Mature jazzy soul sounds from teen prodigy
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

The music business' unfortunate tendency to pigeonhole artists based on genre seems especially odd in the case of singer-songwriter Sonya Kitchell.

Her debut album, Words Came Back to Me, recorded for New York-based Velour Music Group and released earlier this month in Japan by P-Vine Records is an easy-on-the-ears amalgam of jazz-inflected classic-style soul and pop, with elements of rock, blues, folk and gospel that showcases Kitchell's versatile vocal chops and potent songwriting skills.

Her smooth-as-silk-delivery and jazz roots often lead to comparisons to Norah Jones, a comparison Kitchell is clearly uncomfortable with: "I've met Norah a few times and she's really a great person, but there is really only room for one Norah Jones. I think we do very different material. She's got this country thing going on and that's not really what I do. I like to rock...I don't really consider myself a jazz singer."

Mining the same musical vein as Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones and Carole King before her, Kitchell seems destined to be shunted into the ambiguous adult contemporary classification.

But can an album really be considered adult contemporary if the performer in question is only 16 years old?

Seeing her perform, Kitchell's maturity as an artist is immediately evident. Aside from a youthful enthusiasm for pleasing the crowd, there is nothing teenage about her smart and sophisticated sound, the result of far more musical experience than her age would suggest.

After singing on stage for the first time in a school show in the first grade, Kitchell was hooked on performing and says it's the high she gets from connecting with an audience that has kept her touring the club and festival circuit.

Kitchell went from the primary school stage to voice lessons and singing in a gospel choir, an experience that has had a clear influence on her vocal style. At 10, she performed with a jazz band at the 1999 Special Olympics World Games and won a Kennedy Center award for promising young jazz composers at age 12. By 13, she had an agent and was playing jazz clubs with a band composed largely of her former music teachers and musicians she'd met through various workshops near her home in rural western Massachusetts, where she lives with her younger brother; mother, a graphic designer; and father, a painter and successful abstract poster artist. When not on the road, Kitchell attends a nearby performing arts high school.

Her live set in Tokyo, with Kitchell accompanying herself on guitar backed by bandmate Miro Sprague on piano, was a jazzy, laid-back affair with the young diva clearly at ease on stage. Kitchell's singing has an affectless, emotive quality reminiscent of Janis Joplin, without the rough timbre of the later.

Songwriting is something that has come naturally for Kitchell, who wrote her first "real" song on Sept. 11, 2001, in reaction to the events of that day.

"I do most of my writing at home, just sitting down at the piano or with my guitar until something comes to me...I wouldn't say it's an enjoyable process, but it's really exciting when it flows."

Since then she's penned over 100 songs, including all 13 tracks on Words. She says she has already put together enough material for a second release and hopes to be back in the studio soon to make an album she predicts will be more oriented toward folk, rock and soul.

But does living the life of a professional touring musician mean missing out on the typical aspects of teenage life?

"Definitely, but there's nothing I can really do about that. My life is definitely not typical, but then there's the question of 'what's typical?' It's not typical to not be going to a regular public school if you live out in the country, it's not typical to be going to Europe or to be in Japan, but everything has its pros and cons."


"Words Came Back to Me" is currently available. (Sep. 22, 2005)