Biography
Daru Oda (born 1978 in New York, New York) is a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. She began
playing the piano at age 6, flute at age 10 and most recently, the electric bass in 2004. In the summer of
1994, she attended Michigan’s Interlochen Arts Camp which motivated and encouraged her to continue on
a path in music. She spent a year majoring in flute performance at DePaul University in Chicago, studying with Mary Hickey and Donna Milanovich as well as participating in workshops with Mary Stolper and
Donald Peck.
In the summer of 1997, Daru left DePaul and moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to join the band Kid Quarkstar
as their vocalist. The studio/touring experience with Kid Quarkstar inspired her to return to New York the
following year to pursue jazz studies, performance and songwriting.
In New York, Daru began studying jazz piano with Sam Yahel but subsequently shifted gears into the
singer/songwriter scene in the lower east side. It was there that she met and would eventually
perform/record with a number of remarkable local musicians. (Richard Julian, Rachel Loshak, Teddy
Goldstein, Adam Levy, The Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout, El Madmo, et al.)
From 2002 to 2007, Daru was a member of Norah Jones’s touring/recording band, The Handsome Band, as
a harmony singer and multi-instrumentalist. During much of 2008 and 2009, she spent time performing in
the States and Japan with Lisa Loeb (primarily as a duo or trio) in support of Loeb’s album, Camp Lisa.
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