Deanna Witkowski

Education

University of Pittsburgh
Ph.D. in jazz studies

The City College of New York
M.A. in jazz studies

DePaul University
One year towards M.M. in jazz studies

Wheaton College
B.M. in piano performance

Biography

Pianist, composer, and scholar Deanna Witkowski moves with remarkable ease between Brazilian, jazz, classical, and sacred music. Her first book, Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul (Liturgical Press), is the winner of the 2022 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award and the 2022 Jazz Journalists Association Award for Biography of the Year. Her seventh recording, Force of Nature (MCG Jazz), featuring her trio and quartet arrangements of compositions by Williams, reached number five on the JazzWeek nationwide radio chart and remained in the top ten most played albums on jazz radio for more than ten weeks. The two projects cap a twenty-year deep dive into the ground-breaking impact of Williams' life and music, making Witkowski one of the few living authorities on the iconic pianist. As a sought-after Williams expert, she has taught for Jazz at Lincoln Center, presented at the Kennedy Center, Loyola University Chicago, and Fordham University, and performed Williams' compositions as a featured guest with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

In 2024, Witkowski completed her PhD in jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh and is currently writing her second book, Jazz in the Pews: Experiments in Sunday Worship in the 1960s. Her 2025 awards include the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation/Jazz Education Network research fellowship and a project grant from The Crossroads Project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and Princeton University.

Witkowski is the winner of the 2002 Great American Jazz Piano Competition. During her twenty-three years on the New York City jazz scene, she held the piano chair in the BMI/New York Jazz Composers Orchestra for ten years under the artistic direction of Jim McNeely. She has recorded with Grammy nominees John Patitucci, Kate McGarry, and Donny McCaslin, and has performed and toured with vocalists Lizz Wright, Nnenna Freelon, Erin Bode, Filó Machado, and Vanessa Rubin. Her albums range from powerhouse arrangements of Cole Porter standards (Wide Open Window; Length of Days) to sparkling trio re-imaginings of traditional hymns (Makes the Heart to Sing: Jazz Hymns) to solo piano that blurs the lines between Brazilian, jazz, and classical (Raindrop: Improvisations with Chopin).

Dedicated to bringing communities together through jazz, Witkowski has worked as a guest music leader in over one hundred churches across the United States. Her weekly video series, "Off the Page: Sacred Jazz," shares practical resources for church musicians and her jazz hymn arrangements have been purchased by over 500 churches. A prolific choral composer, Witkowski has won multiple competitions for her concert and sacred works. Her modern justice anthem, "We Walk in Love," is part of the Justice Choir songbook and has been sung at the sixtieth anniversary of the Little Rock Nine at Central High School in Arkansas in 2017, at the 2018 St. Olaf Choral Festival, and as the closing song at the 2020 Chorus America conference. Commissions and new compositions have been funded by organizations including the New York State Council on the Arts (for her Afro-Brazilian project, the Nossa Senhora Suite) and the Chora Arts Initiative PREMIERE | Project Festival. Experience her work at deannajazz.com.