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Canadian musician Kim Kuzma is currently performing live shows in Puerto Vallarta.

Photo courtesy Kim Kuzma

Kim Kuzma voted Canada’s best independent artist

By Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins

Published 2:05 PDT, Fri April 29, 2022

Last Updated: 2:08 PDT, Fri April 29, 2022

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Since her successful 1999 debut album Contradictions, Vancouver’s Kim Kuzma has continued to make diverse, interesting music—not just in the studio, but also on live stages all over the world.

Kuzma credits the connection she makes with her audience as one of her strongest skills as a performer. The Our City Tonight team recently sat down with Kuzma to talk about her career, including popular winters singing on stage in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Before we talk about your singing career, we’d like to note that we are talking to you via Zoom in Puerto Vallarta. Can you tell our readers, if they are planning a visit to Puerto Vallarta, where they can see you perform?

The Palm Cabaret or Coco’s Kitchen, both in Old Town.

You have a large following with the gay community and you perform on a lot of gay cruises. You just finished a Panama Canal cruise and will be performing on the Mediterranean in September followed by a river cruise down the Danube in December. What is it like entertaining on a cruise ship?

They are so much fun. I’ve taken my mother with me on most of the cruises and she loves engaging with the travellers. It’s such a great community and I’m blessed to be invited to perform for them.

One of the things we’ve loved about your career over the last two decades is the diversity of music you create for your recordings and your performances. In your latest album you’ve taken music from the 1970s and produced it in a Latin style, which ties in with what you love to do musically with your live shows including everything from Shirley Bassey to Rihanna.

Everything is done with a Flamenco-style guitar. Musically we’ll do everything—new and old—but it all has a Latin feel, making it unique. I’m so fortunate to have excellent musicians here in Puerto Vallarta.

As a musician, singer, and songwriter, who influenced your career the most?

Definitely Annie Lennox, Patti LaBelle, Aretha Franklin, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Tom Jones, who I had the pleasure of meeting. He was the consummate gentleman. The more soulful artists influenced me to want to get into the music business.

You often finish up the winter season in Puerto Vallarta and then head out on the road for the summer to resort places in Maine. This year you’ve decided to stay put and focus not just on your music but on an additional venture: real estate.

I may be performing a few shows this summer at The Front Porch Piano Bar & Restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine but for the most part I’m staying in Puerto Vallarta and focusing on real estate. The market is crazy down here—and who wants to see me on stage in a disco outfit at the age of 70?

Kuzma has been voted Canada’s Best Independent Artist by fans at canadian-music.com as well as being a five-time West Coast Music Award nominee.

For the video interview, visit richmondsentinel.ca/videos/23496/kim-kuzma-interviewed-on-our-city-tonight

Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins are contributing writers to the Richmond Sentinel.