Deanna Witkowski

Known for her adventurous, engaging music that heals the soul, pianist-composer-vocalist Deanna Witkowski moves with remarkable ease between Brazilian, jazz, classical, and sacred music. Witkowski’s explosive performances combine virtuosity and heart, telling stories that reveal her innate curiosity of the human condition. Her first book, Mary Lou Williams: Music For The Soul (Liturgical Press), published in September 2021, is the winner of the 2022 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award and the 2022 Jazz Journalists Association Award for Biography of the Year. Her seventh recording, Force of Nature (MCG Jazz), released in January 2022, reached number five on the JazzWeek nationwide radio chart and remained in the top ten most played albums on jazz radio for more than ten weeks. A frequent winner of composition competitions for her concert and sacred choral pieces, Witkowski has received funding for new work from the New York State Council on the Arts (for her Afro-Brazilian project, the Nossa Senhora Suite) and the Choral Arts Initiative PREMIERE|Project Festival.

Used by permission of Deanna Witkowski