Kalia Vandever is a trombonist, composer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. She recently graduated from The Juilliard School in New York, NY as a member of the Jazz Studies — Bachelor of Music program in May of 2017. Music has taken her to Austria, Italy, and Australia as well as many cities throughout the US. She has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Preservation Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, SMOKE Jazz Club, the Blue Note, and the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Kalia moved from Los Angeles, CA to New York City in 2013 to study at the Juilliard School and has thrived and grown as a creative musician, improviser, composer, and educator since being in the city. Kalia’s current project is a jazz quartet comprised of trombone, piano, bass, and drums in which she writes all of the music. Kalia has played with the following musicians whom she admires greatly, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Ingrid Jensen, Herbie Hancock, Antonio Hart, Tyshawn Sorey, Justin Brown, Jason Moran, Fabian Almazan, and others.
She is also experienced as an educator, having traveled to Boston and Memphis, as a part of the Thelonious Monk Institute’s Peer-to-Peer Program; driven to inspire and motivate the younger generation of musicians. She’s also traveled to New Orleans with a group 18 students from the Juilliard School to teach at local schools, perform for the community, and build houses with Habitat for Humanity. She worked as an Academy Assistant for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Educational Program called the Middle School Jazz Academy in 2016-2017. In summer of 2017, Kalia traveled to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia to work with students in a youth orchestra.
