Kerry Politzer

Kerry Politzer is a Portland-based jazz pianist, composer, and educator. She will release her ninth album, "Alternate Route," on November 21, 2025. The album features Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jaleel Shaw, Alexander Claffy and George Colligan. Kerry also appears on albums by Laura Dreyer, and the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble. In 2019, Kerry was awarded a Regional Arts and Culture Council Artistic Focus grant to explore the music of Brazilian composer Durval Ferreira. The project culminated in the August 2019 release of Diagonal: The Music of Durval Ferreira. In 2020, she received another RACC grant to produce the first edition of Music of Brazilian Piano Masters, which can be accessed at the Music of Brazilian Piano Masters YouTube page. One of Kerry’s newest projects is Bossa PDX, a samba-jazz and bossa nova group for which she has transcribed dozens of classic arrangements from the original recordings. With this music, she has performed around the country at venues such as Jazz Forum Arts, the Black Dolphin, the Oregon Coast Jazz Party, Ellenburg’s Jazz in the Valley, and the Florence Wine & Jazz Festival, among other venues. Kerry has also headlined at the Montavilla Jazz Festival and performed with the Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra.