Kalia Vandever

Kalia Vandever is a trombonist and composer living in New York. Vandever’s approach to the trombone is distinctive, defined by their sonorous tone and lyrical voicing. Vandever’s music has quickly and widely gained traction in the last few years despite the fact that their style has been consistently difficult to pin down, boasting a compositional scope ranging from the palatial modern jazz of their quartet work to the synthetic, gauze-like droning ambience of their solo material, their compositional practice draws from their love of both songs and improvisation, creating a landscape of sounds that resonate in the body and hold the listener. In Bloom, their 2019 debut album, and its followup Regrowth (New Amsterdam, 2022) swiftly established Vandever as a compelling bandleader in jazz circles—a group format they returned to on Another View (Northern Spy, 2025) and still engage in regularly in live performance. Vandever’s debut solo album We Fell In Turn (AKP Records, 2023) signaled a separate path being explored simultaneously. Mana, Vandever’s new album on Chicago’s International Anthem Recording Co,, leans into that development: solo trombone filtered through a well-dialed pedalboard, manipulated live; spare piano as an intermittent anchor; electroacoustic interplay simultaneously echoing and transforming the long-note melodicism of Vandever’s melancholic brass work; head-on, unambiguous, and deeply personal lyricism.