Known for her adventurous, engaging music that heals the soul, pianist-composer Deanna Witkowski moves with remarkable ease between Brazilian, jazz, classical, and sacred music. Witkowski’s explosive performances combine virtuosity and heart, telling stories that reveal her innate curiosity of the human condition. Her first book, Mary Lou Williams: Music For The Soul, published in September 2021, is the winner of the 2022 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award and the 2022 Jazz Journalists Association Award for Biography of the Year. Her seventh recording, Force of Nature, released in January 2022, reached number five on the JazzWeek nationwide radio chart and remained in the top ten most played albums on jazz radio for more than ten weeks. A frequent winner of composition competitions for her concert and sacred choral pieces, Witkowski has received funding for new work from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Choral Arts Initiative PREMIERE|Project Festival.