Jeremy Siskind

Piano, Jazz Studies, Western Jazz Quartet

CONTACT INFORMATION:
http://www.jeremysiskind.com/live/ | Jsiskind2@gmail.com | Jeremy.siskind@wmich.edu

Jeremy Siskind

Jeremy Siskind stands poised to play a major role in the future of piano music. At age 25, Siskind has performed both jazz and classical music at Carnegie Hall, has twice been a finalist to be named the American Pianist Association’s Cole Porter Fellow, and has been a guest on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz. As a composer, Siskind has received recognition in the form of ASCAP’s Young Jazz Composers Award, Downbeat Magazine’s Student Music Award, and has twice traveled to Japan as the American representative in Yamaha’s Junior Original Composition competition. Siskind’s 2010 CD release, Simple Songs (for When the World Seems Strange), featuring Ted Poor, Chris Lightcap, and Jo Lawry, was awarded four stars in a review from Downbeat, and appeared on three jazz critics’  “Best CDs of 2010” features.  In 2011, Siskind was selected out of over forty pianists from around the world as the second place winner in the Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music (High Honors; degrees in Jazz Performance and Music Theory) with a Master’s from Columbia University (degree in English and Comparative Literature), Siskind’s primary teachers include Tamir Hendelman, Tony Caramia, Harold Danko, Sophia Rosoff and Fred Hersch.

In addition to performing and composing, Siskind is making his mark as an educator. He is a regular contributor to Clavier Companion magazine as both a reviewer and columnist, and his collection of instructional jazz pieces, Jazz Etude Inspirations, was published by Hal Leonard in 2011. Siskind has a long-standing relationship with the Yamaha Music Education System; he teaches weekly lessons in piano, composition, and theory at their school in Paramus, NJ, and also travels all over the country (to Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and California), to work with Yamaha’s most advanced students. While just a sophomore at the Eastman School of Music, Siskind taught a course for graduate students entitled “Jazz Piano for Non-Majors,” which shared basic jazz skills with doctoral candidates studying classical piano and organ. Additionally, Siskind has presented masterclasses at the Eastman School of Music, University of California, Irvine, and Xin Hai Conservatory in Guangzhou, China. Recently, three of Siskind’s private New Jersey-based students placed first, second, and third in their region in a national composing and performing contest and one of his theory students was selected as the grand prize winner.

Siskind’s music is noted for its lyricism, its creative use of the piano, and its marriage of classical, jazz, and folk elements. His new project, “Finger-Songwriter,” released on May 15th, 2012, consisting of a voice-piano-woodwinds trio, unites the aesthetic of the singer-songwriter movement with a chamber jazz ensemble, following in the footsteps of the John Taylor-Norma Winstone-led groups that recorded for ECM. The recording has been hailed as “one of the best albums I’ve heard all year” by emusic.com’s Dave Sumner, “one of the most remarkable recordings I’ve heard in a very long time” by Pamela Esplanade of the MinnPost, and “a CD that stands apart” by Peter Hum of the Ottawa Citizen.

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