About Allison Kerr
As an active jazz and blues vocalist/songwriter and musician, Ms. Kerr crafts tunes with a southern savoir faire and sings them with an honest, honey-rich voice that captures the true flavor of the south. For almost twenty years this native Texan entertains audiences from Las Vegas to Kobe, Japan.
Ms. Kerr has recorded two southern jazz and blues CDs: “Allison Kerr,” and “Sit On the Porch and Swing.” Both CDs and her popular book are on this website.
She has appeared as the featured artist with The Jackson Symphony Orchestra’s POP Series and as one of fifteen Tennessee artists to showcase for the Arts Councils of Tennessee. In 2002, Ms. Kerr performed at the Washington D.C. Press Club for the Al Neuharth’s Freedom Forum ‘Free Spirit of the Year Award’ and in 1995 she appeared live on CNN, in honor of the woman’s suffrage movement, securing the right to vote, in Washington, D.C. As the lead vocalist/writer for the ‘Hot Biscuits’ she performs at the Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts, numerous conventions, festivals, galas and popular venues, such as the world famous Bluebird Café in Nashville, Tennessee.
In addition, she acts as a guest lecturer/writer for the Country Music Hall of Fame’s “Words and Music Program,” teaching songwriting to Nashville area students, and as an aesthetic educator with the Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s ArtSmart program with middle school students.
Allison Kerr, MT-BC, is a Board Certified Music Therapist and the author of 8 Easy Right Hand Guitar Styles, which is used as a textbook at several major universities, including the University of Iowa and Queens University in North Carolina. For over a decade she has taught and refined the methods in 8 Easy Right Hand Guitar Styles Simple Guitar Strums To Quickly Expand Your Repertoire.
Ms. Kerr holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, Tennessee Tech University and Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. As a music therapist, she works with people with disabilities utilizing music within a therapeutic environment to achieve non-musical goals. In her Nashville private practice, as well as contract work within the Kentucky school system, she services people with autism spectrum disorder, stroke, traumatic brain injury and other disabilities.
Ms. Kerr offers a variety of workshops: she presents rhythm guitar workshops for educational enhancement, as well as, for the American Music Therapy Association’s regional and national conferences for participants to earn CMTE (continuing music therapy education) credits and to high school show choirs on methods to develop improvisational singing.