Kavita Shah is an award-winning vocalist, composer, researcher, and educator who makes work in deep engagement with the jazz tradition, while also addressing and advancing its global sensibilities. A lifelong New Yorker of Indian origin hailed for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages” (NPR), Shah incorporates her ethnographic research on Brazilian, West African, and Indian musical traditions into her original repertoire. In September 2023, after seven years of immersing in the traditional mornas and coladeiras of her idol Cesária Évora on the Atlantic island of São Vicente with Évora's former musical director and virtuoso guitarist Bau, Shah released her latest album Cape Verdean Blues (Folkalist Records) which The Guardian has called “gorgeous” and The New York Times “quietly riveting”. Recently named a 2023–2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Shah is working next on a new album of original music for her jazz quintet chronicling the journey to her ancestral villages in coastal gujarat.
