Gaea Schell is a San Francisco-based jazz pianist/composer/flutist and singer.
Schell is a native of Alberta, Canada, [1] where she grew up playing music from an early age. During the pursuit of a classical harp degree in college, she began listening to piano greats Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and Red Garland, [2] among others. This inspired a move east and subsequent graduation from the jazz program at McGill University.
Schell gained valuable experience playing with protégés of Joe Henderson, Wynton Kelly, and Ella Fitzgerald. A 1999 Canada Council for the Arts grant took Gaea to New York City where she studied with pianist Richie Beirach.
Schell made her California debut as a featured performer at the San Jose Jazz Festival and has been performing professionally as a pianist (and recently vocalist) for over ten years in many diverse musical contexts. Her experience includes everything from trio to big band to solo work to orchestral performance. She has played with Nancy King, John Stowell, Tootie Heath, Tony Dumas, Bob Sheppard, Ingrid Jensen, Bobby Watson, Dan Faehnle, Earl Palmer, and Gilbert Castellanos.
Maximilian Schell was a Swiss actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, his second acting role in Hollywood. Born in Austria, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zürich. After World War II ended, Schell took up acting and directing full-time. He appeared in numerous German films, often anti-war, before moving to Hollywood.
Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist. He is known for major innovations in cool jazz that led him to be nicknamed the "Prince of Cool".
Friedrich Gulda was an Austrian pianist and composer who worked in both the classical and jazz fields.
Diana Jean Krall is a Canadian jazz pianist and singer known for her contralto vocals. She has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, including over six million in the US. On December 11, 2009, Billboard magazine named her the second greatest jazz artist of the decade (2000–2009), establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her time.
Margaret Marian McPartland OBE, was an English and American jazz pianist, composer, and writer. She was the host of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011.
Myra Melford is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."
Paul Bley, CM was a Canadian jazz pianist known for his contributions to the free jazz movement of the 1960s as well as his innovations and influence on trio playing and his early live performance on the Moog and ARP synthesizers. His music has been described by Ben Ratliff of the New York Times as "deeply original and aesthetically aggressive". Bley's prolific output includes influential recordings from the 1950s through to his solo piano recordings of the 2000s.
Gloria Elizabeth Reuben is a Canadian-American actress, producer, and singer. She is well-known for her role as Jeanie Boulet on the medical drama ER, for which she was twice nominated for an Emmy Award, and for portraying Elizabeth Keckley in the 2012 Steven Spielberg–directed film Lincoln.
Stephanie Louise Vallance, commonly known as Stevie Vallance, also credited as Louise Vallance during the 1970s–90s, is a Canadian actress, musician, composer and director who has worked on numerous films and television series, both live-action and animated. Vallance is most recognized as Jenny in The Ropers, Det. Stevie Brody in Night Heat, and Whazzat Kangaroo in Zoobilee Zoo. As a director, she received a Daytime Emmy for voice-directing the music and dialogue on the children's animated series Madeline, in which she also portrayed "Miss Clavel" and "Genevive".
Alice Lucille Coltrane, also known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda or simply Turiya, was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and Hindu spiritual leader.
Irene Louise Rosnes, known professionally as Renee Rosnes, is a Canadian jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.
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.
Gordon James Beck was an English jazz pianist and composer. At the time of his death, 26 albums had been released under his name.
Elizabeth Shepherd is a Canadian pianst, singer, songwriter and producer.
Emily Jordan Bear is an American composer, pianist, songwriter and singer. After beginning to play the piano and compose music as a small child, Bear made her professional piano debut at the Ravinia Festival at the age of five, the youngest performer ever to play there. She gained wider notice from a series of appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show beginning at the age of six. She has since played her own compositions and other works with orchestras and ensembles in North America, Europe and Asia, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Montreux Jazz Festival and Jazz Open Stuttgart. She won two Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the youngest person ever to win the award, and also won two Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Awards.
Florence Isabelle Schelling is a Swiss former professional ice hockey goaltender. She briefly served as general manager of SC Bern from 2020 to 2021. She was the first woman to be named GM of a professional men's team in the world.
Moody 4B is an instrumental album released by jazz musician James Moody. The album was released in 2010 on IPO Recordings, Moody's fifth release on the label, and was produced by Michael Patterson, Bill Sorin was executive producer. It won the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group.
Sounding Point is the debut studio album by the then 21-year-old jazz guitarist Julian Lage. It was released in March 2009 by EmArcy Records. It entered the Billboard Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart at number 13 and was nominated for the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Reviews of the album were generally positive; one reviewer found the recording inferior to Lage's live performances.
Roni Ben-Hur is an Israeli jazz guitarist who immigrated to the United States in 1985. His parents were Tunisian-Jewish from Tunisia.
Blossom & Bee is a studio album by American jazz singer Sara Gazarek released on June 19, 2012, by Palmetto Records. All the tracks are cover versions except "Blossom & Bee", which Gazarek wrote with producer Larry Goldings and Bill DeMain, and "Fly Away Birdie" which she wrote with pianist Josh Nelson. Seven of the twelve songs on the album have been recorded by Blossom Dearie. The album debuted at No. 18 on the Billboard jazz album chart.