Jimmy Kraft

JW welcomes Jimmy Kraft to the vocal faculty at Jazz Camp! Jimmy leads the prestigious and award-winning vocal jazz department at the Marin School of the Arts, where he directs the jazz vocal ensembles.

Jimmy tells us he’s excited to share his multifaceted musical passions with jazz vocalists at SJW. He has a love for the expressive nature of vocal jazz, and he strives to keep that intact while embracing a technicality more typical of instrumentalists. As a songwriter, he works to balance music’s appeal to the head and the heart — in other words, he searches for a variety of sweet spots between cerebral intricacy and intuitive beauty. Throughout everything, Jimmy is an advocate for the philosophical applications of musical concepts in and outside of the classroom.

Also on the vocal faculty at the venerated San Domenico School in Marin County, Jimmy has degrees in Jazz Studies and Music Composition from the University of the Pacific. He’s a multi-instrumentalist as well, playing sax and piano, and is an active songwriter, composer, and arranger with experience across an array of genres.