Camila Maza

Guitar – Jazz Institute, Advanced Package

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ocalist, guitarist, and composer Camila Meza has brought a sound full of warmth, intricacy, and rhythmic clarity to the New York jazz scene ever since her arrival from Santiago, Chile in 2009. Inspired by jazz, South American music, and American popular song, she has uplifted audiences worldwide with her assured and beautiful singing, brilliant guitar playing and vividly colorful, melodic songwriting.

Exposed to a world of great music via her siblings, Meza began performing her own compositions in high school and went on to study at Santiago’s Projazz Institute. She had a flourishing career in Chile by age 19 and moved to New York at 23, graduating in 2013 from The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, where she studied with Peter Bernstein, Vic Juris, Sam Yahel, Steve Cardenas and Gil Goldstein, among others. She has now appeared at leading venues including The Village Vanguard, Jazz Standard and Duc de Lombards (Paris), and has been sought out to perform and collaborate with the likes of Paquito D’Rivera, Aaron Goldberg, Sachal Vasandani and more.

She had her recording debut in 2007 with Skylark, which Meza followed up in 2009 with Retrato, in 2013 with Prisma, and again in 2016 with the ambitious Traces, her first for the celebrated Sunnyside label (produced by Matt Pierson, featuring Shai Maestro, Matt Penman and Kendrick Scott, among others). Hailed by The New York Times as “a bright young singer and guitarist with an ear for music of both folkloric and pop intention,” Meza is also a member of Ryan Keberle’s Catharsis and Fabian Almazan’s Rhizome, among other top jazz ensembles.

Meza has recently played Winter Jazzfest, the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, the Providencia and Patagonia Jazz Festivals (Chile), the Buenos Aires and Cordoba Jazz Festivals (Argentina), the Swidnica Jazz Festival (Poland), Hildener Jazz Festival (Germany) and Bern Jazz Festival (Switzerland). She was also chosen to take part in the 2015 BMW Welt Jazz Award in Munich, where she took the Audience Prize. She has appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series and WBGO’s The Checkout, and garnered praise from The Village Voice, The Wall St. Journal, JazzTimes, London Jazz News and veteran journalist Marc Myers of JazzWax.

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