““A songbird of a jazz vocalist” ”
Heralded by the New York Times as "a songbird of a jazz vocalist," Julia Keefe (Nez Perce) is an internationally acclaimed Native American singer, actor, educator, and director of the Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band, her flagship project celebrating the diversity and vitality of Indigenous people in jazz. Her professional career has nearly two decades and she has headlined marquee events at the John F. Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., NMAI-NY, as well as opened for the likes of 20-time GRAMMY Award winner Tony Bennett, 5-time GRAMMY Award winner Esperanza Spalding, and 13-time GRAMMY Award winner Bonnie Raitt. Her life’s work is the revival and honoring of the legendary Coeur d’Alene jazz musician Mildred Bailey and is leading the campaign for Bailey’s induction into the Jazz Hall of Fame at Lincoln Center.
Julia grew up in Kamiah, ID on her tribe’s reservation before moving to Spokane, WA. It was in Spokane that she began studying music and competing at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival each year. In 2007, she won Outstanding Vocal Soloist in the alto division at the festival. She earned her bachelor’s in music from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music in 2012, graduating with honors. She taught jazz voice at Gonzaga University and was a guest clinician at North Idaho College and Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival before deciding to relocate to New York City. She earned her master’s in music from Manhattan School of music in 2019, under the tutelage of Theo Bleckmann, Kate McGarry, Jo Lawry, Stefon Harris, Dave Liebman, and Phil Markowitz.
Julia also has a passion for Indigenous theatre and film, and was a featured artist in Sterlin Harjo’s critically acclaimed documentary, Love and Fury. Her first feature film, Virginia Minnesota, was the closing feature at the Catalina Film Festival in 2018. She was the President of the Board for One Heart Native Arts and Film Festival, an annual non-profit festival in Spokane, showcasing the diversity and vitality of contemporary Native art in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Julia’s first EP, Nobody Else But Me, was released to glowing reviews in 2019. Her special effort called The Mildred Bailey Project released its studio album in 2025. Julia’s flagship project, the Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band, released its first studio album Incarnadine in May 2026. The debut album for the big band has been praised as “one of the year’s best jazz albums” (JazzViews). "Incarnadine is not merely an important Indigenous jazz album. It belongs to that rare category of recordings capable of altering the broader understanding of what jazz history has been, and what its future may become. Albums like this do not simply accompany history. They enter it" (Thierry De Clemensat, Paris Move).
Julia has performed with world-class musicians including Esperanza Spalding, Ingrid Jensen, Jim McNeely, John Beasley, Marshall Hawkins, Marc Cary, Emmet Cohen, Billy Test, Dan Hearle, Andreas Oberg, the Lionel Hampton Big Band, among many others.
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