Deanna Witkowski is a pianist, composer and vocalist based in New York City. Her 2017 trio album, Makes the Heart to Sing: Jazz Hymns, features fourteen of her jazz hymn arrangements alongside a companion sheet music book. Her catalog includes eighty sacred music originals and arrangements, including two jazz Masses. In addition to her awards as a jazz pianist, including the 2002 Great American Jazz Piano Competition and the 2017 HotHouse New York Fans Decision Jazz Award, her compositions have won the 2017 ChoralArt New England Carol Contest; the 2016 Illinois-ACDA Composition Contest; and the 2017 annual hymn search sponsored by the Hymn Society in the US and Canada. As a Sacatar Institute Fellow, Witkowski spent eight weeks in Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil in the spring of 2018 doing research for her current project, the Nossa Senhora Suite. The suite will merge Afro-Brazilian expressions of the Virgin Mary with new composition for Witkowski’s jazz quartet, percussion, and four vocalists. She is also the recipient of a 2018 New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant. Visit Deanna online at deannajazz.com.
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