Results for "New York City"

Steve Kuhn

Born: March 24, 1938

Over a career of a half-century and counting, Steve Kuhn has earned renown as one of the most lyrical and affecting pianists in jazz, with an unfailingly beautiful touch and a sophisticated sense of swing. “Steve is an original stylist,” points out Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers. “He’s one of the finest pianists out there today.” Jazziz magazine described Kuhn’s distinctive sound: “Few other pianists, regardless of genre, can tease such an evocative range of timbres from their instrument. Kuhn’s lower register is as dark and rich as Belgian chocolate, and his upper register has the light, translucent quality of ice-cold champagne.”

Briggan Krauss

Saxophonist and composer Briggan Krauss connects the extreme edges of saxophone technique with the unexplored tonal possibilities of the instrument, making his work as much about shape as it is about a signature sound. In June 2014, Krauss led a weeklong residency at John Zorn’s The Stone, highlighting over twenty years as a key player in New York’s downtown and creative music scene and the intense musical relationships he has built with colleagues including Ikue Mori, Jim Black, Wayne Horvitz, Nels Cline and Elliot Sharp. He continues the tradition of bringing together the raw conceptual energy of a rotating cast of improvisers in a monthly series at Brooklyn’s Firehouse Space. As a leader, Krauss has recorded multiple albums for Knitting Factory records, including the critically acclaimed 300 with Wayne Horvitz on keyboards and Kenny Wollesen on drums

Bill Kirchner

Bill Kirchner is a composer-arranger, saxophonist, bandleader, educator, record and radio producer, and jazz historian. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Bill graduated in 1975 from Manhattan College in New York City. From then until 1980, he lived in Washington, D.C., playing with the Mike Crotty big band, the Bernard Sweetney quartet, and his own groups. Since July 1980, Bill has lived in New York City. A few months after moving back to New York, Bill began the Bill Kirchner Nonet. His intent was to have an ensemble with the intimacy and adventurousness of the best small groups and the power and excitement of a big band

Wynton Kelly

Born: December 2, 1931

His family moved from the island of Jamaica to Brooklyn, New York City when Kelly was four, and he started his professional career as a teenager, initially as a member of R&B groups. After working in the big band and small groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, he was a member of Miles Davis' Quintet from 1959 to 1963. Wynton Kelly was one of the most prolific sideman pianists of his era, performing on scores of jazz albums, and led albums under his own name for the Riverside and Vee-Jay labels. After leaving Davis's group, along with Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, he formed a trio which worked regularly during the 1960s. A superb accompanist loved by Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley, Wynton Kelly was also a distinctive soloist who decades later would be a strong influence on Benny Green

Geoffrey Keezer

Born: November 20, 1970

With his highly regarded discography, unique compositions, and acclaimed performances in a variety of configurations, multiple GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Geoffrey Keezer commands the attention typically reserved for the living legends of jazz. A native of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Keezer was playing in jazz clubs as a teenager, holding down the piano chair for Art Blakey at age 18, and touring in the company of Ray Brown, Joshua Redman, Diana Krall, Art Farmer, Benny Golson and Barbara Hendricks in his 20s. More recently he has toured with Wayne Shorter, Dianne Reeves, David Sanborn, Chris Botti, Sting, Joe Locke and Christian McBride; produced and arranged three GRAMMY®-nominated recordings with vocalist Denise Donatelli, and released a series of albums drawing influences from Hawaiian, Okinawan and Afro-Peruvian folk traditions

Stanley Jordan

Born: July 31, 1959

One way to attack the daunting task of describing Stanley Jordan is to think of him as a world class guitarist who marches in all aspects of his life to the beat of his own drummer. Never one to be locked into constraints when it comes to musical expression, genres or applications, the Palo Alto, California-born prodigy is a progressive thinker with goals and ideals that stretch far beyond record deals, fortune or fame. Though he maintains a busy international touring schedule and recently recorded several special independent CDs, his broader interests stretch into the realms of Music Therapy and Sonification. Stanley Jordan came to prominence with the release of his 1985 debut album Magic Touch, a revolutionary project that dually placed him at the forefront of re-launching legendary Blue Note Records into a contemporary entity in jazz and beyond, as well as establishing the then-twenty-something Jordan as among the most distinctive and refreshing new voices of the electric guitar. Key to Jordan's fast-track acclaim was his mastery of a special "tapping" technique on the guitar's fret board instead of conventional strumming and picking

The Jazz Passengers

​The JAZZ PASSENGERS are a fantastical fusion of post-bop and musical comedy, once called a “perverse mainstream … hard-bop group as imagined by Frank Zappa.” (Bob Blumenthal, Boston Globe, 1989). Their name, a take-off on Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, reveals the musicians’ wild ride along the eccentric currents in modern American music. Saxophonist Roy Nathanson and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, who found strong affinity in their Brooklyn roots while together in the band of the Big Apple Circus and John Lurie’s seminal band, The Lounge Lizards, founded the band in 1987. They first broke out on the New York City avant-garde scene centering around the Knitting Factory with a hybrid of Mingus-influenced dance rhythms and original tunes complete with lyrics and/or entertaining stories

David Janeway

Born: June 4

David Janeway was born in Rochester, New York. He began studying classical piano at the age of six after moving to Detroit in 1960. Early influences included Harold McKinney, Marcus Belgrave, Bill Evans and Denny Zeitlin. After moving to New York City in 1978, Janeway studied with the late Albert Dailey for two years.

During this time he worked and recorded with Angel Canales and Orchestra Sabor and other Latin/Jazz artists such as Art Farmer, The Supremes, Michal Urbaniak, Spanky Wilson, David "Fathead" Newman, Jr. Cook, Sonny Fortune, Billy Hart, Tom Harrell, Danny Gottlieb, Louis Smith, Dakota Staton, Pete Yellin, Valery Ponomarev, Benny Golson, Harvie S and others. 

Vijay Iyer

Born: October 26, 1971

Composer-pianist VIJAY IYER (pronounced “VID-jay EYE-yer”) has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in modern music. He was described by Pitchfork as "one of the best in the world at what he does," by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” by the New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.” A musical innovator, an active collaborator, and a member of multiple artistic communities, Iyer continues to reimagine the role of the musician in the 21st century. Iyer’s Uneasy, a trio recording made with his friends and collaborators Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, was released by ECM in April 2021 to wide acclaim, the Boston Globe calling it “extraordinary,” and noting it as “another entry in Iyer’s extensive oeuvre, reaffirming his status as one of the most creative figures in improvised music.”

Fred Hersch

Born: October 21, 1955

Proclaimed by Vanity Fair magazine, “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade or so,” Fred Hersch balances his internationally recognized instrumental skills with significant achievements as a composer, bandleader, and theatrical conceptualist, as well as remaining an in-demand collaborator with other noted bandleaders and vocalists. As a solo pianist (he was the first artist in the 75-year history of New York's legendary Village Vanguard to play week-long engagements as a solo pianist - his second featured run is documented on the 2011 release, Alone at the Vanguard); as leader of a widely praised trio whose Whirl found its way onto numerous 2010 best-recordings-of-the-year lists; and as the impetus behind the ambitious 2011 production, “My Coma Dreams,” a full-evening work for 11 instruments, actor/singer and animation/multimedia - Hersch has fully lived up to the approbation of the New York Times who, in a featured Sunday Magazine article, praised him as “singular among the trailblazers of their art, a largely unsung innovator of this borderless, individualistic jazz – a jazz for the 21st century.” He was nominated for two 2011 Grammy Awards for Alone at the Vanguard - for Best Jazz Album and Best Improvised Jazz Solo; these are his fourth and fifth nominations