Music Minute - Noah Kosta: Right Here

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At just 22, Noah Kosta has already spent seven years building the kind of stage command that usually takes decades to earn, and his debut album 'Right Here,' out now, marks the arrival of a jazz pop vocalist with the tone, phrasing, and instincts to carry that tradition forward. Raised on the classic sound of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack in his grandfather's home, Kosta channels that Big Band lineage through a voice that is entirely his own, drawing inevitable comparisons to fellow Canadian vocalists Michael Bublé and Matt Dusk for a new generation of listeners discovering that sound for the first time.

'Right Here' was recorded at Mark Camilleri's Imagine Sound Studios in Toronto, with arrangements by Charles T. Cozens that Kosta credits with pushing the songs to another level entirely. The seven track collection blends three original compositions co-written with longtime family friend Aaron Dean alongside four carefully chosen covers, and Kosta has assembled four separate ensembles, a big band, quintet, quartet, and trio, to bring the material to audiences across formats. "I want to respectfully bring what the legends of the past created into the present," Kosta says of the project, "and I think, and I hope, that we've succeeded."

What separates Kosta from a simple nostalgia act is the specificity he brings to his song selection and phrasing, treating each cover as a piece of his own story rather than a museum piece. His take on "Way Back When" reshapes an earlier synth leaning demo into what Kosta describes as a wistful, last song at the prom feeling, while his rendition of a ballad chosen specifically for the album's closing moment was recorded with just Cozens on piano, a deliberately intimate counterpoint to the record's fuller arrangements. It is that instinct, choosing restraint exactly when a lesser vocalist might reach for spectacle, that makes the Bublé and Dusk comparisons feel earned rather than assigned.

With 'Right Here' now arriving and four live configurations ready to tour the material, Noah Kosta is positioned as one of the most credible young voices in Canadian jazz pop, an artist building his sound the old-fashioned way: through mentorship, repetition, and an unmistakable respect for the songbook he is now adding to.