ABOUT VALERIE

Since the 1990s, jazz vocalist Valerie Kippen has been “intriguing, entertaining

and satisfying”(Chronicle) discerning jazz audiences at top venues with some of the greatest jazz artists in New York and San Francisco. She’s acclaimed for the improbable combination of impeccable rhythm–a vocal style that swings as much as it sings–and long, lyrical lines flawlessly in tune and in time with her band. “She can lavish a single syllable with a variety of colorations” (Bay Times).

Valerie has headlined every significant San Francisco Bay Area jazz venue, including Yoshi’s, Jazz at Pearl’s, Club 36, Rassela’s, Lascaux, Domaine Chandon and The Mandarin Oriental.She was the first vocalist ever invited to perform at Maxfield’s Pied Piper in San Francisco’s historic Palace Hotel, “an honor that won’t surprise San Francisco jazz fans” (Independent) and later opened the iconic Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Resort in Half Moon Bay.

In New York, she has performed at world-renowned venues including Birdland,

Town Hall, Tatou (formerly Club 54) and Maxim’s on Madison Avenue.

She has worked with pianists Federico Cervantes, Kevin Gibbs, Mike Greensill, Ken Muir, Al Plank and Larry Vukovich; guitarists Ron Affif, Brad Buethe and Bruce Foreman; bassists Jeff Chambers, Bill Douglass, Kengo Nakamura and John Witala; and drummers Omar Clay, Vince Lateano and Eddie Marshall.