Loading details…
Artist
Kelly Fenton Jazz Orchestra
12+ albums
about
A lover of stories and a slave to her overactive imagination, New York City based composer Kelly Fenton uses her music to do just that, tell a story. Deriving inspiration from comic books, myths, and real life stories, Kelly’s programmatic music is enriched with symbolism and honesty, and open to interpretation. While it’s the stories and people she meets that give her the motivation to compose, she strives for her music to be accessible to all listeners, regardless of whether or not they hear the story she deemed to portray. Born in 1978 on a military base in Okinawa, Japan, Kelly grew up with her three siblings, mother, and Marine Corps Officer father, on and around numerous military bases across the United States. Attending eleven schools before graduating high school in the high desert of California, Kelly was exposed to a diverse range of people and music that continue to influence her music today. As a freshman in high school in North Carolina, Kelly, an alto saxophonist, was a founding member of the school’s jazz band. It was two years later, upon moving to Newport, Rhode Island, that Kelly felt she discovered “real jazz” when a friend’s father, a jazz photographer, gave her a pass to the Newport Jazz Festival. The following year in California, Kelly received John Coltrane’s CD “Blue Train” for Christmas and fell completely in love with the music she then realized she would make into a career. In 1996, Kelly returned to the east coast to attend the University of Nort