CURRENT PROJECT & BIO.

2021 Advancing Indigenous Performance Native Launchpad Recipient

2021 South Arts Jazz Road Creative Residency Recipient

2022 Chamber Music America Performance Plus Recipient

"Jazz is a uniquely American art form. The Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band... takes that one step further." -Olympian, 2022

“[Julia] gives me hope for the future of jazz.” – Judy Carmichael, NPR Jazz Inspired

The Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band (JKIBB) is an ensemble of Native and Indigenous jazz musicians from across Indian Country. Performing pieces from their under-appreciated predecessors in jazz, like Mildred Bailey (Coeur d’Alene) and Jim Pepper (Kaw/Mvskoke), alongside works by contemporary Indigenous composers, the band spotlights a vibrant, long-standing tradition of Indigenous improvised music today. 

Led by the celebrated vocalist and luminary Julia Keefe (Nez Perce), the ensemble brings charisma, passion, and purpose to every stage, leaving audiences both inspired and educated. Premiering at Washington Center for the Performing Arts in 2022, the band quickly gained a reputation for deepening and challenging our understanding of the “uniquely American” art form known as jazz. JKIBB features a ‘who’s who’ of Indigenous bandleaders today, including Mali Obomsawin (Odanak Abenaki), Delbert Anderson (Diné), Chantil Dukart (Tsimshian), and Ed Littlefield (Tlingit) among others, and will be headlining the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C spring 2024. 

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Band Statement:

Indigenous jazz musicians, ensembles, and big bands have their place in the contemporary jazz world and jazz history. Following 19th-century federal policies to remove Indian children from their homes and indoctrinate them into European culture (Indian Boarding Schools), small ensembles and big bands began to flourish on reservations across the US and Canada in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Indigenous musicians started to ascend to celebrity with jazz as their medium – including Russel “Big Chief” Moore, Mildred Bailey, Oscar Pettiford, and Jim Pepper – but were never duly credited as Indigenous visionaries in the genre. 

From time immemorial, songs have been the vessels of stories and lessons for the Indigenous people of the Americas. The goals of the Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band are to celebrate and continue that tradition, to compose and perform new music inspired by traditional backgrounds, and to create a community of like-minded peoples from all backgrounds to uplift the next generation of Indigenous jazz musicians.

Indigenous cultures are not monolithic; many cultures carry traditions and songs as old and sacred as the next. The Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band reflects a wide range of Indigenous identities, from South America to Canada, Northeast to Southwest. Together, we represent a long-silenced, long-forgotten chapter of jazz history: the participation, contribution, innovation, and legacy of Indigenous jazz musicians. A legacy that seasoned composers and arrangers Julia Keefe and co-director Delbert Anderson carry forward through original works inspired by songs and rhythms of their Native heritage reimagined through the language and stylings of jazz.

It is a rarity to see a single Indigenous jazz musician nowadays, let alone sixteen, on stage. It is even rarer to see female Indigenous jazz players, yet we have Julia Keefe, Chantil Dukart, and Mali Obomsawin within the ensemble. The Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band celebrates the diversity and vitality of Indigenous peoples in jazz: past, present, and future. It is the bridge for people everywhere to see themselves on the bandstand regardless of race, ethnicity, age, gender, or socio-economic status.

The JKIBB premiered at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts in May 2022. The premiere performance was made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Julia Keefe (Nez Perce) is an internationally acclaimed Native American jazz vocalist, actor, activist, and educator currently based in New York City. Her professional career has spanned over 18 years and she has headlined marquee events at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., NMAI-NY, as well as opened for the likes of 20-time GRAMMY Award winner Tony Bennett and 4-time GRAMMY Award winner Esperanza Spalding. Her life’s work is the revival and honoring of the legendary Coeur d’Alene jazz musician Mildred Bailey and is leading the campaign for Bailey’s induction into the Jazz Hall of Fame at Lincoln Center.

Julia grew up in Kamiah, ID on her Tribe’s reservation before moving to Spokane, WA. It was in Spokane that she began studying music and competing at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival each year. In 2007, she won Outstanding Vocal Soloist in the alto division at the festival. She earned her bachelor’s in music from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music in 2012, graduating with honors. She taught jazz voice at Gonzaga University and was a guest clinician at North Idaho College and Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival before deciding to relocate to New York City. She earned her master’s in music from Manhattan School of music in 2019, under the tutelage of Theo Bleckmann, Kate McGarry, Jo Lawry, Stefon Harris, Dave Liebman and Phil Markowitz.

 Julia also has a passion for Indigenous film and was a featured artist in Sterlin Harjo’s critically acclaimed documentary, Love and Fury. Her first feature film, Virginia Minnesota, was the closing feature at the Catalina Film Festival in 2018. She is the Executive Director of the Board for One Heart Native Arts and Film Festival, an annual non-profit festival in Spokane, showcasing the diversity and vitality of contemporary Native art in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

 Julia’s recent recording, Nobody Else But Me, was released to glowing reviews. In addition to rehearsing for an upcoming album, she is currently directing the Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band, a new project highlighting the history and future of Indigenous people in jazz, and the Mildred Bailey Project will be released winter 2023. Julia has performed with world-class musicians including Jim McNeely, Emmet Cohen, Billy Test, Dan Hearle, Andreas Oberg, Bob Bowman, Clipper Anderson, Jack Mouse, the Lionel Hampton Big Band, among many others.