Yamaha announced that saxophonist Grace Kelly has joined the Yamaha Artist roster. She currently plays a YAS-82ZII model and plans to present Yamaha-sponsored clinics and workshops.
A six-time winner of the Downbeat magazine critics poll as a rising star in the alto sax category, Kelly has released nine CD’s and has played every major jazz festival. She started playing classical piano, then took up the clarinet in fourth grade. Drawn by the melodic styles of Stan Getz and Paul Desmond, she switched to alto saxophone at age 10 and soon began transcribing Miles Davis compositions.
Kelly released her first album, “Dreaming,” at the age of 12 and has recorded eight others, including collaborations with her mentor Lee Konitz and longtime Yamaha Artist Phil Woods, with whom she also toured. She has also performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Her musical output brings many styles under the jazz tent, including pop, the blues and others. Kelly graduated from the Berklee College of Music in 2011 with a degree in professional music and served as a jazz ambassador for the United States Department of State, which sent her to Madagascar and the Comoros Islands.
Collaborator Phil Woods first suggested she try Yamaha and when she got a chance to play Jeff Coffin’s YAS-82ZII model, she got hooked. While visiting Yamaha headquarters in Buena Park, California she came across a horn that “called my name,” she said.
“Finding the right horn is all about feeling and I love the ease with which it plays so smoothly,” she said. “It is easy to get comfortable on the horn, since the tone is so even throughout the whole instrument and the altissimo comes out like butter. The high register has a lot of bite that sings through the mix.”
