‘Music is everything’
Kieran Brown can’t imagine a day without music in her life. “I listen to it. I play it. I can’t get away from it,” said the Fairfield-based jazz singer. “Music is everything to me.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Brown plans to pursue a career in music after she finishes college. Right now, she’s a junior at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, majoring in jazz studies, and she’s going for her master’s after that.
The 20-year-old’s musical resume is already an impressive one. She sang the national anthem at a Madison Square Garden event and founded the firstever children’s choir at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Fairfield — both when she was 16.
While attending Fairfield Ludlowe High School, she took part in a jazz-intensive music camp at Berklee College of Music in Boston on a full scholarship. Most recently, she recorded a threesong jazz EP that landed on the national jazz charts.
“Music has always been such an important part of my life,” said Brown. “I started taking voice lessons when I was 13, and I’d always been involved in choirs and musicals and things like that in the Fairfield public schools.
“I felt that any opportunity to perform was an opportunity to learn and grow.”
Brown graduated from Fairfield Ludlowe High School in 2018. She participated in the Connecticut Regional and State High School Choirs while there and won a National High School Choral Award as a senior.
She sang everything from classical music to musical theater to pop and funk, and felt comfortable performing in all those genres. However, it was during her high school summer camp experience at Berklee College that she discovered the world of jazz.
“Jazz was like a diamond in the rough for me musically,” said Brown. “I started listening to some of the Great American Songbook standards, and I immediately fell in love with the way the music made me feel.
“I was so fascinated by the Songbook and the idea that you can go to a jam session and call a tune in any key and the instrumentalists would be able to play it without reading music.”
Brown surrounded herself with recordings from jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughn, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and John Coltrane.
“I just dove into the music to learn as much as possible. I realized that jazz singing requires such a great deal of technical skill vocally, and I felt ready for it, given my preparation studying voice.
“I was intrigued by how complex the harmony was. I didn’t know what a diminished chord sounded like or what a seventh chord was. I wanted to get into improvisation and scatting and things like that. It was a whole new world to me.”
Brown’s development as a jazz singer continues to this day. She wrote all the arrangements on her debut jazz recording, “Christmas with Kieran Brown & Friends,” which climbed to No. 24 on the national Jazz Holiday Charts last year.
The three-song EP features Brown’s polished jazz vocals recorded with friends and fellow students in Indiana.
“Before coming home for the holiday break, I had the idea of recording a few Christmas songs for my grandparents, who I hadn’t seen in over a year due to the pandemic. It wasn’t going to be anything past that.
“I got some classmates and friends together to record holiday songs in the jazz style, but then I decided to do a full high-quality recording, and it eventually snowballed into a bigger project.
“I got it distributed on all the major streaming platforms, and it turned out to be this big thing, which it wasn’t supposed to be at all.”
Brown’s next recording will need to fit into her college schedule. “I would love to do another recording,” she said.
“I think maybe I’ll release a single. I’ve been working on a lot of original music, and I’ve been into composition and arranging over the last few years. But I am very focused on graduating.”
She’s also focused on sharing her talents as an educator.
“Teaching has always been so important to me, and I’m very enthusiastic about sharing my love of music with others, since I had great music teachers at the Fairfield public schools and with my private teachers,” she said.
“I really admired them, and I wanted to instill that love of music so other people share it.”
She gives private lessons in voice and piano. “I love teaching,” she said. “It’s very rewarding.”
She also recognizes and appreciates the support of her parents. “I am so, so blessed to have parents that support me pursuing a career in the performing arts, because I know so many people, even in music school, whose parents don’t,” she said.
“They absolutely love that I’m doing something that brings me so much joy, and they are 100% on board. They know that I can do whatever I set my mind to.”