Pianist Rob Schneiderman's website features biography, discography, sound bites, transcriptions, itinerary, reviews, etc.
Rob Schneiderman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in California. His Jazz career began in San Diego during the late seventies and early eighties playing piano for visiting soloists such as Eddie Harris, Sonny Stitt, Harold Land and Charles McPherson. A move to New York in 1982 led to performing and touring experience with the likes of J.J. Johnson, Chet Baker, James Moody, Art Farmer and Clifford Jordan including trips to Europe and Japan. A performance fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts featured Rob with George Coleman, Jimmy Heath, Claudio Roditi, and Slide Hampton. The collaboration with Slide resulted in the CD New Outlook, the first of Rob's nine recordings as a leader for the Reservoir Music label. These CD's contain over twenty Schneiderman originals as well as arrangements of many standards. The most recent release is Back In Town, which features Rob in a trio setting with Boris Kozlov on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums. Among the sidemen featured on the other dates are Billy Higgins, Rufus Reid, Brian Lynch, Ralph Moore, Peter Washington, Lewis Nash, Akira Tana, Billy Hart, Gary Smulyan and Ben Riley. Rob's Reservoir CD Keepin' in the Groove received 4 ½ stars (out of five) from Down Beat magazine. Rob's recordings as a sideman include sessions with Eddie Harris, J.J. Johnson, and TanaReid ...
Benny Green's website features music, cds, bios, itinerary, electronic press kit, photo gallery, discography.
Born in New York in 1963, Benny Green grew up in Berkeley, California, and began classical piano studies at the age of seven. Influenced by his father, a tenor saxophonist, his attention soon turned into Jazz: “I began trying to improvise on the piano, imitating the records I’d been hearing from my father’s collection, which included a lot of Monk and Bird… it was a gradual process of teaching myself”. He played in school bands before hooking up with Jazz singer Fay Carroll: “That was good training for me in terms of accompaniment and learning about the blues, and she also gave me a chance to play trio, opening for her every night”. As a teenager he worked with Eddie Henderson, and got some big band experience with a 12-piece group led by Chuck Israels. After his graduation, Benny freelanced around the bay area for a year, and then moved to New York in the spring of 1982. Back in the Big Apple, Benny met veteran pianist Walter Bishop Jr.: “I began studying with him and he helped point me in the direction of developing my own sound, and he also encouraged me to check out and study the whole scope of Jazz piano history, so I could get a sense of how I was to fit in”. After a short stint with Bobby Watson, Green worked with Betty Carter between 1983 and 1987, the year he joined Art Blakey’s band. He remained a Jazz Messenger through late 1989, at which point he began working with Freddie Hubbard’s quintet. In 1993 Oscar Peterson chose Benny as the first recipient of the City of Toronto’s Glen Gould International Protégé Prize in Music. That year, Green replaced Gene Harris in Ray Brown’s Trio, working with the veteran bass player until 1997. From 1997 on, Benny resumed his freelance career, leading his own trios, accompanying singers like Diana Krall, and concentrating in his solo piano performances ...
Pianist Steve Kuhn's website features reviews, sound bites, recordings, biography.
Brooklyn-born Steve Kuhn was fascinated with jazz very early in his life. He began classical piano lessons at age five and soon began to "improvise and syncopate the classical repertoire."
In his early teens, Kuhn studied with legendary teacher Margaret Chaloff who schooled him in the "Russian Technique", an invaluable tool for tone production and projection. Chaloff's son, Serge, baritone saxophonist for Woody Herman, hired the 13 year-old pianist to play in his group. Throughout his teens Kuhn continued to play in Boston jazz clubs with visiting celebrities; Coleman Hawkins, Chet Baker and Vic Dickenson.
After graduation from Harvard College, Kuhn attended the Lenox School of Music where he met and played in a group with fellow-students Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. The faculty included Bill Evans, George Russell, and Gunther Schuller. While at Lenox, Kuhn met trumpeter Kenny Dorham and began a two-year stint, interrupted when Kuhn was asked to join John Coltrane's newly-formed quartet.
Kuhn next joined Stan Getz's band, which included bassist Scott LaFaro ...
Pianist Peggy Stern's website features biography, activities, recordings sound bites, newsletter, etc.
Peggy Stern is as well-known as a composer as she is known for her fine piano playing. She arrived at jazz via classical music, R&B, and salsa. Her music has a particularly broad ethnic base -- in addition to European and American classical music, Peggy's music draws from Brazilian, African, Jewish, Irish, Cuban, and traditional jazz influences. Eclectic indeed!
Peggy has composed, played, recorded, and toured in a wide variety of situations: from solos to octets to jazz choruses. Her compositions range from highly original pieces to reharmonized jazz standards. "Everything she writes wants to dance, " says Ken Dais of Jazziz.
Peggy's background would account for her varied musical tastes. She began playing Classical piano at an early age, continuing her studies at the Eastman School of Music, and finishing a Masters Degree, still in Classical music, at the New England Conservatory. And then she began to improvise. While living in San Francisco, she played in salsa bands, notably Azteca and Supercombo with Benny Vallarde. She did a stint in an R&B band (called Cat's Cradle) with singer Linda Tillery, and was "instructed" by Paul Jackson (bass) and Mike Clark (drums) of Herbie Hancock's Headhunter band ...
Pianist and composer Helio Alves has received high praise as an in-demand sideman with Joe Henderson, Yo-Yo Ma, Slide Hampton, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, Paquito D'Rivera, Claudio Roditi, Oscar Castro-Neves and Gato Barbieri, to name but a few. And now, with more than 40 recordings in just over a decade - two at the helm of his own ensembles - this incomparable musician is quite deservedly earning respect as a leader. too.