Kellylee started singing as a member of the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir, but her initial career aspirations were anything but musical. She obtained degrees at Carleton University in legal studies and English literature, but her destiny took a different direction: she initially courted tennis, but a debilitating ankle injury cut short that career dream. Then along came bassist Lonnie Plaxico; impressed by her performance at a jam session at the Ottawa Jazz Festival, he encouraged her to record an album and enter the Thelonious Monk Jazz Vocal Competition in Washington. “I literally went from singing in the shower to the Kennedy Center stage,” Kellylee remembers. “I wasn’t a professional musician before that.” Today, her fans admire her as an “in-between” artist, between jazz and soul, between Lizz Wright and Erykah Badu.

At once charismatic and sensual, Kellylee opens her pores to the action around her, constantly swaying and dancing, punching the air to match the downbeat of the drumsticks; strumming an imaginary guitar, losing herself in the melody and the movement, drawing you in with her hypnotic spell. It’s an insidious flair, this ability to entrance her audience so convincingly. Kellylee says she feels most at home on stage, performing in her bare feet. “The stage is my favourite place to be, and performing without shoes is more comfortable.”