Pianist Renee Rosnes' website features reviews, sound bites, itinerary,
biography, cds.
The extraordinary pianist and composer Renee Rosnes clearly enjoys the challenge and freedom of playing jazz in numerous formats. Her eight previous Blue Note recordings featured her, brilliantly, in smaller ensembles. Now, on her ninth Blue Note release, Renee Rosnes and the Danish Radio Big Band, Rosnes mines the experience gained during her impressive tenures with both the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Renee Rosnes and the Danish Radio Big Band puts her in the spotlight with the revered Copenhagen ensemble, and reveals her capacity to shine within a jazz orchestra context.
Replete with the phenomenal solos and fluid, yet soulful, virtuosity that distinguish her live performances and previous recordings, Renee Rosnes and the Danish Radio Big Band is her first large ensemble recording featuring her music. It showcases her impressive clarity and range while transmitting a remarkably intimate jazz feel despite the 20-piece orchestra format.
Established in 1964, the Danish Radio Big Band (DRBB) has become synonymous with live jazz magic. From 1998 until January 2003, pianist Jim McNeely served as the DRBB’s chief conductor. He has worked with Phil Woods, Stan Getz, Mel Lewis, and co-led the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra in NYC, and first became acquainted with Rosnes in the ‘80s when she studied with him. In March 2001, the two pianists renewed their creative friendship in Copenhagen when she performed with the DRBB under his baton: the resulting chemistry sparked the decision to record together in December 2001 ...
Pianist Dave Burrell's website features reviews, sound bites, recordings, diary,
biography. Distinguished composer-pianist Dave Burrell is a performing artist of singular stature on the international contemporary music scene. His dynamic compositions, with blues and gospel roots recall the tradition of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Duke Ellington. After majoring in music at the University of Hawaii, he enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1961. After graduating with degrees in composition/arranging and performance in 1965, he moved to New York City, where he quickly established himself as one of the most innovative and original pianists collaborating with the emerging leaders in contemporary jazz.
Burrell's Jazz Opera Windward Passage, written in collaboration with Swedish-born poet/lyricist Monika Larsson, blends opera voices with world class jazz soloists, a 21-piece jazz opera orchestra, dancers and chorus. Seldom has the classically trained voice played such a unique improvising roll as in this important, ground breaking endeavor. Burrell's dance drama, "Holy Smoke," with blue-print by Monika Larsson, is being developed for modern dance and tap. Burrell's "Jazz Sonata" for piano and violin has been completed and will be orchestrated for symphony orchestra ...
Jazz pianist Jimmy Amadie's website features reviews, sound bites, teaching activities, biography, books and records for sale, etc ...
For more than thirty years, Jimmy Amadie has been recognized as one of the premiere jazz educators in the world. But before he dedicated his life to teaching, the 67-year-old Philadelphian was known primarily as a full-speed ahead bebop pianist and sideman to greats like Mel Torme, Woody Herman and Coleman Hawkins.
In the 1960s, Amadie was diagnosed with acute tendonitis, and eventually he was forced to abandon playing the piano entirely. New medical treatments and a series of operations allowed Amadie to return to the ivories around ten years ago, although he could only play once a month, and just a few minutes or so, before unbearable pain would cause him to stop.
Eternally optimistic, Amadie decided in the mid-1990s to record some of his favorite standards plus a few of his original compositions, which he accomplished at a rate of one song-and one take-at a time, with a period of months elapsing before he would be physically able to play again. Amazingly, Amadie's first-ever album, a collection of solo piano performances titled Always with Me, appeared in 1996, earning him accolades for both his sterling musicianship and indefatigable spirit. Reviewers noted Amadie's "elegant touch" and his "strong, swinging expression," and before long he was being featured in the top jazz magazines and on CBS's popular TV program "Sunday Morning with Billy Taylor" and National Public Radio with commentator Scott Simon ...
Richard Bliwas:
The pianist has been compared to Joni Mitchell , Laura Nyro, Miles Davis , Randy Newman , The Beatles, Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson and Sun Ra-- but as All About Jazz said in it’s review of Rising Rose Records 2004 chart-haunting release Ghost “ His writing is unmistakably original …. Cadence Magazine said in it’s review of Compose Yourself “ Bliwas transforms intricate phrases into seamless music , and Shredding Paper said in it’s review of Walk the Bike “ Bliwas walks the line between jazz and folkrock with confidence…producing a dialectic sound that compliments rather than conflicts. His lyrics have been described as profound, cryptic, silly, perceptive and poetic. Hidden tracks on a couple CD’s led one music journalist to proclaim that "Richard Bliwas has a great sense of humor…”
Soon after studying with composer Olivier Messiaen, pianist Joseph Schwartz,and poet David Young at Oberlin College and Conservatory , Richard's early 80's groups with Ben Sher and Ned Goold were incorporating the influences of Miles Davis , Brian Eno , Syd Barrett and The Beatles , in intimate innovative recordings-- and in performances at Pittsburgh's Kool Jazz festival , smokey old jazz clubs where Benson and Eckstine played a few generations earlier or rock/punk clubs like The Electric Banana. The music however, freely crossed genre lines, foreshadowing alternative and contemporary styles.
When he moved to New York in 1984, Richard began an odyssey of gigs--from playing piano for Jacques d'Amboise and the National Dance Institute , to infusing his sensibilities as an improviser into the jazz and pop music he loved everywhere from CBGB's to the 21 Club, to creative structural and line by line editing of Cynthia Kadohata's acclaimed first novel --The Floating World ...
Award winning pianist Jill McCarron's website includes all flash jukebox, presskit, bio, recordings and more ...
ill McCarron is a dedicated New Yorker. Born in Minneapolis, she spent her childhood and teen years in Canada (Winnipeg and Ottawa). She also lived for a time in Toronto, where she performed solo piano and with several local bands at Toronto's top jazz clubs while also attending Humber College.
Upon winning a Canada Council Grant, she relocated to New York for private studies in the jazz program at the New School for Social Research. After seeing the wider opportunities for growth that the city offered, it was not a tough decision for Jill to stay on permanently.
Although she enjoyed piano lessons from the age of five and proved to be unusually talented, Jill's moment of decision came at the age of 16, when listening to a radio recording of Art Pepper with her brother, Ross. A bebop piano caught her ear, which she discovered years later to be the stylings of Russ Freeman, and there was an instant connection. "I knew I could do that," she recalls thinking. From then she pursued the study of jazz with unflagging enthusiasm.
Jill's first place win ("for her deeply rooted jazz sensibility") at the 13th Great American Jazz Piano Competition in Jacksonville, Florida in 1995 capped her earlier (1993) semi-finalist selection at the Thelonius Monk Jazz Piano Competition and her still earlier (1990) win, with her quintet, of the New York City Finals of the Hennessy Jazz Search.
Among those artists she has worked with since being in New York are trumpeter Randy Brecker, tenor saxist Don Braden, guitarist Russell Malone, alto saxist Vincent Herring, drummer Sheri Maricle's DIVA, and Kit McClure's Big Band. Venues have included The Blue Note, Shanghai Jazz, Knickerbocker,Tavern on the Green, Iridium, Metropolitan Cafe and Cleopatra's Needle, among others. Her performances have taken her throughout the U.S. and Europe.
As a soloist, playing both jazz and classical selections, Jill regularly performs at the Harvard Club of NYC Monday and Tuesday evenings and has recently added vocals to her repertoire. Her Wednesday evenings belong to Arturo's in Greenwich Village. For the balance of the week, she is in high demand, both as a soloist or with her combos, at numerous popular restaurants and night spots in NYC and environs ...
Jazz pianist Kenny Barron's website features sound bites, reviews, activities, bio, photo gallery, etc ...
Kenny Barron's unmatched ability to mesmerize audiences with his elegant playing, sensitive melodies and infectious rhythms is what inspired the Los Angeles Times to name him "one of the top jazz pianists in the world" and Jazz Weekly to call him "The most lyrical piano player of our time."