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Hannah Marks
Hannah Marks is a bassist, bandleader, composer, and educator living in New York City. As a bandleader, she has performed at several major festivals, including the Detroit Jazz Festival, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Iowa City Jazz Festival, and Indy Jazz Festival. Her current band, Hannah Marks: Outsider, Outlier, is a genre-defying, lyric-based project. Marks plays in many bands including Tide Pools, with alto saxophonist Alfredo Colon and drummer Connor Parks, as well as for singer-songwriters Elora and Jack Broza. She is a frequent sideman with Geoffrey Keezer, Ingrid Jensen, Kalia Vandever, Matt Wilson, Ted Nash, Morgan Guerin, and Marcus Printup. Her former project, Heartland Trio, released their debut album in November 2018. Marks is a 2021 alumnus of the Woodshed Network, a 2019 alumnus of Betty Carter Jazz Ahead, a 2018 alumnus of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, and a 2014 alumnus of the Brubeck Summer Jazz Colony. She is on faculty at The Spence School and runs her own private lesson studio. Marks is currently an artist-in-residence at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in New Jersey and a curator for Green Lung Studio in Brooklyn.
Hannah is an alumnus of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with Walter Smith, Todd Coolman, Kurt Muroki, and Jeremy Allen. She was a member of IU’s top jazz group, the Plummer Jazz Quintet, led by Walter Smith. She is a former member of the IU Soul Revue and was the assistant principal bassist in the Spring 2018 production of West Side Story.
She hails from Des Moines, IA, where she got her start playing in monthly Des Moines Community Jazz Center jam sessions and attending Synergy Jazz Foundation Workshops. By the time she graduated high school, she played regularly with the Max Wellman Quartet, the Plymouth Church Saturday Night Band, and the Dave Bohl Quartet. She was selected for the Dave Brubeck Colony in 2014; she had other eye-opening experiences from attending the Centrum Jazz Workshop, the Jamey Aebersold Jazz Workshop, the University of Northern Iowa Jazz Camp, and the Simpson Jazz Camp in high school.
Hannah is passionate about sharing her love of music with a range of communities. She is involved in music education, non-profit work, and community outreach across the Midwest and East Coast, and currently works at Manhattan School of Music doing performance operations for the jazz department. As well as teaching on faculty at The Spence School, Hannah has also taught several masterclasses on music business and entrepreneurship for Indiana University’s Project Jumpstart program.
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A Few More of My Favorite 2023 Jazz Things - Part 4
by Ludovico Granvassu
For the past few episodes we have been looking back at albums released this year which we've been most fascinated by, and we cherry-picked songs from those albums that struck us the most... To wrap up this retrospective here's the last batch of sonic gems.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Will Vinson, Gilad Hekselman, Nate Wood Urban Myth" Trio Grande: Urban Myth (Whirlwind) 0:16 Host talks 5:24 Sammy ...
read moreMeet Bassist Hannah Marks
by Sanford Josephson
This article first appeared in Jersey Jazz Magazine. Growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, Hannah Marks started off playing guitar. I didn't really take to the instrument," she recalled, so I picked up the cello in fourth grade. I was shy and wanted to be in the background." She discovered jazz when the middle school jazz band performed at her elementary school. So, she joined the jazz band in middle school, adding electric bass to her cello playing. ...
read more"Hannah has a fresh, modern, and original approach to playing the bass" Marcus Printup
Primary Instrument
Bass, acoustic
Location
New York City
Willing to teach
Beginner to advanced
Photos
Music
Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson
Break
From: Break (Single)By Hannah Marks
Orpheus
From: FallingBy Hannah Marks
Sisyphus
From: FallingBy Hannah Marks
Let's Fall
From: FallingBy Hannah Marks