Roberta Donnay was born August 10, 1966, Washington, D.C. She is an award-winning singer, songwriter, composer, and band leader. She is a Buddhist. At 16 she began singing professionally, traveling Europe with a backpack and borrowing guitars from locals. After moving to San Francisco, she joined Dick Oxtot’s Golden Age Jazz Band. Tom Keats followed, and then she sang with His Tom Kats. After moving to San Francisco, she studied Latin jazz and vocal jazz. Her first indie album, Catch the Wave was released in the San Francisco Bay. Donnay was a singer/songwriter and toured the U.S. on her guitar, appearing on numerous shows. She signed a publishing agreement with Heavy Hitters Music in 1999 and began writing songs for television and film. Jazz was her first love and she was heavily influenced by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. In 2005, Donnay began singing jazz full-time. Keepnews and she were both governors of the San Francisco Chapter of The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. This is how they met. She produced the Tempo track for Journey of the Universe (2011). She has performed with Ernestine Anderson and Tommy Castro, Booker T, Junior Brown and Peter Coyote. Her songs and voice have been featured on The Unit and NUM3ERS, PAN AM”The Young and the Restless. Donnay’s song “One World”, which became the theme for United Nations 50th anniversary, is currently being performed on five continents as a global peace anthem. It was also used as the theme of World AIDS Day 2003 in South Africa.
