A brief bio of Kathryn Lorenzen

The music of Kathryn Lorenzen is a unique blend of folk, pop, blues, and country, distilled through the filter of a classically trained voice.
Kathryn Lorenzen is a gifted singer-songwriter whose musical style has been lovingly refined over years of performance experience. Having started out as a classically trained vocalist, she is now being recognized as one of the region’s most up-and-coming singer-songwriters. Along the way, she has encountered few musical styles that she hasn’t incorporated into an ever-expanding repertoire.
Kathryn’s tour of duty as a performer has exposed her not only to new worlds of music but new geographical horizons as well. Starting out as a folksinger, then traveling with a series of Kansas City-based rock bands, she later moved on to country stints in locales as far flung as Charleston, SC and Cedar Rapids, IA. In 1995 she returned once again to her Kansas City roots.
Kathryn’s musical foundation began with classical voice training, her devotion to music solidifying while at the University of Kansas. In a variation on a theme, she worked her way through college not by waiting on tables but by writing and performing in the ever-fertile musical spawning ground of Lawrence, KS. Eventually some of her bands toured the country, playing venues from Berkeley to Atlanta. She has opened for a diverse range of artists including Greg Kihn, Barbara Higbie, Dana Cooper, Steve Van Zandt, New Grass Revival, and Blue Oyster Cult.
Her style continued to evolve while working in South Carolina as a writer-producer in the advertising industry. As a creative staff member at several agencies, she wrote and produced nationally award-winning jingles, film scores, broadcast station identity packages, and theme music. In Charleston, she worked with an acoustic quartet (Dogs Gone Bad) that blended folk, jazz, and bluegrass influences.
Since returning to Kansas City she has solidified a large fan base, attracted by her compelling lyrics as well as her warm and commanding voice. For three years running in the late ‘90s, Kathryn was a category winner in the Kansas City Songwriter’s Showcase. In 1999, her song “Desert Heart” (co-written with Beth Scalet) won Honorable Mention in Billboard’s annual songwriting competition, and she had three songs (“Trouble,” “Lay It Down,” and “Half a Heart”) receive that same honor in 2001. Kathryn currently performs in Kansas City and throughout Missouri and Kansas, both solo and in collaboration with other artists.
According to Kathryn, the touchstone for her original songs is “whether a little piece of truth is uniquely expressed.” She still enjoys playing songs written in her college years. Even greater satisfaction, however, comes from writing about adult subjects like family, work, friendship, and enduring love. “The most meaningful aspect of performing these songs in intimate venues,” she says, “is knowing that a few people have really heard you.”