When I made this portrait of Kait Dunton 10 years ago, she was a promising young pianist and composer who had just graduated from the University of Virginia. Four years earlier, she had arrived in Charlottesville as a gifted classical pianist, but she thought that her future would be in business or government, not in the arts.
UVA transformed her, I'm delighted to say. Here, she discovered jazz. Or, to be more exact, she discovered the mentors who would introduce her to jazz and a life of music -- John D'earth, Pete Spaar, and Bob Hallahan (who now teaches at James Madison University).
Kait Dunton, 2005. Photo: John Edwin Mason
Kait's returning to Charlottesville from Los Angles, where she's now based, as an accomplished artist with several of well-received albums to her credit. (I reviewed one of them here. As you'll see, her music has me enthralled.)
Kait and her band, TrioKAIT, have in town gigs on both Friday and Saturday evenings. For information about Friday's concert, visit the Charlottesville Jazz Society's website. On Saturday, she's at Fellini's.
And now for a little preview of the music that's going to make a lot of people very happy this weekend.
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