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Charles Chen
Charles Chen is a San Francisco Bay Area pianist who has performed or recorded with notable musicians such as Randy Brecker, Billy Drummond, Bob Sheppard, Roy McCurdy, Adam Nussbaum, Mike Richmond, Ralph Moore, Peter Washington, and Kenny Washington. He has played at Yoshi's, San Jose Jazz Festival, and Freight and Salvage. In 2019, he won first place at the Jazz Search West competition. Charles leads a trio and has performed internationally in Taiwan, Singapore and Japan. His debut album, Charles, Play!, was featured as one of the Best Albums of 2024 in Downbeat Magazine.
Charles is also a passionate educator and his students have gone to the best music schools in the nation with full scholarships (Juilliard, MSM, Berklee, NEC) and won a variety of awards (YoungArts distinctions, all-state band placements, and first place for arranging and performance in the Charles Mingus competition).
He serves as the historian of the South Bay Traditional Jazz Society and also an admin to Jazzcord, a popular jazz discord community with over 7000 members. In both groups, he writes historical essays and album reviews regularly.
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Charles Chen: The Long Way Home
by Jack Bowers
The Long Way Home is a fascinating album, not so much for the music alone--even though that is first-class--but for the lengthy interviews with the Charles Chen quartet's bassist and drummer, 98-year-old Bill Crow and 91-year-old Steve Little, respectively, who still anchor a regular weekly gig at Smalls Jazz Club in New York City. Crow and Little, each of whom has played and recorded with a veritable who's who of jazz luminaries, talk informally about their early influences, ...
Continue ReadingCharles Chen: Building Characters
by Jack Bowers
San Francisco-based pianist and educator Charles Chen returns with Building Characters, his second recording in as many years, and as on his debut album, Charles, Play! (Cellar Music, 2024), he is backed by an all-star supporting cast that includes a front line of trumpeter Randy Brecker and saxophonists Bob Sheppard and Lawrence Feldman. They bolster a sharp and powerful rhythm section consisting of bassist Mike Richmond and drummer Adam Nussbaum. Missing are the members of Chen's quartet ...
Continue ReadingCharles Chen: Charles, Play!
by Jack Bowers
Pianist Charles Chen makes his recorded debut and confidently answers the command on Charles, Play!, a splendid quartet date on which he is ably supported by veteran tenor saxophonist Ralph Moore and the peerless rhythmic tandem of bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington. Chen wrote four of the album's nine engaging numbers and had the good sense to pair them with three pleasurable standards and tantalizing originals by Charlie Parker ("Passport") and Cedar Walton (the closing ...
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