She began her career in 1989, touring small stages up and down the East Coast, promoting her work with a sparse but haunting self-recorded demo tape.

Norah Jones (who duets on Duke Ellington's "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good" on Kurtz's 2004 album Beautiful Yesterday) and Bonnie Raitt[1] have raved about Kurtz in interviews, and she's performed on the radio shows World Cafe, Mountain Stage and NPR's Morning Edition and Tell Me More.

King, Richie Havens, Rufus Wainwright, Keren Ann, Chris Whitley, and The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Critic James Reed of the Boston Globe wrote in a review of Beautiful Yesterday that "there's no logical reason why singer-songwriter Dayna Kurtz is not a full-blown star".

[2] In 2015 Dayna Kurtz released Rise and Fall, which features "You’re Not What I Needed (But You’re All That I Want)", which she called her "Dan Penn" song.