in her career when singer/songwriter Fred Taylor approached her after she sat in with vocalist Ann Hampton Callaway at Scullers Jazz Club. Kelly has studied saxophone with Jeremy Udden, James Merenda, George Garzone, Lee Konitz, Greg Osby, Jerry Bergonzi, and Allan Chase. While in the recording stages, she met Ann Hampton Callaway, a jazz cabaret singer, who offered to write the liner notes to Kelly's first CD. which she had won previously in 2008 and 2010. Kelly was also voted alto saxophonist of the year by the 2016 NYC Jazz Fans Decision Award.

Touring In 2009, she played with the Foxboro High School Jazz Ensemble and Dave Brubeck for the "Let Freedom Swing/Celebration Of America" concert held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

That same year, Kelly was selected by the Boston Celtics to play the national anthem at the TD Garden for preseason and play-off games.

For the Kennedy Center's 15th Annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival, in 2010, Kelly performed as part of an all-star quintet of Dee Dee Bridgewater, Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Esperanza Spalding for a set that celebrated the 100th anniversary of Mary Lou Williams's birth.

In 2012, Kelly was selected to perform at the 30th Annual NEA Jazz Masters Ceremony with Phil Woods and Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Collaborations At 15, Kelly and NEA jazz master Lee Konitz recorded the album, GRACEfulLEE. The album gained a 4 1/2-star review from DownBeat.

At 18, she released her sixth album, Man with the Hat, recorded as a collaboration with another NEA jazz master Phil Woods. The title of the album also refers to when Woods invited Kelly, when she was 14 years old, on stage during one of his performances and presented her with his iconic leather cap as a gift after her solo on "I'll Remember April".

In 2017, when she recorded Go Time: Brooklyn 2, Kelly had Leo Pellegrino as a guest. On November 30, 2019, Pellegrino and Kelly announced the official formation of a new "group, a band... a collaboration" called 2SAXY, which would consist of a duet between Kelly on alto saxophone and Pellegrino on baritone saxophone.

Charting Kelly's 2013 single "Sweet Sweet Baby", recorded for the Woodward Avenue Records label, reached number 7 on the Billboard Smooth Jazz Singles chart. The track was also included on the label's 9 Mile Road compilation.

Film and television Kelly is a featured performer in the 2014 documentary Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story, co-produced by author Michael Connelly and directed by N.C. Heikin. In the documentary, she performs "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" as part of a tribute concert held in San Quentin State Prison, where Frank Morgan was incarcerated at different times in his life. The documentary had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 14, 2014 and was followed the next day by a tribute concert at the Grammy Museum, featuring Kelly, George Cables, Ron Carter, Mark Gross, and Roy McCurdy. The documentary was selected for multiple additional film festivals, including the 2014 Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, the 2014 Maine International Film Festival, the 2014 Virginia Film Festival, the 2014 Atlanta Film Festival, the 2015 Palm Springs International Film Festival, and the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Kelly has performed many times with jazz musician Jon Batiste and his band Stay Human as the house band for the New York City-based late night television show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert as well as at other New York City locations.

Kelly released her tenth CD, Trying to Figure It Out, in 2016; it includes the track "Blues For Harry Bosch", a composition written for the Amazon produced television series Bosch. In the second season, episode 2, of the series, Kelly is featured, as herself,

Kelly was executive producer and music composer of the 2017 short film The Bird Who Could Fly, directed by Raphael Sbarge, written by Robert Munic and Raphael Sbarge. The film won multiple awards in the "Asians on Film Festival of Shorts 2016 Fall Quarter".

Charity work In partnership with Berklee College of Music, Kelly established the Fred Taylor Scholarship Fund Feels Like Home (Feat. Elliott Skinner) (2019) single (PAZZ Productions); Julian Waterfall Pollack, Julia Adamy, Ross Pederson GO TiME: Live In LA (2019) (PAZZ Productions); Feat. Sarah Reich, Julian Waterfall Pollack, Julia Adamy, Ross Pederson GO TiME: Brooklyn 2 (2018) (PAZZ Productions); Julian Waterfall Pollack, Julia Adamy, Ross Pederson GO TiME: Brooklyn (2018) (PAZZ Productions); Julian Waterfall Pollack, Julia Adamy, Ross Pederson She's The First (2016) single (PAZZ Productions) written by Grace Kelly and April Bender. Trying To Figure It Out (2016) (PAZZ Productions) Jon Batiste, Michael League (leader of Snarky Puppy), Mocean Worker, Shayna Steele, Henry Hey, Tim Lefebvre, Lemar Carter, Pete McCann, Ross Pederson, Jeff Babko, Steve Hass, and others. Working For The Dreamers (2014) (PAZZ Productions); Sunny Levine, Amir Yaghmai, Gabriel Noel "Sweet Sweet Baby" (2013) (single) (PAZZ Productions); Alain Mallet, Mike Bono, Duke Levine, Spencer Stewart, Eric Law, Gabe Smith, John Nellen, Vishall Nayak. The single reached #10 on Billboard Smooth Jazz Singles Chart

Awards 2016 Winner 64th Annual Downbeat Critics Poll