Central Florida jazz chanteuse Kristen Warren takes the stage at Judson's Live

Jazz and neo-soul chanteuse Kristen Warren should be a familiar face — and voice — for music-attuned Orlandoans. She's been effortlessly crossing scenes, playing diverse stages and collaborating with heavyweights both local (Swamburger) and national (Blueprint) since about 2011.

But the last couple of years, in particular, have been something of a renaissance for Warren. The momentum is only building from here for Warren, a creative polymath along the lines of an Erykah Badu. Giving a TED Talk? Check. Using hip-hop to educate about climate change? Check check. Starting an arts organization to platform Black voices? Check check check.

Warren seems a constant blur of motion and hustle, so this Sunday's ( July 21 ) gig at Judson's Live is a great chance to catch up with her in a more relaxed setting. Warren and backing band Creek — an all-star "swamp-jazz" trio that includes Orlando bassist Thomas Milovac, keyboardist Daniel Tenbusch on keys and Ashton-Bailey-Gould on drums — play two sets for an R&B brunch at the new Dr. Phillips Center venue. The cabaret aesthetics blend pretty perfectly with the smoky sounds Warren and co. have loaned us.

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"We're going to do some classic R&B along with some originals, and we're gonna mix it with some jazz standards as well," says Warren of the plan for Sunday. "We're going to do some neo-soul — a mixture of R&B and jazz. So it's a perfect marriage of everything that I do."

Warren and Creek make for an ideal pairing, all creatively dynamic musicians operating in the spaces between jazz and rock and soul, eager to switch the sound up at a moment's notice — their locked-in interplay nearing the telepathic. Fittingly, they came together in a time of worldwide flux and change.

"We all met in the drummer's garage probably four years ago in the thick of the pandemic. And a lot of the first gigs we played together, everybody was in masks! Well, except for me, because I couldn't sing in a mask," remembers Warren about formative garage jams. "Pretty much since 2020, we've been traveling and playing together. And when Judson's came about, it's definitely kind of a big deal for us, because this is a place that we wanted to play for a while."

Warren speaks of the creative dynamic between herself and the players in Creek like that of a family, savoring the bird-on-a-wire spirit that all involved embrace musically.

"There's just this kind of unspoken thing that happens with us, we just vibe very well," says Warren. "We're all jazz heads. And all of us were brought up listening to all kinds of music, so it was really easy for us to gel in that way. We all really trust each other creatively. Getting up there, we just follow each other and we trust each other. So if they want to do a funk break in the middle of a song, then we're going to do that ... One of the first rules of improv is that you never, whatever your partner says in the scene, say no. You go with it. And that's true also in jazz; whatever your partner is saying musically, you never say no, because that ruins it, right?

"And I just love watching Creek play. They're like a little band of brothers, and they're amazing. The chemistry on stage is really special."

This writer has only seen Warren live once, and it was with Creek. But it was also at Uncle Lou's on a raucous post-Christmas evening of celebration for Milovac's birthday. Spirits were high, the vibe in the bar was a little chaotic [ often the case, not a bad thing ] but Warren, perched on a stool with a sprig of flowers adorning her hair, came off like musical royalty. Playing any stage, or any floor, is meaningful to her.

"The stage is my home. That is probably where I'm most comfortable," she says. "In person, I'm pretty awkward. I prefer intimate spaces as far as shows go. Big stages are cool too, but that is my comfort zone. As long as I am able to make that connection with the audience, then I'm comfortable. ... The beauty of music is that it speaks to people. It connects instantly. Because everybody's hearing it at the same time I perform it, there's this exchange of energy. All of a sudden, we're all on one wavelength."

For the purposes of this article, we're more focused on Kristen Warren circa the now, summer 2024 — because there's a lot going on — but she's been on the scene for awhile now, trying her hand at a little bit of everything. She's also played the Florida Music Festival, Fusion Fest, Melrose in the Mix, Lil Indie's, Soundbar. And though she lives in Melbourne, she has continually taken inspiration from the creative energy in Orlando's music and arts scene. She calls Orlando her "favorite city to play."

"My first show in Orlando was in 2011. It was curated by Swamburger at Blank Space. RIP Blank Space, it was so cute. It was called Please Listen To My Demo. I was so nervous. This was mostly a hip-hop crowd in Orlando, which is ultimately the scene that adopted me. The rappers loved me and I did a little set of, I think, two songs. And it was, like, instant adoption."

Fast-forward over a decade later, Warren is trying out new material with new collaborators and there's a very distinct sense that she's fully come into her own with momentum on her side.

"I was able to go to London for TED. I got involved with TED out there, so I was able to do original music at TED Studios in New York," she marvels. "I recently headlined Space Coast Music Festival, which was absolutely surreal. And then I've started to frequent Nashville, so that's been really cool. I'm up there every few months at Rudy's Jazz Room, so I'm beginning now to develop a following in a new city ... I'm in the process of releasing some soul music this year as well. I'm trying to make some progress. It's a hustle, you know."

The final, and very important piece, in Warren's creative endeavors at present is arts amplifier Black Box Blackout — a community-minded organization and arts incubator dedicated to championing Black artists. Though she founded the organization in Melbourne, this year she started making inroads toward establishing a Black Box Blackout presence in Orlando with the "You're Invited to the Barbecue" mini-fest, only the first in a series of happenings she'd like to stage.

"Black Box Blackout was something that I created in 2022 all about uplifting Black creatives," says Warren. "What we're hoping is to establish something out in Orlando too, and to just continue to find ways to give platform and voice to an underrepresented group. And Orlando is the perfect place to do that, because, like I said, it's insane the amount of talent here."

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