Cathy Elliott just released her first CD, The Turning Point, available on cdbaby.com!

Cathy is currently a vocal artist-in-residence in Ecuador at the Instituto de Música Contemporánea, Universidad San Francisco de Quito. A vocalist, composer, arranger, and music director, she was raised in the Washington, DC area and has played piano, sung and composed from an early age. By 10, she was competing in piano competitions. At 11, she was invited to study composition with Helmut Braunlich at The Catholic University Music School. In high school, she won a Mitsubishi scholarship to study voice privately with Susan Dash.

She has written music for the Richmond Symphony Orchestra as well as the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Her arranging work has been heard on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and her songs have been featured on WHCR’s Jazz Break at Eight. She has won a grant from the American Composers Forum to write a piece celebrating the renaissance and history of the U street area of Washington, DC. The work was performed with Ms. Elliott on vocals along with such notable musicians as bassist Steve Novacel, trombonist Calvin Jones and trumpeter Webster Young. Ms. Elliott has traveled to Africa where she was a vocalist for Dzimbo Dzavadzimu, a collaborative music and dance show. Performances were held in Zimbabwe and South Africa at the International Grahamstown Fine Arts Festival. She has composed music or been the music director for a number of theater productions including the Signature Theater production of Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro, performed at the Public Theater, Hamlet, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, The Tapestry by Alexis DeVeaux War Music; by Jonathan Logue, and Gospel at Colonus (Breuer and Telson). In addition, she has composed music for two film shorts.

Ms. Elliott was the co-founder of the Tedd Baker/Cathy Elliott quintet, a straight-ahead jazz group that performed in and around New York for about 3 years. She has worked as a freelance musician on the New York scene up until her residency in Ecuador.

Ms. Elliott has been very active on the educational scene. She was an orchestrator and vocalist for a national project produced by Silver Burdett Ginn. She was also a co-creator of a new curriculum funded by a grant from The Mockingbird Foundation for a series of jazz workshops in high schools in Queens entitled The Jazz Project. Cathy Elliott is a graduate of The Oberlin College Conservatory(B.M.) and The Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College(M.A.) where she studied composition and jazz arranging. Her teachers and mentors include Thea Musgrave, Michael Philip Mossman, Wendell Logan, Susan Dash, Jeff Nichols, and bassist Marcus Miller.