Kathleen Landis

Consummate Piano-Vocal Artistry

Jazz pianist and vocalist Kathleen Landis has performed in Manhattan’s most acclaimed musical venues, from the Pierre Hotel’s Café Pierre to Carnegie Hall to Birdland. 

Landis grew up in Detroit where she was influenced by many of the great Detroit jazz pianists, including Kirk Lightsey, Howard Lucas, and Roland Hanna. Within six months of moving to New York in 1982, she landed a prime piano-room spot at the St. Regis hotel. The following year, Landis became artist-in-residence at The Pierre Hotel’s Café Pierre, a position she held through 2008 when the café closed. Landis and her trio have regularly been heard in such notable jazz venues as Jazz at Kitano, Pangea, Peacock Alley at The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and The David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center.

In the 1990s she met famed Argentine classical and tango pianist Arminda Canteros, with whom she studied Spanish classical and modern tango for six years. February 2025 marked the release of Frank Dain’s new CD, I’ve Had a Love. For this CD, Landis was co-producer (with Kurt Peterson) and also musical director and arranger.

The New Yorker has called Landis “Sophisticated…Erudite…Passionate”— adding that she “has a way of bringing the room to life.”While she remains a New Yorker, Landis and her husband recently purchased a home in Portugal. In fall of 2024, she performed in Cascais at the Cascais Jazz Club, and she has been booked there again with her trio for an engagement this coming summer. KathleenLandis.com