On Sunday, November 11, New York pianist, composer, and vocalist, Deanna Witkowski, will bring special music to our 9:15 am and 10:45 am worship services. Witkowski is best known for her jazz arrangements of classic hymns, her sense of swing, and vast harmonic resources.

Witkowski has released six critically hailed albums since 2000 that feature rich fusions of jazz, Brazilian, and Afro-Cuban music. Her work also includes 80 sacred music originals and arrangements, including two jazz masses.

Witkowski has won several competitions throughout her career, including the 2002 Great American Jazz Piano Competition, the ChoralArt New England Carol Contest, and the Illinois-ACDA Choral Composition Contest. In 2015, she was one of five composers selected for the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, where she composed five music theater pieces in the space of two weeks in collaboration with five playwrights. She is also the recipient of a 2018 New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant.

In the spring of 2018, Witkowski spent eight weeks in Bahia, Brazil doing research for her new project, the “Nossa Sehhora” Suite. The suite will merge Afro-Brazilian expressions of the Virgin Mary with new jazz composition for Witkowski’s jazz quartet, percussion, and four vocalists.

Witkowski holds an M.A. in jazz piano performance from the City College of New York and a B.M. in classical piano performance from Wheaton College of Illinois.