About Kitty Mazinsky

I grew up in Wokingham singing in school choirs and with Wokingham Choral Society, where I sang under conductor Edward Gardner. Music was in the family from the start: my mother Kathleen studied at Goldsmiths and sang in choirs across Europe before having children, and taught me and my siblings and friends to play recorder from the age of five. My father Bryan worked for Maidenhead Steam — he still keeps a 1925 pleasure craft called Crest on the Thames; you can find her on Instagram at @Crest1925 — and I grew up on the river in and around Henley-on-Thames, getting underfoot as a child at the regatta, where I later tended bar as a teen, and attending the Festival and Traditional Boat Rally for many years. More recently, I have performed twice for the Henley Living Advent Calendar. The world of Edwardian and interwar elegance on the water was a part of my surroundings before I even attended nursery, and probably part of why I ended up here. A Sheryl Crow fanatic, I picked up guitar at sixteen and started writing and performing my own songs, and at eighteen I moved to Los Angeles, where I spent four years playing acoustic gigs on the Sunset Strip — at the Whisky a Go Go, the Rainbow Room and others.

At A-level, studying theatre, I became fascinated by Marilyn Monroe and wrote and starred in a short play about her — my first inkling of an interest in classical Hollywood and the world created on the backlots and soundstages of Burbank and Studio City. When I came back to the UK and attended Warwick University, I spent every available moment immersing myself in student society Music Theatre Warwick, performing in multiple productions every year, directing and producing as well as appearing on stage. While studying film and television, including a PhD on costume, a module on Hollywood musicals sparked an idea. Watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and taking in MGM spectaculars, I kept hearing music I somehow already knew, realising I had been listening to jazz standards and the Great American Songbook my whole life without knowing it. I was immediately inspired, knowing I must do something with these songs.

When I graduated in 2013, I launched my career as Kitty Mazinsky: performances built around the music, history and aesthetic of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s. The connection between jazz standards and musical theatre — which has always been my first love — turned out to be inseparable. So many songs I sing began their life on a Broadway stage or a Hollywood set before becoming jazz standards, and understanding that lineage makes the music more meaningful to me. I work consistently with vocal coaches to keep my technique sharp, and I am learning piano so that I can eventually accompany myself live.

Before Kitty Mazinsky, I performed as a singer-songwriter under my own name, Fiona Cox. My album Mrs Charming is available on Spotify if you’re curious about where I started. I took the long way round, but it turns out this is exactly where I was always going.