Jazz Studies professor Marc Seales performs American songs--jazz, blues, gospel, and selections from the Great American Songbook in this solo piano performance.
PROGRAM NOTES
This concert is dedicated to my past mentors like Don Lanphere and Jerry Gray, my family and friends, and all the great musicians I’ve had the opportunity to work with and listen to.
I have divided this evening’s music into three basic categories:
Spirituals and Blues: This music to me is the core of most American music. It is the foundation of what I call the “Blues Culture” which later became a worldwide musical influence.
Tunes to include:
IT’S ME, OH LORD
BYE AND BYE
SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A MOTHERLESS CHILD
STREET BLUES
American Popular Tunes to include
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES STAND
RING OF FIRE
Jazz compositions to include
FREEDOM JAZZ DANCE CONFIRMATION GIANTSTEPS
FALL
ROSETTA
—Marc Seales—
ARTIST BIO
Marc Seales, jazz piano
A noted pianist, composer and leading figure in the Northwest jazz scene, Marc Seales has shared stages with many of the great players of the last two decades. He has played with nearly every visiting jazz celebrity from Joe Henderson and Art Pepper to Benny Carter, Mark Murphy, and Bobby Hutcherson. With the late Don Lanphere he performed in such places as London, England; Kobe, Japan; The Hague in the Netherlands; and the North Sea Jazz Festival.
The musicians he admires most are Herbie Hancock, Charlie Parker, John Lewis, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Wynton Kelly, though he is quick to acknowledge that he owes the basically be-bop/post be-bop sound of his playing to his mentors, Don Lanphere and Floyd Standifer.
Critics have praised Seales variously for his "meaty piano solos," and "blues inflected, Hancock-inspired modernism." Winner of numerous Earshot awards (Instrumentalist of the Year in 1999 and Acoustic Jazz Group in 2000 and 2001; Jazz Hall of Fame, 2009), Seales is today promoting jazz awareness and molding young talents as a Professor of Music at the University of Washington, where he serves as Chair of the Jazz Studies Program. He teaches an array of courses, including History of Jazz, Jazz Piano, and Beginning and Advanced Improvisation, as well as leading various workshops and ensembles.