Kim Nalley was named “legendary” in San Francisco and “Most Influential African American from the Bay Area” in 2005. Kim Nalley is a must-see on any trip to San Francisco. She is known worldwide as one of the best jazz and blues singers. Kim Nalley is a true Renaissance woman. She has been a featured writer at JazzWest and SF Chronicle’s City Brights. A former jazz club owner, an accomplished stage actor, a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley and a keen lindy hop & Blues dancer, she has also been a featured playwright for JazzWest. Kim Nalley Black Youth Jazz Scholarship was one of her many charitable endeavors.
Kim Nalley has the look of a former diva. She has a range of 3 1/2 octaves that can go from operatic and gritty blues on one dime. Her projection can project a ballad but can fill a room without a microphone. She can also spit blistering solos that don’t lose the audience’s attention or give them a lot of swing. Although she has been compared with all the greats, in the end it is Kim Nalley. She is an unforced instrument with clarity, jazzy musicality and effortless delivery.
Nalley, a born singer and a descendant of several generations of jazz musicians, was trained by her great-grandmother to play the piano. She also studied theatre and classical music in high school and then moved to San Francisco following in the footsteps the Grateful Dead. Nalley learned the intricacies jazz through small dives and jam sessions as she made her way through college. After hearing her sing at the Alta Plaza, packed audiences and without any amplifying, Phil Elwood, a music critic and Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony conductor, quickly noticed Kim Nalley. Tilson Thomas hired Kim Nalley as a singer for a Gershwin program with the San Francisco Symphony. She also recorded her farewell concert at Alta Plaza.
Kim Nalley has been performing internationally since then, including at major jazz festivals like Monterey, Umbria Jazz, and Lincoln Center. She also lived for several years in Europe before returning to San Francisco to reopen Jazz at Pearl’s. As the club’s owner and artistic director, Nalley brought the club to a renowned international reputation.
She has worked with artists like Rhoda, David “Fathead”, Newman, Houston Person and Michael Tilson Thomas. She has recorded many songs on major and independent labels, including She Put A Spell On Me which was shortlisted for the 2006 Grammy Award and Million Dollar Secret which charted in Jazz Top 40.
Nalley is a musician and historian who often combines music with history to create historiographical concerts. These include her award-winning “Ladies Sing the Blues*,” and “She Put a Spell on Me Tribute To Nina Simone.” She also serves as musical director and curator of the Martin Luther King Institute’s Commemoration of the 1950th Anniversary of the March on Washington. She is a playwright and has written “Ella: The American Dream”, a bio-musical on Ella Fitzgerald. It premiered in 2008. She was an actress and portrayed Billie Holiday’s role in “Lady Day In Love.” Blues Speak woman in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Spunk” and she has appeared in Teatro Zinzanni in Madame Zinzanni. This role was later filled by Joan Baez-Phillips and Sandra Reeves.
Kim Nalley is a California Jazz Conservatory faculty member. She is a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley’s history program and plans to complete her dissertation on Globalization of Jazz & Black Cultural Politics.