Mandy Harvey (Biography)

Not A Deaf Jazz Singer, But A Jazz Singer Who Just Happens to be Deaf
(Kyra Adiavira XI IPA 4)

Mandy Harvey (born January 2, 1988) is an American jazz singer and songwriter. A Vocal Music
Education major at Colorado State University, Mandy lost her hearing in 2006-2007 at age eighteen
and left the university. She pursued several career options, including education, but returned to music
in 2008. Smile (2009) is a self-produced album and has received acclaim from Jazz critics. Her third
album "All of Me" (2014) was released in November 2014.

Mandy was born in Cincinnati, Ohio before moving to Florida at age two. Mandy is one of four
children of Joe and Valerie Harvey. Daughter to a minister and to a public school teacher, Mandy
showed an early talent for singing, but also suffered reoccurring hearing problems. At age ten (1998),
her family moved to Longmont, Colorado, where Mandy attended middle school at Twin Peaks
Charter Academy. Mandy participated in choral groups and music competitions in high school,
including traveling with one such group to sing in Australia. Her vocal talent blossomed during her
high school years and she was recognized as the "Top Female Vocalist" at the Longmont High School
graduation ceremony (2006).

From the time she was little, a series of bacterial ear infections ate away at her eardrum. Through
childhood she never passed a school hearing test. Doctors warned her parents that Mandy's hearing
would probably always be impaired, and that she would eventually lose all hearing in middle age.

Still, it could not stop her love of music. She began singing at 4 and joined every choir she could find
as she moved into adolescence. Money was always tight. As a child growing up first in Florida and
then Colorado, her father was a minister, her mother a teacher. Harvey worked odd jobs, including
scrubbing toilets at the church, to pay for vocal music lessons. She learned to cope, mastering lip
reading early. When she was a senior in high school she dislocated her knee. It is now thought that the
stress and medication from multiple surgeries may have hastened her hearing loss.

After graduating from Longmont High School (Longmont, CO) in 2006, Mandy applied and was
accepted to Colorado State University. Mandy was one of fifteen students that year that were accepted
at CSU to be vocal majors. In her first semester of college, she says, she tried to follow her
psychology instructor's words from five rows back in the lecture hall. That's when she got her first
hearing aid. But a week later she did not hear a bicyclist approaching and he crashed into her,
crushing the device. In her second semester, she was in a music theory class waiting for dictation to
begin. She kept thinking the professor would start. Soon she realized he was already finished. Harvey
ran from the classroom weeping and never went back. Harvey willed herself to finish the semester
without music classesbefore dropping out of school.

Once she returned home Mandy decided that she would take a year off of singing, but she did
continue to play the guitar with her father. One day while searching the internet Mandy and her father
discovered a song titled "Come Home" by OneRepublic. Mandy's father suggested that she learn the
lyrics so that they could make a home recording. Mandy thought this would be impossible, but she
gave it her best effort. She was able to read the music and sing in key, which brought her to the
realization that she didn't have to give up on singing.

He made a recording, which Harvey took to Cynthia Vaughn, her former vocal coach. Skeptical at
first, Vaughn was floored when Harvey began to sing. Vaughn was marveled that Harvey's pitch was
better than most of her hearing students.

Harvey, who once shunned performing solo, decided to go all in. On a whim, she signed up for an
open-mic night at a Fort Collins club. She sang "My Funny Valentine" to the six people in the
audience, clutching the side of the piano in terror. Soon it was a regular gig and people started to take
note. She was featured in jazz publications and local news media. She made her first CD just to prove
she could and in the years that followed made two moreher third released just before Christmas.
She has been invited to perform at the Kennedy Center three times.

She finds the tempo by feeling the vibrations in the floor. If she is slightly off keywhich is rare
the pianist will subtly raise his hand up or down to get her back in tune. A touch to the top of the head
means, "From the top."

In 2011 Mandy won VSA's International Young Soloist Award and returned in 2014 to perform a full
concert at the Kennedy Center. She now travels as a jazz soloist and a motivational speaker. She is
also an ambassador with the non profit organization No Barriers.