Member Since: 10/09/2006
Band Website: cdbaby.com/cd/olivervonessen
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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::" The Story of Oliver von Essen: from Europe to America to Asia and Back" ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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“Music is the communicator and musicians are the messengers of zeitgeist†............................................................
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..............................Oliver von Essen, describing his aesthetic. Interviewed in Paris, France, April, 2008 ............................................................
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In his childhood in Frankfurt, Germany, Oliver was trained in classical piano. His father was a jazz performer and teacher and had a collection of original LPs of the real blues artists, including Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Ray Charles, and BB King, to name just a few. Oliver was constantly exposed to live music through his father’s shows and started performing piano and guitar at a very early age. ............................................................
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................The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts: 1980 – 1981, The Most Magical and Richest of all Musical Melting Pots........................................................
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.....................................................For young Oliver at age 16, New Orleans was a real eye-opener. “My favorite was James Booker. He used to play piano everyday in the lobby bar of the One More Time Theatre so I could get in there for free. He was a master. With his left hand he could play the chords and the bass line, so his right hand was free to play solos.†At the Center for Creative Arts, which Oliver attended from 1980 to 1981, Ellis Marsalis taught a rhythm section class everyday. “Ellis was the best teacher and most insightful coach. While his sons Wynton and Branford were becoming the personifications of a new jazz spirit in music, I was visiting their home turf! Here I could feel the incorporation of a living culture of New Orleans, which includes funk and the tradition of jazz, with classical and theory as academic heritage in music.â€...................................................
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Everyone seemed to be excited about being in New Orleans in those days. There, Oliver realized that jazz was and is part of the culture, it is real and it is lived; it’s not only sound from records, not something mechanical. “Music was part of their folklore, a part of the people, which had not been true in Germany.†Soon after returning to Frankfurt to finish high school, he started applying for a scholarship at jazz schools. For three years, he studied in the State Conservatory in Arnhem, The Netherlands, where he did some “woodsheddingâ€..........................................
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..........The Meaning of Music.......................................................
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en at a young age, listening to music was a very sensual experience. “In society I saw a lot of value placed on music. Music made people’s outlook change. Music became the way, the key to teach people to think differently, to move away from materialism, from the traditional work ethic and from traditional religion and norms of society. Musicians were our teachers, our heroes, and music was a communicator by itself. ............................................................
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Music supplied the new spirituality. I didn’t need drugs. Music gave me time and space to disengage from reasoning and to reflect; it freed my mind to the spiritual. Music is my philosophy, my value, my belief, my mode of being.â€
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Back to the USA.........................................................
......When he got a scholarship to attend the New School Jazz Program, in 1989, Oliver moved to New York City. At the laundromat during his first week in the city, someone told him, “You look like a musician! You should go to the “Lickety Split†in Harlem.â€
He started playing the Hammond organ there right there (“in those days the Harlem clubs didn’t have pianos nor bass, so the Hammond played bassâ€) and stayed for two years, followed by a four-year stint at the “La Famille†and later at “Showmans†as well as many other uptown clubs. “There, it was a celebration. People would come in as a course of habit as they had been doing for decades, sometimes straight from church where they had been all day, and they would stay at the club keeping the groove going at night. The Hammond was cranked up to 10. The drums too were at full volume as were the horn players. That was the folklore then, the folk and art music of New York, which was quite different from the music of New Orleans. Everybody knew the songs from their childhoods. Art and life were wrapped in to one.†............................................................
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After Harlem, Oliver got a gig playing piano five nights a week at the Blue Note “After Hours Sessions†where he played for two and a half years with some of the greats. Danny Kay was on drums and Ted Curson was the leader. Many times, the stars and big names of the main shows would come down and jam with the “After Hours†musicians. During this time, Oliver jammed with some of the greats including George Benson, Grover Washington Jr., Chaka Khan, Monty Alexander, James Moody, Roy Hargrove, and many, many cats who still play all over the world today.......................................................
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?What started as a one-year trip to New York ended with the city becoming his home of 18 years. He recorded as a sideman on many records and worked all over the city. During the later part of these years he began to tour the world including the US, north, south, east and west as well as South America and Asia. In Shanghai, in 2006, he recorded the first album under his own name, “Shanghai Reflections,†during a long-term gig at the Grand Hyatt. Other long-term engagements included Hong Kong and his annual spring appearance at Tokyo’s Grand Hyatt. Having moved to Paris in 2007, Oliver now plays at some of the best jazz clubs in Paris and tours in France. He also continues to appear in New York and Asia on occasion. His second album, “Tokyo Motion†was recorded during 2007-2008.
Influences: (pianists:)Ray Charles,James Booker, Bobby Timmons, Phineas Newborn Jr.,Thelonius Monk ,Tommy Flanagan(living) McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Oscar Peterson, Cedar Walton,Gene Harris(teachers:)Kenny Barron , Ellis Marsalis, Joanne Brackeen, Jackie Byard,Kenny Werner(inspired in Shanghai by:)Dwight Dickerson(Organists:)Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Victor Davis, Larry Young (non-pianists:) Louis Armstrong, Bird, Cannonball, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Gene Ammons, Miles Davis, Elvin Jones, WesMontgomery, DjangoReinhardt, Wayne Shorter (others:) B.B. King, Fela Kuti, Muddy Waters, Beatles, James Brown, Jimmy Hendricks, Bob Marley,Andy Bay and many more.
Sounds Like: Despite our heartfelt devotion to all the cats and heros we manage to sound like ourselves...ok...on the real tip...we dont manage anything; in the moment of truth we just play, and the sound that emerges is what you'll hear!
Record Label: Unsigned