Kris Adams Biography
Kris Adams began singing at an early age having grown up in a music loving family. Her grandfather played organ by ear and her mother played piano. As a young teenager, Kris sang in a touring children’s theater and had her first professional gigs at the age of 19 in Hartford, singing in a latin-jazz band that the late saxophonist Tom Chapin was a member of.
Kris left Hartford to attend Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. She released her first CD, “This Thing Called Love” in 1999 and her second, “Weaver of Dreams” in 2002. Both were collaborations with pianist/arranger, Steve Prosser. She recorded her third disc in 2013 (Jazzbird Records), “Longing” in collaboration with trumpeter/arranger, Greg Hopkins. Her latest and fourth release is “We Should Have Danced” and it features her lyrics, Steve Prosser’s music and Tim Ray’s arrangements for voice, flute, piano and bass.
Kris has shared the stage with Joe Lovano, Wayne Escoffery, Lee Musiker, Cameron Brown, Billy Drummond, Bill Pierce, Harvie S, Jay Leonhart and Michelle Hendricks. She has performed and given clinics in New England, New York, Los Angeles, Brazil, Germany and Italy, recently, at the Fara Sabina Jazz Festival along side Jonathan Kreisberg, Kevin Hays, Rueben Rogers and Gregory Hutchinson.
Kris currently teaches at Berklee and is author of the book “Sing Your Way Through Theory” (Hal Leonard).
Kris Adams Biography:
Full Biography | Short Biography
Creative works:
We Should Have Danced
Longing
This Thing Called Love
Weaver of Dreams
Sing Your Way Through Theory
Reviews
Jon Garelick
Artfuse.org
Jazz, January 27, 2019
“Singer Kris Adams’s foruth album (and first since Longing, in 2014, a stellar collaboration with trumpeter arranger/Greg Hopkins) is probably her most personal – a tribute to the late composer and Berklee professor Steve Prosser, to whom Adams (another Berklee teacher) was married for a couple of decades, and with whom she remained friends until his death, in 2012. On the new We Should Have Danced, Adams has collected music that Prosser wrote and set it with lyrics, some inspired by Prosser’s poetry. The results are lyrical, swinging, harmonically rich, and beautifully sung and played by Adams, pianist Tim Ray (who arranged), bassist Paul Del Nero, and flutist Fernando Brandão. That group will join Adams at the Lilypad.”
Chris Spector, Editor and Publisher, www.midwestrecord.com
“KRIS ADAMS/Longing: Not your usual fine voiced jazz thrush, Adams wraps her throat around the Great American songbook her way. That means she’s covering Steve Swallow, Ralph Towner, Abbey Lincoln and more that might just well be new to younger ears. Singing words as well as vocalese, her music almost comes across like a one woman playlet without the tortured artist effect in it’s wake. Delightfully ear opening stuff, Adams is loaded with the chops that make her stand out as can be heard on a stand out release like this. A winner throughout, try not to miss it because it’ll be your loss.”
Fred Bouchard, Downbeat Magazine
November 2014
“Blithe, airy Kris Adams rolls a bright set of heartfelt, gnarly linearities as post-bop arranger Greg Hopkins re-meters classics (“All Of You”, “One Upon A Summertime”, “Voce E Eu”) in daring charts that nimbly exercise 7-to 12-man Berklee-based ensembles. A superb scatter, Adams precisely navigates thrilling hairpin vocalise amid keen solos for Hopkins’ trumpet, agile pianist Tim Ray, bassist Fernando Huergo, flutist/engineer Bob Patton and altoist Shannon LeClaire.”
Jon Garelick
Scene & Heard-Best of Boston Music 2014
Boston Globe Arts Section, December 19, 2014
“The crystalline glow of Kris Adams’s singing, along with her technical assurance and emotional commitment, make this a standout vocal album, but the arrangements by her Berklee colleague Greg Hopkins put it over the top. Hopkins worked with Adams on seven of the 11 tracks, sometimes with as many as 10 pieces, including cello. The varied material ranges from Joni Mitchell’s “The Dawntreader” and Michel Legrand’s “Once Upon a Summertime” to Mary Lou Williams’s “What’s Your Story Morning Glory?,” a couple of pieces by the British singer Norma Winstone (including the title track), and Adams’s own lyric setting of Steve Swallow’s “Wrong Together.”
Jack Goodstein, www.blogcritics.org
“In Longing, her new album, vocalist Kris Adams demonstrates just what jazz singing is all about. She uses her instrument, her voice, in the same way a fine horn player uses his; she takes the song, explores it, and makes it her own. This is no mere lounge singer. This is a creative artist.”
Vittorio Lo Conte, www.musiczoom.it, Rome, Italy
“An impressive team with which Kris Adams singing one of the most interesting vocal albums of the moment, between tradition and look to the future, where nothing is predictable and obvious.”
Jerome Wilson, Cadence Magazine
“Kris Adams has a lovely, malleable voice that can either come out as a wistful sigh or sharpen into a piercing soprano sax wail . . . she has very impressive versatility.”
Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
“A very talented and subtle jazz singer . . . “
Frank-John Hadley, Down Beat Critic
“Adams voice is warmly inviting and projects a sense of believable drama when articulating the lyrics of standards.”
Bob Blumenthal, Jazz Critic
“Kris Adams takes rare natural gifts, a most pleasing voice and sure sense of time, and adds taste in material and a curiosity in conception that is central to jazz.”
Christopher Loudon, Jazz Times
“Kris Adams has a strong jazz sensibility . . . an easy, agreeable sense of swing and an obvious appreciation for everything from Ella’s scatting to Sheila Jordan’s intonation.”
Steve Starger, The Hartford Advocate
“Prosser’s rearrangements can snap like elastic bands or unravel like balls of twine . . . Right on the edge!”
Dave Nathan, All Music Guide
“Adams is not a typical songbird, but one who stretches herself, requiring listeners to open their ears. Those who do will find the rewards many and great!”
Bill Donaldson, Jazz Improv Magazine
“Kris Adams stakes her own claim as a singer to be reckoned with . . . she subtly gets into the melodies and the music itself.”
Dr. Herb Wong, The IAJE Journal
“An arresting CD with an interesting edge book ended by Watch What Happens and The ‘In’ Crowd underscores Kris Adams’ range of abilities, values, and attitudes as a genuinely ripened singer.”
