Home » Member Page

Paul Ward

About Me

My Jazz Story

Jazz offers something for everyone, no matter how little or how much you know about music. At it's best, it asks you to sit up just enough to care, and lean back just enough to be open to change. I was first exposed to jazz growing up. My father taught music at a college, bringing home LPs from the radio station (which was more interested in 60s and 70s rock). Bill Evans, Live at the Village Vanguard. Duke Ellington compilations. Oscar Peterson in Russia. Coltrane. Plus, my family was heavily involved in the local theater scene, which included a fantastic jazz pianist, Dougee Zeno, who had played at Birdland with Bird. Her versions of Love for Sale and Go Tell It on the Mountain were unbelievably rich, a universe of exploration for a young boy just developing his tastes in jazz vocabulary. I've met and played personally for Loonis McGlohon (who invited me on stage), Count Basie (who didn't), Alec Wilder, George Shearing, Chick Corea -- and dozens of players from New York, DC, Los Angeles, and beyond, who have their own following. My main influences have been Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, Phineas Newborn, Dan Haerle, and Hal Galper (whom I saw perform with Phil Woods and Tom Harrell at Cincinnati Conservatory when I was there in the jazz program). I'm working now on building a platform to help develop new members of our jazz audience, in part by bringing in musicians from other genres. Jazz is a living art form. It always finds its place. Musically, I'm working on new improvisation approaches to break me away from bebop and early modern players. I'm working on new ways with pentatonics, and on augmented, diminished, and triad pair tools that allow me to slip these approaches into songs at any level of tension or relaxation. (Jazz is about story telling and tension building.)