"19/8 (Molinaro)" - PART I. With guest Stefano Di Battista playing at Rome's Alexander Platz Jazz Club in November 2006.
Rachmaninoff
Piano Concerto 3 "Big" Cadenza
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto 3 Mvt. III
Gershwin Prelude 3
"An original, often iconoclastic thinker equipped with a leonine technique."
- The Chicago Tribune
"The best Gershwin piano CD I’ve ever heard!"
- Steve Ramm's IN THE GROOVE
"Edge-of-the-seat brilliance…absolutely first rate performances"
- Salt Lake City Deseret News
"About the most lively interpretation (Rhapsody in Blue) one could imagine."
- Chicago Sun-Times
"A freshness that I have found in no other performance (the Goldberg Variations)... you have to physically respond to its infectious energy.
- Listener magazine
Hello! I am a pianist/composer from Chicago. You can read more details on my website, but in a nutshell my career began more or less as a classical pianist after winning The 1997 Walter W. Naumburg International Piano Competition in NYC. Since then I have toured throughout the U.S. and Europe playing solo recitals, with orchestras (including the 2004 premier of my own piece for Piano and Orchestra), and more. Currently, I am most excited about a new trio (piano, bass, drums) I am putting together to feature more of my music.
All three of my recordings have been released on Nineteen-Eight Records, an expanding label that I founded in 2001. The new year (2008) is going to be a big year for the label with many new projects and a new website offering a lot of digital downloads. Current releases include Rudder (Keith Carlock, Henry Hey, Tim Lefevbre, Chris Cheek) and The Chris Tarry Group (featuring Dan Weiss) and the coming months will bring new recordings from the Molinaro-Levy Project and Will Vinson (Aaron Parks, Lage Lund, Ari Hoenig, Orlando Le Fleming). The Nineteen-Eight MySpace page is not too happenin' yet but we will get that going shortly.
When not doing the music thing I enjoy working out and running and have recently caught the triathlon bug. After a bunch of injuries I am training hard again and hoping for a sub 3 hour marathon this fall and looking to compete in the "elite" amateur triathlon ranks next season.
