Kenny Drew, Jr.
Kenny Drew Jr. ( born June 14, 1958 in New York City, New York ) is an American classical and jazz pianist.
Life and work
He is the son of jazz pianist Kenny Drew, him but not one of his influences, because he grew up with his aunt and his grandparents, where he as received classical piano lessons from his mother, as a child, and he played in clubs as a teen, mostly rhythm and blues. He says they always played jazz when it is almost no one was there. He then but quite jazz. His recording debut in 1987 he had the Japanese Jazz City label with bassist Charnett Moffett .. Other recordings for the labels Antilles, Concord and claves soon followed until 1994. He has performed with musicians such as Stanley Jordan, was a member of the band Out of the Blue, Stanley Turrentine with further, Slide Hampton and the Jazz Masters, who won Mingus Big Band ( Gunslinging Birds 1994), Steve Grossman, Yoshiaki Masuo, Eddie Gomez, Sadao Watanabe, Smokey Robinson, Frank Morgan and Daniel Schnyder and 1990 Great American Jazz Piano Competition in Jacksonville. He led several jazz festivals, including the Kyoto Jazz Festival, Clearwater Jazz Festival and Newark Jazz Festival.
He also turned in recent years increasingly to classical music. In the Barossa Music Festival in Australia in 1996 and 1997, he appeared with both jazz and classical music. He joined Daniel Schnyder's classical and chamber jazz trio ( with Dave Taylor), with whom he recorded several compositions Schnyder. In 2000, he led the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra under Andreas Delfs a piano concerto by Mozart and played at the International Bachwettberwerb in Leipzig with Daniel Schnyder and David Taylor works by Bach. In 2001, he joined with the Norrland Opera Orchestra under the baton of Krystian Jarvi with Schnyder's Piano Concerto.
He continued to work with jazz musicians such as Steve Turré, Jack Walrath, David Sánchez, Jack Wilkins, Michael Mossman, Ronnie Cuber, Steve Slagle, Marlena Shaw, Jon Faddis, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath and Charles Mingus and played more than twenty albums as a leader or a soloist.
Disco Graphical Notes
- Kenny Drew Jr. ( Antilles, 1991) with Ralph Moore, Wallace Roney, Christian McBride, Winard Harper, George Mraz and Al Foster
- Secrets (TCB, 1998) with Lynn Seaton and Marvin Smitty Smith
- Winter Flower ( Milestone, 1999) with Lynn Seaton and Tony Jefferson
- Rememberence (TCB, 2001) with Santi Debriano, Tony Jefferson, Stefon Harris and Wallace Roney
- Another Point of View ( Tokuma, 2002) with Eddie Gomez and Bill Stewart