Renee Katz has appeared in major New York City Cabaret venues, in The Mabel Mercer’s Cabaret Convention at Rose Hall in Jazz at Lincoln Center and its Jerome Kern tribute show entitled All the Things You Are at Weil Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. A graduate of LaGuardia High School of Music & Art, she went on to study at New York University and Julliard. Renee has performed in Maury Yeston’s BMI Workshop, varied regional theater productions, with New York City’s Apollo Opera Company, and she was invited on multiple occasions by Mayor Koch to perform at Gracie Mansion. Her recent album, Winter Awakenings, featuring Maury Yeston’s passionate “December Songs” (Musical Director John Cook) and her acclaimed first album co-produced with Musical Director Christopher Marlowe, Never Been Gone, based on her autobiographical show (Musical Director Tedd Firth) and her authored book of poetry, both garnered BroadwayWorld and MAC Award nominations.

Renee is a survivor of a life-altering, highly-publicized crime that occurred two weeks before her high school graduation, disrupting her plans to attend The New England Conservatory of Music. Her dedication and passion for musical excellence and the way she fought to come back and assist others with similar challenges, has kept her life story prominent in the local and national media, followed by people across the country and everyday New Yorkers. She has been featured in stories by Clyde Haberman of The New York Times, Pete Hamill of The New York Daily News, Dennis Duggan of Newsday, with Chuck Scarborough on “Live at Five,” most recently with Tony Guida of CUNY Arts TV and Magee Hickey of WPIX Channel 11, as well as nationally in Time Magazine, People Magazine, on NBC’s “Leeza” and on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Renee Katz’s music is fueled by embracing, rather than suppressing, hardship and how that ultimately yields to compassion and love, the greatest gift of all.