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She's just getting started

By Walter Tunis Contributing Music Writer

With opening night in Burlington, Vt., behind her, Sonya Kitchell views the rest of her 27-city fall tour with cautious contentment.

"My band is amazing and just supremely accomplished as musicians," Kitchell said last week by phone from road travels between Burlington and Boston. "But am I happy with how the music is evolving on the road? I don't know that yet. I imagine I will be."

Already this year she has released an album of accomplished folk reflections with a jazzlike flexibility called This Storm and has toured the world as vocalist for Herbie Hancock. Along the way, she just happened to meet and perform with her foremost musical inspiration: Joni Mitchell.

This Storm, however, represents the second chapter in what is still a very young pop music profile.

Kitchell isn't a seasoned performer, although she handles the subtle, confessional grooves of her songs onstage and her interview conversations offstage as though she were one. She also isn't a veteran artist, although her 2006 debut album, Words Came Back to Me, established Kitchell enough in coffeehouses across the country (thanks to a distribution deal with the then-Starbucks-owned Hear Music label) and earned enough favorable press (including glowing reviews in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Jazz Times) to generate considerable expectation for the release of This Storm.

That Kitchell is only 19 makes it all the more remarkable.

"When I made my first album, I was just completely white," she said. "I was 15 or 16 when I started making that record and was just thrilled that people liked my songs enough to let me make a record.

"On the new one, I really felt like I was making a record as an artist. While I was still appreciative of the help and guidance I was getting, I was also excited to explore all these different possibilities and sounds. I just felt I came into the studio with more in my pocket, so to speak."

Helping Kitchell explore the sound designs of This Storm — from the spacious, Sarah McLachlan-like longing of Walk Away to the atmospheric shuffle on Who Knows After All that recalls the more bittersweet music of Lindsey Buckingham — is Malcolm Burn. The Canada-born producer has helped record Patty Griffin, Patti Smith and, most recently, Carrie Rodriguez. He also won a Grammy in 2001 for producing Emmylou Harris' Red Dirt Girl.

"It was just very empowering as a young lady, as an artist, to work with Malcolm," Kitchell said. "He — and all of the guys who made the record with me, really — fully respected me and let me follow my vision for what I wanted the music to be. Malcolm is also very strong-willed. But we all came into the session with a collaborative spirit. Everyone was bouncing ideas off of each other."

A different but fruitful sense of collaboration commenced this summer when Hancock took the music of River: The Joni Letters on the road. Last winter, the Joni Mitchell tribute project became the first jazz recording in 43 years to be named album of the year at the Grammy Awards.

"It was like being in school, a little bit," Kitchell said of touring with Hancock, whose touring group included celebrated bassist and bandleader Dave Holland. "I learned a tremendous amount. Just being around accomplished musicians like Herbie and Dave was wonderful. But they are also really sweet, caring, generous and compassionate people. I just felt so lucky."

But working with Hancock and Holland was only half the thrill. Kitchell readily regards Mitchell as one of her foremost influences and especially admires the more jazz-inclined music the songwriter dipped into during the late '70s. To sing Mitchell's songs only heightened the excitement of working in such esteemed jazz company.

"I already thought of Joni pretty highly. If I was inspired by any one artist, it was Joni Mitchell," Kitchell said.

This is where the Kitchell-Mitchell connection turns really sunny. Before the summer tour, Hancock teamed with Mitchell for a full online performance. At Mitchell's invitation, Kitchell was invited to sing harmony on Hana, a tune not from River, but from Mitchell's 2007 album, Shine.

"I got to hang out with her for a couple of days, which was really lovely," Kitchell said. "She is a great lady. She heard me singing her songs and dug it. That was very cool. So when she asked me, 'Do you want to sing harmonies with me on one of my new songs?' I said, 'Well ... yes.'"

Of course, just because Kitchell worked this year with several musical heavyweights and was treated with full respect by Burn in the recording studio, there is still the age issue. Kitchell said that, at 19, she hasn't been fully accepted as an adult.

"It comes up in every interview I do," she said with an almost resigned laugh. "So I don't think people have moved on yet. And that's OK. When I reach 20 or 21, I'll still be viewed as being really young. People will still probably bring the age thing up until I'm about 24 or 25 — when I'm at a kind of young but normal age, if that makes sense."