About Kitty Mazinsky
Vintage jazz vocalist, Great American Songbook specialist, and occasional maker of 1930s blouses.
I have been performing professionally since 2013, specialising in jazz standards, the Great American Songbook and 1940s wartime repertoire. I am based in Hungerford, Berkshire, and perform at weddings, corporate events, luxury hotels, private members’ clubs, 1940s heritage festivals and wartime commemorations across the South of England and beyond.
The name Kitty Mazinsky is, I will admit, a stage name — though not an invented one. Kitty comes from two women on my mother's side: my mother Kathleen, who was called Kitty as a child, and my grandmother’s sister, my great aunt Kitty. Mazinsky is a childhood mishearing of my great great grandfather's surname — Masansky, Misansky, Maskey, Mason; it depends on which document you find.
Barnett Masansky was born in Vilnius in 1893, smuggled into exile in London around 1911 after being imprisoned for distributing socialist pamphlets, conscripted into the Royal Field Artillery in WWI, and spent the 1920s running a barber's shop in Manchester that doubled as the unofficial headquarters of the local Communist Party. In late 1936 he left for Spain with the International Brigades to fight for the elected government of the Spanish Republic, and was killed on the first day of the Battle of Jarama on 12 February 1937, aged 43. He died two years before the war that produced much of the music I now sing.
Some years ago I sang Patsy Cline's Crazy as a duet with his son Albert at a family reunion in Manchester. Using the name feels right because it belongs not only to my family but also an appropriate era.
How I Got Here
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 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. The world of Edwardian and interwar elegance on the water was a part of my identity 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 changed everything. 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 in love.
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 had 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 richer for me. I work consistently with vocal coaches to keep my technique sharp, and I am currently 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.
The Aesthetic
The 1930s and 40s hold endless fascination for me. An occasional seamstress, I make some of my own clothes from 1930s and 40s patterns: little blouses, slacks, shirtdresses. I have been known to wear my own creations to gigs. My Pashley bicycle — a brand I first spotted in a shop window in Stratford-upon-Avon and pined over for many years — is as much a part of the aesthetic as anything else. I love to ride it into Hungerford to pick up bread from the baker, which is as close to living in 1935 or perhaps being a Suffragette as modern life allows. Some of the photographs on this and other pages were taken alongside my dad’s Frogeye Sprite, which I borrowed for the shoot — it belonged in the pictures as naturally as the vintage microphone (is what I told him to get him to drive it over). To me, the music and the look belong together; there is something about putting on a well-cut 1940s silhouette that puts you in exactly the right frame of mind to sing Ella Fitzgerald.
I have been described, not entirely inaccurately, as a little bit Doris Day — sunny, enthusiastic, and honest-to-goodness delighted to be doing this. The era I love to inhabit was one of extraordinary elegance and resilience, and I try to bring both of those qualities to every performance — and maybe the occasional day at home, too.
In Performance
I perform solo with professional backing tracks for most bookings — a full, polished sound with arrangements your guests will recognise, suitable for everything from a wedding breakfast to a hotel lounge to a corporate dinner. I also perform at food and drink festivals, with experience at venues including Oxford Town Hall, Cheltenham Town Hall, Reading Town Hall and Exeter Corn Exchange. For larger stages and special occasions I also appear with Apollo Big Band, bringing the full live sound of jazz and swing, including a dedicated 1940s wartime set for heritage and commemorative events. For intimate settings, I am available as a duo with piano, trio with piano and double bass, or quartet with piano, double bass and percussion.
Every booking includes a consultation to discuss repertoire, format and the flow of your event. I am easy to work with, I like to please people, and I take the practical side of performing — logistics, timing, sound requirements — as seriously as the musical side. All equipment is provided, PAT tested and covered by Public Liability Insurance through the Musicians’ Union.
What I do
Get in Touch
If you’re thinking about booking me for your wedding, event or venue, I would be delighted to hear from you. I love to talk through what people are looking for and enjoy working out the best way to make it happen. Drop me a message via the enquiry form or contact me on the number below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.