Results for "piano"

Bradley Parker-Sparrow

Mark Soskin

Born: July 12, 1953

Mark Soskin was born July 12, 1953 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Soskin has recorded and performed with such diverse musicians as Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Randy Brecker, Billy Cobham, Buster Williams, Eddie Henderson, Stanley Turrentine, Cornell Dupree, Herbie Mann, John Abercrombie, Claudio Roditi, Sheila Jordan, Gato Barbieri, Joe Locke, David\"Fathead\"Newman, Mark Murphy, Slide Hampton, Pete and Sheila Escovedo, Bobby Watson, Miroslav Vitous, The NY Voices, Phil Woods and others. Soskin attended Colorado State University where he pursued classical studies, but at this time his interests in jazz music were growing

Martial Solal

Born: August 23, 1927

Martial Solal (born August 23, 1927 in Algiers, Algeria) isa French jazz pianist and composer, who is probably mostwidely known for the music he wrote for Jean-Luc Godard'sdebut feature film À bout de souffle (1960).

Solal was the son of an opera singer and piano teacher, wholearnt the instrument from the age of six, settling inParis in 1950. He soon began working with leading musiciansincluding Django Reinhardt and expatriates from the UnitedStates like Sidney Bechet and Don Byas. He formed a quartet(occasionally also leading a big band) in the late 1950s,although he had been recording as a leader since 1953.Solal then began composing film music, eventually providingover twenty scores.

Willie "The Lion" Smith

Born: November 25, 1897

With his derby and cigar, along with his command of counterpoint and swing, Willie "The Lion" Smith was one of the jazz world's outsized characters. Bravery during World War I earned him his nickname; friendship and mutual admiration led to Duke Ellington's "Portrait of The Lion" and Smith's own "Portrait of Duke." William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff was born in Goshen, N.Y., on Nov. 25, 1897. Growing up in Newark, he began playing at age 6, drawn to the piano by his mother's playing in church. His father's Jewish ancestry later led to work as a cantor, he claimed, during the '40s

Paul Smith

Born: April 17, 1922

Paul Smith (April 17, 1922 - June 29, 2013) was an American jazz pianist. He has performed in various genres of jazz, most typically bebop. However, he also performed in cool jazz, swing music, and traditional pop.

He was born in San Diego, California. After playing early on with Johnny Richards in 1941 and spending a couple of years in the military, he worked with Les Paul (1946–1947) and Tommy Dorsey (1947–1949) before moving to Los Angeles and becoming a studio musician.

Smith recorded frequently both with his trios and as a soloist. In addition he is featured on work of artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Anita O'Day, Buddy DeFranco, Louie Bellson, Steve Allen, Stan Kenton, Mel Tormé and others.

Nina Simone

Born: February 21, 1933

The High Priestess -

Eunice Waymon was born in Tryon, North Carolina as the sixth of seven children in a poor family. The child prodigy played piano at the age of four. With the help of her music teacher, who set up the "Eunice Waymon Fund", she could continue her general and musical education. She studied at the Julliard School of Music in New York.

To support her family financially, she started working as an accompanist. In the summer of 1954 she took a job in an Irish bar in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The bar owner told her she had to sing as well. Without having time to realize what was happening, Eunice Waymon, who was trained to become a classical pianist, stepped into show business. She changed her name into Nina ("little one") Simone ("from the French actress Simone Signoret").

Horace Silver

Born: September 2, 1928

When Horace Silver once wrote out his rules for musical composition (in the liner notes to the 1968 record, Serenade to a Soul Sister), he expounded on the importance of "meaningful simplicity." The pianist could have just as easily been describing his own life. For more than fifty years, Silver has simply written some of the most enduring tunes in jazz while performing them in a distinctively personal style. It's all been straight forward enough, while decades of incredible experiences have provided the meaning. Silver was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on September 2, 1928. His father had immigrated to the United States from Cape Verde—-and that island nation's Portuguese influences would play a big part in Silver's own music later on

Ben Sidran

Born: August 14, 1943

Ben Sidran has been a major force in the modern day history of jazz and rock and roll, having played keyboards with or produced such artists as Van Morrison, Diana Ross, Michael Franks, Rickie Lee Jones, Mose Allison and Steve Miller.

It's been a long and varied journey for Sidran—from playing boogie-woogie piano as a six year old in Racine, Wisconsin, leaning into his jazz records, “literally like an Eskimo huddled around a fire,” to growing up to play boogie-woogie piano around the world. Despite the reality that he is better known in Europe and Japan than in America—a fact of life for most jazz musicians—Ben Sidran is an American success story.

Travis Shook

Born: March 10, 1969

Former Sony/Columbia recording artist Travis Shook is somewhat of a jazz enigma. He has been called a “man of mystery” by JazzTimes, “pianist-in-exile” by Time Out New York, and although he has been highly praised by the likes of Tony Williams and Ahmad Jamal, remains largely unknown to the public. Shook is an acoustic jazz pianist��”one who demonstrates an unusually wide scope of feeling from the simple to the complex, the conventional to the unconventional, and from the softest, most lush ballads, to the fiercest, hard-driving jazz. “It's all the same to me,” Shook explains

Bobby Short

Born: September 15, 1926

After he took up residence in the lounge of New York's elegant Hotel Carlyle in the late 1960s, vocalist and pianist Bobby Short became an icon of New York and American cultural life. Short called himself a saloon singer, but actually he roosted at the top of the hierarchy of entertainers who perform in cocktail lounges, and indeed he did much to define the modern categories of lounge singer and cabaret singer. New York visitors stopped in at the Café Carlyle for decades to hear Bobby Short, to glimpse the lifestyles of the city's well-heeled residents, and to take a tour through the classics of American popular song with one of its most knowledgeable curators for a guide