Carrie Cooley is a traveler. On the road and through the heart. Born in Wichita, Kansas, she’s no stranger to the prairie winds. At 11 years old those winds blew her south to Ponca City, Oklahoma, where she found her first guitar, and her immediate interest in writing and singing her own music.
Music was where Carrie’s heart was. Music led her to play the trumpet which took her back to Wichita to study trumpet and voice at Wichita State University. It was at WSU where Carrie developed a love of opera, performing several leading and supporting roles throughout her tenure there. Her studies in opera took her to Florence, Italy for six weeks to continue studying voice, the Italian language, and the history of opera with a program called “Canta in Italia” in 2004.
Carrie’s time in Italy sparked her love for travel, and in 2007, a year after completing two undergraduate degrees in music education, Carrie would find herself back in Italy (Pistoia), and later to Paros, Greece as a part of The Aegean Center for the Fine Arts where she studied voice and creative writing. In 2009 Carrie returned to the Aegean Center to study photography, creative writing, and Greek literature.
When Carrie returned from Greece she moved to Tallahassee where she would earn a Masters of Music in vocal performance at Florida State University school of music. Her love of travel, and the desire to know herself further, would lead her to walk the legendary spiritual pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago in 2012, (500 miles culminating in Santiago de Compostela) with only a backpack, a pair of shoes, and the incredible kindness and camaraderie of the pilgrims she met along “The Way.” In 2013 she would make a second pilgrimage from Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal) to Santiago de Compostela.
In 2015 Carrie left Tallahassee and moved to Louisville, where she became a regular part of the folk music scene. She made several return trips to Tallahassee to record her debut album Adequate Choice at Alchemy Sound Studio with Cory Johnson, and best friend and dulcimer wizard Aaron O'rourke, which was released in January of 2017. In 2020, during the height of the covid pandemic, Carrie made the decision to move to Kansas City to be closer to family.
Now Carrie's focus has shifted to singing jazz. She regularly performs in Kansas City as a part of the widely celebrated Kansas City jazz scene along a host of talented musicians and good friends. Carrie is still writing and creating original music, and will begin work on a second album of original material in July 2026.
“What I like most about what I’m doing is the possibility of reaching someone with my songs,” she explains. “It’s a wonderful feeling when someone says, ‘that song really resonates with me.’ When I talk, I never know if anyone hears what I am saying, but if I sing I know people will listen.”
