Jazz: Litchfield Jazz Presents Matt & Atla DeChamplain
Atla & Matt are high school sweethearts that met when Atla was 15 & Matt was 16, and have been performing together ever since.
They were both studying jazz music at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and both loved the same musicians: Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Jon Hendricks, Nat King Cole. Jazz was really the foundation for our friendship.
In 2015 the DeChamplains released PAUSE, their first album as a team. Pause is a documentation of what they’ve been working on since they first met. It features mostly songs from the Great American Songbook, jazz standards that they’ve been performing together for years that their live audiences always request.
Matt currently teaches at the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz (at the Hartt School of Music). Atla currently teaches jazz voice at Western Connecticut State University. They also present high school and college-level clinics for developing musicians.
Atla DeChamplain
In 2003, Atla had the opportunity to sing with Jazz legend Jon Hendricks at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Hendricks invited Atla to study with him at the University of Toledo. She accepted the offer and studied with Hendricks for 1 year. She then transferred to the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School of Music and formed a trio with Matt DeChamplain (piano) and Adam Cote (bass). She studied with vocalists Shawnn Monteiro and Dena DeRose and worked under bassist Nat Reeves and trombonist Steve Davis. She completed her Bachelors Degree magna cum laude. She continued her education at the University of Toledo, where she received her Masters degree with a full scholarship. She worked as Jon Hendricks assistant and researched vocal jazz pedagogy as it relates to the performer. Atla currently teaches jazz voice at Western Connecticut State University, and teaches music at Capital Community College. She is currently working on a book about learning and performing Vocalese. She also authors a blog for aspiring Jazz Vocalists.
Matt DeChamplain
Pianist Matt DeChamplain grew up in Wethersfield, Connecticut. During high school Matt attended the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts studying under Jimmy Greene and Dave Santoro. He obtained his bachelors degree from the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School in 2010 and graduated with his masters from the University of Toledo in Ohio in 2012.
Matt has performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz, Berks Jazz Festival, New York’s JVC Jazz Festival, the Berklee Jazz Festival, the Kennedy Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center and renowned jazz clubs such as the Regatta Bar, Smalls and Yoshi’s. In 2008, Matt was selected for the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program where he engaged in a two week intensive composition and performance workshop under the instruction of jazz luminaries Dr. Billy Taylor, Nathan Davis and Curtis Fuller culminating in three performances filmed live from the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. That same year he was part of a group lead by bassist Nat Reeves that toured New Ross, Ireland. In 2010, Matt participated as a semifinalist in the Martial Solal Jazz Piano Competition in Paris, France.
Presented by New England Arts & Entertainment