Biography  

Kiva is a Canadian overtone singer/ keyboardist who is gaining international recognition as a western pioneer in worldbeat music. She is well known for her harmonic overtone singing, a technique in which two pitches are produced simultaneously.

Her diversified career, spanning twenty-five years, began with a solid basis of classical and jazz piano training. The early professional years included stints in several rock, pop and R & B bands. Later on, she performed extensively as a solo act, including a jazz circuit in Japan. As a writer, she cites influences from a wide variety of artists: Jane Siberry, Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, Ferron, Sting, Yma Sumac, Claude Debussy, Bobby McFerrin, Bulgarian women’s choirs, East Indian classical, and Tuvan singers. 

Ongoing attention for her innovations in harmonic overtone singing has led to some unusual performance situations. International appearances have included: guest vocalist with orchestra 'Olla Vogala' in Brugge, Belgium (’02), main stage artist at KIEKU throat singing festival in Helsinki, Finland and Nordic House in Reykjavik, Iceland (’01), and only foreign female artist at the International Symposium of Throat Singing in the Republic of Tuva, Russia (’95). She was also world tour member with the Crash Test Dummies at the height of their fame, in support of 'God Shuffled His Feet' in ’94-‘95, where she demonstrated overtoning at each concert. Venues included the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in London, and appearances on Saturday Night Live  and David Letterman in New York City.

Her debut 'The Ladder' (’98) has dreamy, metaphorically rich offerings and elements of jazz, pop, impressionism and worldbeat. Cultural influences such as Tuvan, East Indian, Celtic, Balinese and Japanese are apparent. Roughly half the tracks on ‘The Ladder’ contain some form of this technique. Lyrically, it’s an expression of her personal, theoretical and global ponderings, full of lush imagery and wordplay. This all comes together with hair raising harmonies and highly melodic vocals that are simultaneously sweet, powerful, innocent and exotic.

Kiva continues to stretch musical boundaries with the release of ‘Pulse’. It falls into the category of 'otherworldly worldbeat'. She creates layers of textural vocals with mostly imaginary language (‘vocables’), sometimes imitating instruments, combining this with rhythms from several different cultures. Latin, African, East Indian, Caribbean, and even a little Klezmer, are influences that appear in ‘Pulse’. The uplifting results are unique hybrids that meld East and ‘new’ West. 

From ‘The Ladder’, ‘Pulse’ and beyond, all her work documents an unorthodox history of study, performance, world travel and experimentation.

See more details on The Ladder, and Pulse

and the archives for past highlights and discography

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