The next somebody?

KICKING AND BEAMING Christina Courtin’s Running Kicks are making waves before even recording an album.

Christina Courtin is a 22-year-old singer whose nervy voice undulates with the inconstancy of a theremin. She has no album or recording contract, to say nothing of a manager, yet when she played Joe’s Pub last month she sold the joint out, returning to the stage twice for encores. When her band, Christina Courtin’s Running Kicks, began her composition “Renaissance Song,” it was greeted with rapt applause. Courtin appeared taken aback: “You know this one?” she wondered aloud. But the audience’s zeal seemed reasonable; the song is on her MySpace page.

It isn’t hard to decode the allure of this burgeoning local artist. Her songs are at once old-fashioned—classic pop about “all the typical love shit,” as Courtin puts it—and garnished with strange instrumental trimmings. Onstage, she lunges into her music with a spasmodic fearlessness that most vocalists reserve for the shower, recalling performers as diverse as Janis Joplin and Antony. And she has ample support in the Running Kicks: guitarist Kyle Sanna and percussionist Mathias Kunzli, who play with a light, fluent touch.

Although Courtin is an untrained vocalist who only recently began singing in public, the musicality of her work is no lucky accident. Last May, the Buffalo native graduated from Juilliard, where she studied violin and, to hear her tell it, assimilated with a clumsiness befitting Holden Caulfield. “I wasn’t one of those prodigy kids,” says the musician, sipping tea at a restaurant near her Morningside Heights apartment. “I didn’t grow up in a practice room with my mom breathing down my neck. When I came to Juilliard to audition, everybody knew everybody and had been studying with each other forever. I was like: ‘Fuck this place. If I get in, great; if I don’t, I’ll figure something else out.’ I was 17—and hung over!”

In a verdict that must have thrilled the pants off her grim-faced competition, Juilliard not only accepted Courtin, but awarded her a scholarship. The musician’s tenureat the school proved rocky: Her instructor greeted the violinist weekly by sneering, “How’s my rebel today?” Yet by the time she graduated, Courtin had met musicians who would join her in the Running Kicks; she’d also attended a workshop with Yo-Yo Ma. “He’s definitely who he is for a reason,” Courtin says, before peppering the cellist with the usual accolades. More notably, Ma has returned the flattery, being quoted by the reputable news agency www.christinacourtin.com as admiring the musician’s “creativity” on both violin and voice.

It was during Courtin’s junior year that, at the urging of friends, she began sneaking out of practice rooms and into downtown clubs. “That school can do a number on you,” says the singer, who still performs with a chamber group called the Knights. “I realized that playing in the back of the section in Milwaukee just wasn’t gonna be for me.”

Although she began singing as a shy hobbyist, Courtin soon discovered that in her new capacity, she had gained something for which there is no Juilliard class: an immediate bond with an audience. As the singer made the rounds of local clubs—Rockwood Music Hall, Nublu, Mo Pitkin’s—she found an audience dutifully trailing her, mushrooming from the perennial friends and family to intrigued strangers. “The excitement for Christina is similar to what I saw with Norah Jones,” says Brice Rosenbloom, who booked both women for residencies at Makor. “The difference is that with Norah, it took a push from the industry to get things going. With Christina, the buzz is purely audience-driven.”

Of course, Courtin remains untried, lending her large voice to small rooms. At the moment, she makes a living as part of a performance-art piece, sitting in the Tribeca gallery Art in General for four hours a day and slavishly mimicking the handwriting of a Czech artist. Evidently, it beats waitressing. “I’m still overwhelmed with how many performers are called the next whoever,” the accidental pop singer says. “I always go check them out, and I’m always disappointed. I’m like, ‘That’s not the next whoever—that sucks!’ But I’d love to play and sing forever. I won’t quit—that’s not an option.”

Christina Courtin’s Running Kicks play the Stone Tuesday 21 and Rockwood Music Hall March 3.