Music Artist. Songwriter. Performer.
“Every song has a story to tell. Mine. Yours. Ours.” — Susan Kay Wyatt
SUSAN KAY
Susan Kay Wyatt’s long history with music and entertainment started in Ohio, where the buzz-saw fierceness and excruciating discipline of pageant work led her to become Miss Ohio.
A trained singer and dancer, after college she worked with the largest producer of live shows in the world, traveling and performing throughout Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Spain, and throughout the United States including notable work in Cincinnati, Nashville, and Los Angeles, where she lives now, recording, entertaining with top-ranked big bands, and songwriting.
Susan Kay is also a life coach, bringing her life story — with all its ups and downs — training and experience into the process of inspiring change and growth in her clients’ hearts, minds, and health.
FIND HER
These Portland gigs seem like a million years ago. Right before the March lockdown. Gearing up for the Los Angeles scene in 2022. Stay tuned!
CALENDAR
PORTLAND, OREGON
February 16, 2020
Clyde’s The Prime Rib is a Portland institution featuring regular top shelf jazz entertainment and a weekly active jam session.
Susan Kay Wyatt performing at Clyde’s the Prime Rib in Portland, Oregon. Accompanying her here is Ron Steen, longtime band leader and preeminent drummer in Portland, and Phil Baker of Pink Martini on bass. Not pictured, Paul K. Ward on piano.
February 17, 2020
The 1905 was recently named by downbeat magazine as one of the top 100 jazz clubs in the world. Located in a district where Portland’s famous jazz scene first came to national attention, it is intimate, progressive, and relaxed, with great food.
February 19, 2020
Wilfs has become the best venue to hear Portland’s jazz artists perform, and if you are lucky, national artists may “sit-in” or be relaxing to the music.
HER MUSIC
You’re this close to hearing her. So near, click here to hear.
Susan Kay’s music has always erupted from the center of her being, which for her is the engine of her musical motion. Her most beloved songs were inspired by her own healing journey and the honesty, passion and love that continue to transform her life and her talents.
She has written and produced music and lyrics for dozens of pop and inspirational songs for several albums which continue to sell worldwide. “I wrote music and lyrics to my original work then directed the production of that work in the studio,” she says. She was lucky to work with producers whose belief and love for her voice, music and performance taught her about perfection: It’s not the absence of mistakes; it’s not perfect until the imperfections open our hearts. In fact her least favorite imperfect “takes” in the studio have become some of her most beloved moments.
Pop music and jazz equally define her book. “My positive pop, spiritual and children’s music is available on iTunes. It’s pure joy to know I get to connect with people all over the globe,” she says. “I think I’ve gotten positive emails from listeners from just about every country you can think of.” Still, hearing a jazz standard sung right stops her in her tracks. “My passion for the American songbook in the jazz genre has been a constant in my life.”
An in-demand singer in Los Angeles, particularly for big band swing and American Popular Songbook work, she has performed in major venues, indoor and outdoor, in the Greater Los Angeles area. She’s now workshopping new arrangements of the jazz songbook in Portland, developing sets and recordings that are opening a new chapter in her musical story. Her goal is to get to the essence of a song’s story, deliver what’s at stake in the lyric, and do it with a presence, tenderness, and strength that pulls people in.
Be pulled in.