Laufey

Name: Laufey
Start: 2024-06-26T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre

Schedule

Wed Jun 26 2024 at 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre | Rochester, NY

SOLD OUT
The CGI Rochester International Jazz Festival, one of the world's leading jazz festivals, is proud to present Laufey, at the Festival's nine-day 21st Edition on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater.
Laufey (pronounced lāy-vāy) is a phenomenal young artist who crosses boundaries and meshes the old with the new. She is a young classic jazz singer with a new twist, drawing new audiences from around the world.
The 24-year-old is a Los Angeles-based singer, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist whose jazz songs are about young love and self-discovery.
Raised between Reykjavík and Washington, D.C., with annual visits to Beijing, the Icelandic-Chinese artist grew up playing cello as well as piano and became hooked on the jazz standards of Ella Fitzgerald after digging through her father’s record collection.
In 2020, while still a student at Berklee College of Music, Laufey released her debut single, “Street by Street,” which went on to top the Icelandic radio charts. Following the release of her 2021 Typical of Me EP, Laufey hosted her own show on BBC Radio 3/BBC Sounds. Her debut full-length, Everything I Know About Love, debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Alternative New Artist Album chart, and the lead single “Valentine” peaked at #1 on the Spotify Jazz Chart. In 2022 Laufey was the most streamed jazz artist on Spotify, with 425 million streams across all platforms.
"I'm definitely very influenced by composers like Ravel and Chopin," the 22-year-old musician explains, "but when I discovered the Great American Songbook and the music of George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers, it felt like this middle ground between jazz and classical that suited me perfectly."
Laufey dove headfirst into the musical canon, captivated by the lush arrangements and dreamy vocals, and by her early teenage years, she was turning heads with a mesmerizing style that belied her young age. Attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Laufey began cementing her distinct blend of tender jazz melodies and slow-burning R&B grooves.
As a classically-trained musician, Laufey's songs are produced and performed as jazz tunes, but the songwriting follows a more modern and relatable blueprint, one taken straight from her own intimate experiences in life and love. Her debut lead single, "Street by Street," is an empowering declaration of intent to reclaim her relationship with the city of Boston, as jeopardized by the associated memories of a painful breakup. Through free-form scatting and reposeful vocal styling, Laufey transforms her heartfelt truths into a revived classic sound for contemporary audiences to resonate with.
Unable to tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Laufey instead took to Instagram and TikTok, performing a mix of originals and classic jazz standards. Within a year, she found herself garnering an impressive Gen-Z social following propelling her work to a newfound audience. Her songwriting has seen her gain new fans in Billie Eilish, Willow Smith, V from BTS, dodie, Ricky Montgomery, and Alexander 23, the latter two of which Laufey went on to support on their sold-out fall 2021 tours.
After a standout year since releasing her highly-acclaimed debut EP, Typical of Me, Laufey made her television debut with a captivating performance on Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel, and performed a soft medley of tracks from her debut for KEXP's first live session back in-studio. With the momentum from last year, Laufey is set to have another remarkable run as she prepares to share more of her signature cross-generational sound.