 |
American composer, arranger, pianist and educator Frank Giasullo was born on December 2, 1950, in Somerville, New Jersey. He is the only child of Joseph and Michelina Giasullo. He attended public schools in his hometown of Raritan, NJ and recalls loving the piano as a very young child. He was enchanted in particular by Claude Debussy's Arabesques.
His classical training began with private piano lessons at the age of 12 with Arlis Heukelekian, a classical pianist of Armenian heritage. He continued lessons with “Uke” for many years until his teacher died in 2001. It was Heukelekian who performed Giasullo's original pieces for piano, three preludes, at New York City's Town Hall in 1970. He recalls an earlier pivotal moment when he was, at the age of 15, attending a concert with his piano teacher and his father of being impressed by Jimmy Smith on organ and both Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk on pianos, leading him to add the jazz idiom to his classical repertoire.
Giasullo earned his Bachelor of Arts in Music from Livingston College, Rutgers University in 1973 and a Master of Arts in Composition and Performance from Goddard College in Vermont. He has also studied composition with Daniel Goode, theory with Philip Corner, and jazz piano with Morris Nanton, John Coates, Jr., Richie Beirach, Don Friedman, Phil Markowitz, Bill Mays, and Skip Wilkins.
Giasullo and his quartet have released four jazz albums, starting with Expeditions; First Light in 1999, with trumpeter Pat Wristen, bassist Ken Filiano, drummer Ron Glick, and a rare vocal for Giasullo CDs, performed by Michelle Glick; Until the Next Time, and most recently Kensal Road in 2011. He has toured London ten times in the last 13 years and has played at the Brecon Jazz Festival in Wales and the London Jazz Festival.
In 2006, the CD Until the Next Time collaborated with British saxophonist Art Themen, later named by the British Jazz Awards as their top tenor sax player in 2008. Brit Dave Green played bass, and Pat Tamminen, a New Jerseyan who shares a long history with Giasullo, played the drums. Reviewer John Fordham had this to say in The Guardian (July 18, 2008) about the FGQ's performances during another UK tour as “an effortlessly assured straight-ahead jazz set led by a glossily elegant pianist” with “crisp phrasing and pearly sound.” [1] Of the eleven tunes on the CD, eight are original compositions; three are Giasullo's arrangements of jazz standards, “Autumn Leaves,” “Yesterdays,” and the Gene de Paul song, “You Don’t Know What Love Is.”
During their 2011 tour of the UK, The Frank Giasullo Quartet recorded six new Giasullo compositions and his arrangement of the traditional “House of the Rising Sun.” The straight-ahead jazz set was strongly influenced by Giasullo's classical training. They were joined by Philadelphia bassist Nicholas Krolak and New Jerseyan Pat Tamminen on drums. Themen is as daring and dazzling as a Formula One driver at Monte Carlo, counterpoint to the upholstered chauffeur ride that is Giasullo at the piano.
Giasullo's earliest recording was as a student at Rutgers University. On Folkways Records, Gamelon in the New World consists of modern compositions for Indonesian instruments orchestrated by Dr. Barbara Benary. Many of Giasullo's original classical works, including ten preludes, an orchestral piece for strings, French horns, and English horn called “Largo,” another titled “Ashling,” translated from the Gaelic as dream, and a third for piano and voice, “Martins Creek,” remain as yet unrecorded.
Giasullo has been a jazz piano instructor at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, since 2006. He previously taught jazz theory and improvisation at Raritan Valley Community College for ten years and keeps a studio in the historic Old Egg Auction in Flemington, NJ, for private and advanced students.
David Warren Brubeck was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
John Taylor was a British jazz pianist, born in Manchester, England, who occasionally performed on the organ and the synthesizer.
Patrick Bruce Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post–John Coltrane era.
John Aaron Lewis was an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger, best known as the founder and musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Charles Edward Haden was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than 50 years. Building on the work of predecessors such as Jimmy Blanton and Charles Mingus, Haden helped to revolutionize the harmonic concept of bass playing in jazz, evolving a style that sometimes complemented the soloist, and other times moved independently, liberating bassists from a strictly accompanying role, to allow more direct participation in group improvisation.
Jack DeJohnette is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer.
Arthur Edward George Themen is a British jazz saxophonist and formerly orthopaedic surgeon. Critic John Fordham has described him as "an appealing presence on the British jazz circuit for over 40 years.... Originally a Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins disciple ... Themen has proved himself remarkably attentive to the saxophone styles of subsequent generations."
William Harris Stewart is an American jazz drummer. He has performed with Maceo Parker, John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Lonnie Smith, Nicholas Payton, Bill Carrothers, Steve Wilson, Seamus Blake, Larry Goldings and Peter Bernstein, and Jim Hall.
Shirley Valerie Horn was an American jazz singer and pianist. She collaborated with many jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Ron Carter, Carmen McRae, Wynton Marsalis and others. She was most noted for her ability to accompany herself with nearly incomparable independence and ability on the piano while singing, something described by arranger Johnny Mandel as "like having two heads", and for her rich, lush voice, a smoky contralto, which was described by noted producer and arranger Quincy Jones as "like clothing, as she seduces you with her voice".
Jason Moran is an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator involved in multimedia art and theatrical installations.
Bradford Alexander Mehldau is an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.
Gwilym Simcock is a Welsh pianist and composer working in both jazz and classical music. He was chosen as one of the 1000 Most Influential People in London by the Evening Standard. He was featured on the front cover of the August 2007 issue of the UK's Jazzwise magazine.
Gary Husband is an English jazz and rock drummer, pianist, keyboard player and bandleader. He is also a composer, arranger and producer.
Craig Marvin Taborn is an American pianist, organist, keyboardist and composer. He works solo and in bands, mostly playing various forms of jazz. He started playing piano and Moog synthesizer as an adolescent and was influenced at an early stage by a wide range of music, including by the freedom expressed in recordings of free jazz and contemporary classical music.
James Williams was an American jazz pianist.
John Law is a British jazz pianist and composer, born in London to British and Austrian parents.
Piotr Orzechowski, also known by his stage name Pianohooligan, is a Polish jazz pianist and composer. He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Valencia and a winner of the Montreux Jazz Piano Competition and Jazz Hoeilaart, hailed by the critics as "the most creative and uncompromising young Polish jazz artist."
Alexander Hawkins is a British jazz pianist and composer. Three of the main groups he has led or co-led are the Alexander Hawkins Ensemble; the Convergence Quartet ; and the Hammond organ-based Decoy.
Yutaka Shiina is a Japanese jazz pianist and composer.