Grace Kelly (born Grace Chung) 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 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 wrote her first song “On My Way Home” at age seven. 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 Sculler’s. He offered to book her first headlining show at a major jazz venue. In March 2005, when she was just 12, Kelly released her first CD, Dreaming. While in the recording stages, Kelly met Callaway, a jazz cabaret singer, who offered to write the liner notes to Kelly’s first CD. Grace won numerous ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Awards. Grace previously won the “Jazz Artist of the Year” for the third time at the 2016 Boston Music Awards’ she had won the same award in 2008 and 2010. She was voted alto saxophonist of the year by the 2016 NYC Jazz Fans Decision Award.
At 15, Kelly and NEA jazz master Lee Konitz recorded the album, GRACEfullLEE. 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 honors Woods, who has had a signature leather cap as his trademark since 1976. 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”.
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. In 2017, when she recorded Go Time: Brooklyn 2, Kelly had Leo Pellegrino as a guest. In November 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.
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, performing “Blues For Harry Bosch” in a scene in front of main character Harry Bosch Titus Welliver and his Lieutenant Amy Aquino filmed at the Catalina Jazz Club.
