InterAct Open Mic with Featured Singer Kay Martin

Are you ready to get your poetry on? Join us on June 16, 2026 at Satori Arts for InterAct, a FREE open mic night, from 7-9 pm, featuring Kay Martin.

Kay’s longtime day job was teaching (Writing+ at UCSC) for fifteen years, which morphed into writing/ editing/ consulting upon going freelance in 2000. But she also always performed (acting and directing), receiving her PhD in theatre from Berkeley. (She’s also a mother of two amazing people, Niranjan and Manjula.) Singing was a late-breaking development! In the late 90s Kay studied singing at Cabrillo and by 2000 was fronting a jazz band every Friday at Positively Front St. (until it burned down~). She led a trio longstanding at the Shadowbrook—and elsewhere around. She released the straight-ahead jazz album Softly in 2002, featuring wonderful local musicians Tim Volpicello, Art Alm, Stan Poplin, Steve Robertson, and Scott Nordgren. Kay moved to LA in 2002 and sang across the southland, in downtown LA club residencies but especially on the west side—many years at Santino’s in Santa Monica with many wonderful accompanists. She also had her mom for long years until her death, and grandsons regularly for even longer, almost to Covid—as well as working. But music happened, always. Released in 2015, her groundbreaking Four Sweets album and Afro-Brazilian rhythms project featured world-class LA players Liz Kinnon, Hussain Jiffry, Enzo Todesco, Kirk Brundage, Roberto Montero, and Dick Mitchell. It won accolades and awards from radio stations and online blogs: Best International Album nominee; Best Single for le Saboteur; Best Song of the Year for Dulce Amor/Day After Day. Kay has also sung with indie rock groups both north and south. Under Covid, Kay was determined to develop music for more people and to take it out to them—remember the Italians singing on their balconies in early Covid? She would do “Pop-up” street concerts like so many performers have done, from Moliere to modernity—and with the right tech and help, she did, starting in Santa Monica. In 2022-2023 she traveled and lived in Europe, Wales, and Morocco, performing that new eclectic repertoire of Brazilian, jazz, indie and soul. Kay recently released these recordings one at a time as the Prodigal Tomboy album. She is content to be back in these Santa Cruz area communities, which her heart never really left.

Come share your spoken word work or poetry with the community, or come out to support our local readers! Sign up to read starting at 6:30 pm. Limited seating. For more information, visit www.maginei.com/openmic.

1st and 3rd Tuesdays.

Free.

Satori Arts, 815 Almar, #9, Santa Cruz (warehouse building near the back, follow signs)

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Host or Publisher Kimberley Bermender