Kalia Vandever

Kalia Vandever is a Grammy Award-winning trombonist and composer based in Brooklyn. Their approach to the trombone is distinctive and defined by their sonorous tone and lyrical improvisational voice. They lean into the challenges of the instrument and allow patience and melody to guide their process. In their compositional practice, Vandever draws from their love of songs and improvisation, creating a landscape of sounds that resonate in the body and hold the listener.

Writing for WBGO Jazz, Nate Chinen said that Vandever’s 2022 sophomore album Regrowth “confirms [their] strengths as a composer and bandleader with a distinctly contemporary point of view.” (Nate Chinen, WBGO Jazz). 2025’s Another View featured the stellar cast of Mary Halvorson, Kanoa Mendenhall and Kayvon Gordon and was praised by Downbeat for “its entrancing, cyclical rhythms and longing melodicism.” At Solar Myth, Vandever will be taking another bold stride forward in their ongoing creative evolution.