Cathy Elliott

“Cathy's performances range from playful to deeply emotional. She uses her voice to make her audience feel things they didn't know they could feel. Cathy creates powerful, magical sounds that shatter the boxes we put ourselves in." 

Cathy Elliott Garcia(vocalist, composer, arranger, music director) was raised in the Washington, DC area and has played piano, sung and composed from an early age. She has written music for the Richmond Symphony Orchestra as well as the Cleveland Chamber Symphony.  Her arranging work has been heard on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and her songs have been featured on WHCR’s  Jazz Break at Eight.  She has won a grant from the American Composers Forum to write a piece celebrating the renaissance and history of the U street area of Washington, DC.  The work was performed with Ms. Elliott Garcia on vocals along with such notable musicians as bassist Steve Novacel, trombonist Calvin Jones and trumpeter Webster Young. She has composed music or been the music director for a number of theater productions including the Signature Theater production of Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro, performed at the Public Theater, Hamlet, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, The Tapestry by Alexis DeVeaux War Music; by Jonathan Logue, and Gospel at Colonus (Breuer and Telson).  She has been a musical director for productions with AMAS Musical Theater Group (NYC) and Reader’s Theater Workshop (NYC) She has also had work performed in Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center Rhythm’s of Christmas concert. In addition, she has composed music for two film shorts.   She has been the director of numerous choirs both in educational and professional settings, 2 of which recorded albums. Us embassy ecuador events
As a vocalist, Ms. Elliott Garcia has performed on three continents and has shared the stage with various musicians including saxophonist Antonio Hart and guitarist Scott Henderson. She has traveled to Africa where she was a vocalist for Dzimbo Dzavadzimu, a collaborative music and dance show. Performances were held in Zimbabwe and South Africa at the International Grahamstown Fine Arts Festival.  She has performed in a number of jazz festivals in Ecuador, New York, and Washington, DC.  She has performed on a number of US embassy sponsored events such as the Semana de Dignidad Afro-Ecuatoriana.  She co-founded the Tedd Baker/Cathy Elliott quintet, a straight-ahead jazz group performing around New York for about 3 years.  In Ecuador, she was the resident pianist at the Radisson Royal Quito.  In Argentina, she has been a pianist and vocalist with the Ediberto’s Project.
Ms. Elliott Garcia has had extensive experience directing choirs since high school where she won the position of student director.  In college, her directing experience expanded from more classical repertoire to include the direction of the gospel choir in a mainstage theater production.  Later, in NYC she was the director and pianist for the Hope of Israel Choir.  Soon after, she directed the choir of an NPR radio pilot entitled, “The Corner.”  After that, she was invited to Ecuador in 2006 to rejuvenate SoloVox, the jazz choir at Universidad San Francisco de Quito where she served as artist-in-residence for 3 years as voice teacher and choir director.  Staying in Quito, she also ran choirs at Universidad de Los Hemisferios and Universidad de Las Americas.  In addition to university choirs, she ran two independent choirs and numerous smaller choirs as part of different ensembles.  Currently, she is working as part of Trio Peregrine, a delightfully different trio of three vocalists from very diverse backgrounds.
Ms. Elliott Garcia has been very active on the educational scene.  She was an orchestrator and vocalist for a national project produced by Silver Burdett Ginn.  She was also a co-creator of a new curriculum funded by a grant from The Mockingbird Foundation for a series of jazz workshops in high schools in Queens entitled The Jazz Project.   Stateside, she has been  an adjudicator in the national and local NAACP ACT-SO Competitions. Cathy Elliott Garcia is a graduate of The Oberlin College Conservatory(B.M.) and The Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College(M.A.) where she studied composition and jazz arranging.  Her teachers and mentors include Thea Musgrave, Michael Philip Mossman, Wendell Logan, Susan Dash, Jeff Nichols, and bassist Marcus Miller.