Dan Tepfer

Critics have called New York-based pianist/composer Dan Tepfer "brilliant" (Boston Globe), "one of tomorrow's jazz stars" (Eugene Weekly) and "certainly among those clearly willing to play with familiar formulas and take new approaches, even as he incorporates strokes from the masters" (Jazzreview.com). Born in Paris in 1982 to American parents, he started classical piano studies at the age of six, and immediately began to explore improvisation. In college, he majored in astrophysics before switching to jazz piano for his master's at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He tours internationally as leader of his trio and has released a debut CD, Before the Storm, which was voted one of the ten best albums of 2005 by Cadence Magazine. Tepfer was awarded both the first prize and the audience prize at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition and was most recently named the 2007 Cole Porter Fellow in Jazz of the American Pianists Association . Dan has performed with jazz greats Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, and Bob Brookmeyer, and has studied with Martial Solal, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, Danilo Pérez and Bob Brookmeyer.