All Jazzed Up

Kate Davis, 17, of West Linn, just released her first, full-length jazz album - another high note along her musical journey

By Nicole DeCosta

The West Linn Tidings, Oct 2, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

17-year-old Kate Davis of West Linn practices her upright bass. The West Linn High School senior just released her first album, titled “Introducing Kate Davis." Davis recorded her CD in her living room – with vaulted ceilings, elegant decor and creating sounds like a concert hall.

VERN UYETAKE / West Linn Tidings

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It’s bigger than she is — the musical instrument and the force it has over her.

Wearing a simple dress and her signature side-swiped bangs and angelic smile, 17-year-old Kate Davis leans against her upright bass and begins to play. Her living room comes alive with the rhythmic plucks, echoing against the vaulted ceilings and wall of windows.

The West Linn resident lives and breathes jazz music.

A senior at West Linn High School, Davis just released her first, full-length album titled “Introducing Kate Davis” in which she sang, played the bass and violin.

“You can find some way to have it relate to you,” Davis said of the 12 tracks. “There’s things I take from all my songs.”

On the CD, Davis remade old classics such as “Just One of Those Things” by jazz pianist Cole Porter written for a 1935 musical. And then there’s the instrumental version of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love.”

“There’s a way to make (songs) your own. It’s such a personal art form; you can really do anything,” Davis said. “Even for something like ‘The Old Country’ — that’s a classic song.”

Davis refers to Curtis Lewis and Nat Adderley’s tune from decades ago, a jazz standard.

“These are a lot of songs that I’ve connected with,” Davis said.

While many kids her age are caught up in video games, pop culture, rap and rock music, Davis said she’s an “old soul.”

She loves vintage clothing styles and eye-glasses, jazz history and, she said, she may have lived a “former life” in the 1950s. And unlike most teen-agers, Davis speaks in complete sentences.

Five or six years ago, a junior-high-aged Davis sat in the audience at WLHS and watched a jazz concert.

“That was it,” Davis said, upon seeing a teen-age girl play the upright bass and violin.

“She looked really cool. And I could also play the violin,” Davis said.

In high school, Davis spent three years in the jazz band and also honed in on her vocals. She has served as principal second violin, and currently principal bass in the Portland Youth Philharmonic. She is a two-time Gibson/Baldwin GRAMMY Band finalist and was selected to participate in the Brubeck Jazz Colony in 2007 and 2008, according to her Web site.

She practices each day, takes lessons and plays weekly gigs with some of the area’s finest jazz musicians.

And Valerie Day of Portland — her vocal teacher — makes sure she’s on pitch, just like her instrument.

“Kate is an amazing musician — and her voice reflects that. There are shades of many of the great jazz vocalists in her phrasing — but her tone reminds me of the great jazz vocalist Nancy Wilson,” Day said, not to be confused with the Nancy Wilson in the rock band “Heart.”

Jazz music is difficult to define — with strong, syncopated rhythms, call and response patterns and influences from blues and gospel. But improvisation is one of the key elements that Davis embraces about the style.

“It’s like you’re having a conversation,” Davis said. “(Jazz is) like telling a story and that’s funny because I’m a horrible story teller.”

Modest, humble and well-versed (she’s reading “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” currently), the teen said she’s been drinking coffee since fifth grade.

“Sometimes, tips from gigs are for my latte fund,” Davis said.

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