Viva

As a child, Viva was exposed to a robust variety of music from Cuban salsa to '90s pop to chamber orchestra and the great American songbook. She made her stage debut with musical theatre in high school. She began singing with a small jazz combo at 21 years old and directed her first performance a year later. After time recording in studio and abroad, Viva assembled an elite team of jazz musicians for the premiere of her band VIVA & The Reinforcements. Since then, the group has played hundreds of events in dozens of cities across the continents.

Viva is the granddaughter of economist Alfred P. Thorne, author of Poor By Design, a book that examines systemic exploitation of former colonial states, and the great-granddaughter of A. A. Thorne, a human rights advocate and the first person of African descent in the world to earn both bachelor's and advanced graduate degrees conferred by a British University. This legacy informs Viva’s values of education access, civic participation, and intersectional feminism.