Ellen Pieroni: Balancing Act for a Life in Music

By day, a mild-mannered music teacher in the Buffalo public school system in western New York state—the city known for its brutal snowstorms and the NFL's Bills—Ellen Pieroni is, by night, ready to pour out streams of jazz-inflected, funk-infused solos from any given bandstand. From that vantage point, she's fierce and fun.

Her band, the Encyclopedia of Soul, is gaining fans and growing a reputation known for delivering moving and memorable live experiences. Pieroni is a lifelong resident of the Buffalo area and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music education. She played in a number of bands in the region and, in 2022, broke off to create her own band and play music inspired by some of the great instrumentalists and groups in the jazz/funk/soul arena.

The band did a 10-city tour in the spring when the leader was on spring break from teaching. She hopes to expand the schedule of live shows as the group develops. On that spring tour, in Saratoga Springs, NY, at the famed Caffe Lena venue, the band wowed the crowd with its soul grooves and varied arrangements that highlighted Pieroni's strong tone and sinewy sound, as well as Adam Bronstein's slithering, tasty guitar lines. The rhythm section pounded out the right support. The original compositions were strong, and the covers of classic soul tunes were imaginative and hit the solar plexus with the right amount of gusto.

The band's sound derives much from the Crusaders, Grover Washington, Jr. (a Buffalo native), Christopher Hollyday's Headhunters period and the band STUFF, which included funkmasters like Eric Gale and Richard Tee and, at times, the dazzling drums of Steve Gadd.

"I have super diverse taste in music," says Pieroni. "I think a lot of musicians can say that. I grew up loving classic rock because that's what my father listened to. Supertramp was one of the first bands that I was trying to transcribe saxophone solos from, because there are such great saxophone parts in all that stuff. Then I got into Herbie Hancock in college, him and Freddie Hubbard. I was super into Pat Metheny in college. I was pretty new in terms of listening to jazz that wasn't Miles Davis, and so I feel I was really a product of my friends being like, 'Hey, check this out.'

"Now I'm a big fan of Cannonball Adderley, the Crusaders, Stuff. It's hard to name bands, because I have so much love for so much different music."

The first album her band recorded was Encyclopedia of Soul, Vol. 1, released in 2023, and the second Soul Vacation came out in 2024. Both are self-produced. They present strong examples of the funk fury the saxophonist/leader enjoys. It's a direction they continue to go in.

Pieroni is in the mixing stages of a third recording, to be called Soul Progressions. It could come out toward the end of the year. Her full schedule as a music teacher and school band director, which involves leading her students in school year-end concerts and readying marching bands for holiday parades, takes extra time. But the summer gives her more freedom. (Although she and her fiancé are maneuvering to buy a house, another item has been added to her menu.) But, "I always get to feel like a full-time musician over the summer. It's awesome," she says.

The Buffalo area is where most of her career endeavors were spawned. It's not an unusual city for music. In the heyday of jazz, touring icons played rooms in Buffalo that attracted audiences eager to hear artists such as Thelonious Monk. Drumming great Mel Lewis and guitar legend Jim Hall were born there, as were fine musicians like pianist Don Menza and noted drummer Frankie Dunlop.

"There are, and always will be, creative people and incredible players in Buffalo," says Pieroni.

For a time, she booked bands for one of the city's hotspots for live music, Nietzsche's.

"I feel I got really in touch with the local music scene when I worked there. There's a lot of really great jazz musicians here. There's been some really cool and creative original music bands that I really dig over the years. I think there's less now than there used to be, which I think is a sign of the times. But there are still a lot of creative people here. It's funny because some of the most talented people I know are the people that I play weddings with on the weekends."

She notes that getting people out to hear live music is a task, as it is in so many cities.

"We're a football town. You're competing with the Buffalo Bills and the Sabres (hockey) trying to get people's attention, and get people to come support original art. It's not always an easy thing to do. Sometimes I feel I'm better received on the road than I am at home, which is part of the reason why I tour so much."

As a child in that area, she listened to records her father played. He also had some guitars on which she would play songs of the day. She started playing sax around the age of eight. But playing guitar with dad "just felt so cool." Playing sax in the school band was more something that was expected, but she liked it.

"I think when I got into middle school and started playing jazz at school, that's where I started to really enjoy playing the saxophone, and I started taking private lessons."

Music wasn't a top priority like it is in arts schools, but it was a worthy program and the teachers were good. Pieroni participated in the available programs and bands. On sax, she studied with a teacher into classical music.

"We were working pretty heavily on the obscure French saxophone repertoire, and it was awesome. I loved it so much. I really wanted to go to school for classical saxophone performance, but my father told me that that wasn't practical. He was very right about that. It's such a niche thing," she says.

At Buffalo State University, jazz came to the forefront.

"That's where I kind of started getting more into jazz. I played in the jazz ensemble and the jazz combo. Somebody made me listen to Herbie Hancock, and I was like, 'Oh my god, this is the best thing I've ever heard.' Then I was very much into jazz funk, jazz fusion, and wanted to start a band playing that music."

Listening to Hancock's Headhunters group "was pretty life-changing," she says.

Of her saxophone influences, she says, "I got put on to Grover Washington way too late. I do really love his playing. I think he's one of the first players where I listened to him and heard myself a little bit ... I feel he was someone I listened to and thought, 'Wow, I do kind of play like him.' But I really love Cannonball Adderley. I studied a lot of Charlie Parker, and I think that Charlie Parker is a genius. I spent a lot of time transcribing his solos and learning them. I'm really grateful that I spent time doing that, because it's kind of the Bible in terms of bebop language."

"I love Wayne Shorter. But it's funny because I feel sometimes I'm more inspired by people who play different instruments than play the saxophone. I feel like, in terms of my compositions and stuff, I'm way more inspired by Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard and the Crusaders and things like that."

Pieroni got her teaching job in the Buffalo school district right after graduating from college. She also found gigs with bands in the area, among them a popular group called Folkfaces. She departed from that formation in 2021 because "I wanted to start my own project, which is what led me to the Encyclopedia of Soul," she says.

After a relationship breakup, her career was on hold. But after a while, Pieroni took the initiative and forged strongly ahead.

"I said, 'I'm sick of contributing to other people's projects. I want to release music under my own name. That way, no one can ever take it away from me.'"

Still growing as a musician, she immersed herself in recordings on vinyl, where the band Stuff grabbed hold of her imagination.

"I just thought it was the best. It's music that spoke to me immediately. Then I started to realize how many iconic recordings these guys played on. I realized that they play on the Grover Washington record Winelight. A bunch of the guys play on that record. Eric Gale plays on it. Richard Tee plays on it. Steve Gadd plays on it. I was like, 'Oh my god, wait. This is Stuff, but with a saxophone. This is exactly what I want to do. This is perfect.'"

"That was probably my main vision and inspiration. Then I also got into the Crusaders. I really love their aesthetic as well. It's a little less funk-fusion than my first band was. There's still hints of it in there. There always will be, probably because of Herbie Hancock. But really the vibe was to go for soul-jazz, so a little bit more in the vein of the Crusaders, Stuff, Freddie Hubbard and Grover Washington, because that's the music that really speaks to me the most."

Pieroni also listened to Stanley Turrentine and Hubert Laws. In the meantime, Pieroni still practices the mainstream jazz language of bebop.

"I'll always be trying to get better at bebop, because it—as the kids say—scratches my brain in a good way. I love listening to bebop music. I find it so stimulating. It's engaging. It's something I love a lot, and also it's just such a challenge to be good at. I feel if you're trying to improve, probably one of the best things you can do with your time is try to get better at playing bebop," she says, adding with her pleasant sense of humor, "but I don't see Ellen Pieroni and the Encyclopedia of Bebop coming anytime soon."

She's discovered her niche with the Encyclopedia of Soul and is excited about another album coming to fruition. More touring is another thing she strives for.

"I feel every time we go on tour, and the longer we play, the tighter the band gets, and the more I write songs. (The upcoming recording) is the first project that I've really written songs for. I'd written a few songs here and there over the years, but I really had to figure out what it is to write songs, and how to write songs that I liked."

"What I'm noticing is that the longer I do this, the more I like the songs that I write. I think the songs on this next record are my best batch of songs yet. I'm very proud of them."

She adds, "I think it's important to write music, but I do also really love the covers that we do. It's nice. It feels nice to be one of the people who recorded things like 'Feel Like Making Love.' All my heroes have done a version of that song. So it's cool to have my own version of it too."

In the late spring, Pieroni said the Encyclopedia of Soul already had gigs in Ohio and West Virginia, as well as the Buffalo area. She's realistic about the future, with a steady and satisfying teaching position keeping things stable.

"I think there's still a part of me that's delusional enough to think that someday I'll quit my teaching job, not because I don't love it, but because (teaching is) draining, and just focus on playing. My goal is to sound the best that I possibly can. Sometimes I get bogged down because I don't have the time to put into sounding as good as I know I can. There's a part of me that the goal would be to quit my job someday and go on tour full time and just be a musician," she says.

"The older I get, the more practical, realistic and content I feel in my life. I think that every day, every moment that I get to spend on stage is a huge blessing. I still feel that every single time."