BEGIN:VCALENDAR METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:-//EVDB//www.eventful.com//EN VERSION:2.0 X-WR-CALNAME:GRAMMY NOMINATED PIANO PHENOM ELDAR in New York City at B lue Note - Eventful BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART:20080123T200000 DTSTAMP:20080120T061527Z SUMMARY:GRAMMY NOMINATED PIANO PHENOM ELDAR DESCRIPTION: FEATURING: Eldar\, piano Todd Strait\, drums Harish Ragha van\, bass With the release of re-imagination\, his third CD for Sony BMG Masterworks\, jazz pianist Eldar documents his transition from yo uthful prodigy to a creative artist with something to say. The release follows the 2006 CD Live at the Blue Note\, which featured Eldar and his working trio with jazz trumpeters Chris Botti and Roy Hargrove as guest artists\, and cemented Eldar's position as one of the most formi dable jazz musicians of his generation. Live at the Blue Note and Elda r's self-titled 2005 Sony Classical debut were recitals\, on which the pianist interpreted and presented serially a mixture of originals and well-chosen standards from the American Songbook and canonic jazz com posers\, revealing\, as the New York Times noted\, a "formidable techn ique wedded to a mature grasp of musical structure." But on neither al bum was he able to focus fully on expressing his own emerging musical vision. On re-imagination\, recorded last December\, Eldar\, then six weeks shy of his twentieth birthday\, had something more ambitious in mind. He conceived the project as a sort of suite\, weaving together n ine originals\, the songbook standard Out of Nowhere and Oscar Peterso n's rollicking Place St. Henri into a narrative arc. Joining him are t hree different trios (bassists James Genus\, Carlos Henriquez\, and Ma rco Panascia and drummers Terreon Gully\, Ali Jackson\, and Todd Strai t)\, while guitarist Mike Moreno and turntable guru D.J. Logic augment the sonic palette. "This is the first record I've done where I focus more on composition than playing standards or working in the standard setting of a trio\," says Eldar. "Unlike anything I've done in the pas t\, it's a very personal statement rather focusing on a certain tradit ion or vibe\, or on genres or labels. It's more an enhanced version of a piano trio that's just making music." "Of course\, it's a very pian istic record\," Eldar adds\, "It states certain things that only a pia no player would say\, because of the way piano is laid out-horizontall y\, like a symphony orchestra-and the way the ideas flow. Compositiona lly\, I didn't want to restrict myself. I wanted to write in a more rh apsodic way\, compositions with freer forms where you make the puzzles fit within a free-flowing expression. Eldar accesses a wide range of references to tell his stories. As always\, he draws on the legends-Os car Peterson\, Art Tatum and Benny Green for orchestral swing and impe ccable technique\, McCoy Tyner\, Herbie Hancock\, Chick Corea and Kenn y Kirkland for harmonic palette. But Eldar's heady 21st century brew i ncorporates information from a broad range of late 20th century source s. Among the pianists he cites as heroes are Gonzalo Rubalcaba\, Danil o Perez\, Brad Mehldau\, Bill Charlap\, Esbjorn Svensson\, and Jason M oran. Composer-improvisors like Pat Metheny\, Michael Brecker\, and Ku rt Rosenwinkel enter the mix. So does the jazz-hiphop synthesis of Roy Hargrove\; the sophisticated pop of Radiohead\, Bjork\, Sting\, Souli ve and the Beatles\; the classical pianists Evgeny Kissin and Arcadi V olodos. It makes sense that Eldar feels a particular affinity for the latter pair\, both ethnic Russians\, and for Rubalcaba\, who was train ed in Cuba by Russian teachers. Himself of Russian descent\, he spent his first ten years in Bishkek\, Kyrgyzstan\, a province on the easter n border of the then-Soviet Union\, where his father\, Emil\, was a me chanical engineer and his mother\, Tatiana\, was a professor of music studies. "There's a very direct correlation between the way I approach the piano-the way my parents shaped my approach from a very young age -and the Russian school of music\," he says. "It comes from a formal t radition of classical music and classical training. From day one\, my mother taught me to form a perfect arch with my hand\, as though there 's an apple in there as you play." Eldar's path from Bishkek to the Un ited States is the stuff of jazz legend. At nine he performed at a jaz z festival Novosibirsk\, in Siberia\, and impressed the late Charles M cWhorter\, a New York based jazz patron. McWhorter obtained a scholars hip for Eldar to attend summer camp at the prestigious Interlochen Cen ter for the Arts in Michigan\, where he spent each summer between 1998 and 2001. In 1998\, he and his parents moved to the U.S.\, beginning their new life together in Kansas City. During these years\, Eldar con tinued to develop and impress everyone who heard him. Marian McPartlan d invited Eldar to appear on her NPR series Piano Jazz after McWhorter sent her a tape of his playing. Dr. Billy Taylor encountered him at a Charlie Parker symposium in Kansas City and booked him for an appeara nce on CBS's Sunday Morning. Also in Kansas City\, Eldar played for th e Jazz Musician Foundation\, before Michael Greene\, then head of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences\, who booked Eldar to play on the 2000 Grammy Awards telecast. In 2001\, Eldar participa ted in the jazz piano competition of the 2001 Lionel Hampton Jazz Fest ival and won the top prize. The following year\, he won first place in the Peter Nero Piano Competition. From then until now\, Eldar has per formed on the international festival\, club\, and concert circuits\, w hile pursuing his education in jazz harmony and improvisation with Kim Park and John Elliott. His family moved to San Diego in 2003\, and in Fall 2005\, he matriculated at the University of Southern California\ , where he studied improvisation with pianist Shelly Berg. Now a full- time musician\, Eldar is happy with the trans-genre approach. "I'm not looking at labels\," he says. "I've never heard music as one style or another-as bebop or swing\, or the Romantic or 20th century period of classical music. It's more about whether music connects\, whether it has a message. The message is the most important thing. I want to be a musician and I want to be an artist-not just a piano player. LOCATION:Blue Note @ New York, United States SEQUENCE:1200809727 UID:E0-001-008191459-8 URL:http://eventful.com/E0-001-008191459-8 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR