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). While he has played with some of the great names in jazz -- Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Bob Brookmeyer and Charles McPherson, to name a few -- he strives to create music that is distinctly of our time.

Born in Paris, France, in 1982 to American parents, Tepfer started classical piano studies at the age of six at the Paris Conservatoire Paul Dukas. He soon began to explore improvisation on his own and remained largely self-taught in jazz into his college years. After earning a bachelor's in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he also played extensively on the jazz scene and enjoyed a brief stint as an opera conductor, he was offered a scholarship to complete his master's in jazz at the New England Conservatory in Boston under the guidance of Danilo Pérez. Graduating with honors in 2005, he moved to New York City, where he is in demand as a pianist, composer and educator.

His work has been recognized with a number of recent awards, including the first prize and audience prize at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition, the first prize at the 2006 East Coast Jazz Festival Competition, and the first prize at the 2007 competition of the American Pianists Association -- leading him to be named the 2007-2009 Cole Porter Fellow in Jazz.

His new release, OXYGEN, follows his acclaimed debut "Before the Storm," which was voted one of the top ten CDs of 2005 by Cadence Magazine. Both albums feature his longstanding trio with bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Richie Barshay (whom Tepfer shares with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea). The group has been noted for its exceptional chemistry on stage, which reflects its more than four years of international touring. Dan also pursues an active solo career, with a recent focus on full concerts of freely improvised music. He has been named a Cultural Envoy of the U.S. State Department, with recent travels to Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Czech Republic. 

Actively involved in jazz education, Dan has given lectures and master classes in many universities and conservatories throughout the world. These include the Royal Academy of Music (London), the Seoul Institute of the Arts (South Korea), the Chopin Conservatory (Warsaw), the Swiss Jazz School (Bern, Switzerland), and the SMU Meadows School of the Arts (Dallas, Texas). 

Recent or upcoming engagements include Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall with Jeff Ballard and Chris Cheek, New York's Jazz Gallery and Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola with Lee Konitz, the Indianapolis Jazz Festival, the Kennedy Center and the Caramoor Festival with his trio, and solo concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Radio France Festival in Montpellier, and the Fazioli Salon in New York City.

Solo Blues for Violin and Piano by Dan Tepfer

Solo Blues for Violin and Piano was commissioned by Liz Bacher and premiered at the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in January 2007. It is a solo piece, as the title indicates, for violin and piano, meaning that both instruments are played by a single performer. My idea in writing the piece was to imagine an inquisitive soul, equally adept at the piano and violin, sitting down to explore the possibilities offered by the combination of both instruments. As I child, after I had been playing the piano and improvising for a number of years, I was given a clarinet by my father and I have a clear memory of going through this exploration myself. I loved how two separate problems, one geometric, the other musical, came together and grew off of each other. Hence, there is a sense of narrative to the piece, as the musician, a little tentative at first, gradually gains confidence and sees her enthusiasm grow as she discovers more and more ways to combine the two instruments. While the music is meant to stand on its own, a live performance of the piece is ultimately as much choreography as it is music. The Blues of the title refers to the harmonic framework used in the composition, which is articulated around the first, fourth and fifth degrees of the key of D, in the order of the traditional blues form: I - IV - I - V - IV - I. This makes two things possible: on the one hand, using the backdrop of the blues connects this classical composition with my background in jazz and gives a cultural and historic framework to the plaintive quality of the initial melody; on the other, it allows me to use the violin's open strings (G, D, A and E) to play the fundamental and fifth of each of the three harmonic centers of the piece. Seen this way, it's as if the violin had been made to play the blues.

-Dan Tepfer

Reviews of Karen Bentley Pollick performing Solo Blues for Violin and Piano by Dan Tepfer

"It's rare to see the violin and piano played simultaneously - by one person. Karen Bentley Pollick, a violinist, pulled off that exciting feat when she played Dan Tepfer's Solo Blues for Violin and Piano on Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. The piece called for the violin and piano to alternate between melody and accompaniment. Pollick gallantly bowed away on her violin while her free hand bounced across the keyboard. Fortunately, Tepfer's fine piece was worth the effort. After having played the piano and violin simultaneously, she deserved to go wild."

--Birmingham News

"Friday's Noontime Concert Series at the Michael C. Carlos Reception Hall showcased the talents of violinist Karen Bentley Pollick, who has performed with Paul Dresher's electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 1999.

Pollick prepared for the next piece by taking her seat at the piano with the violin still in her hand. As she did so she joked with audience, explaining that she would be playing the two instruments in order to give Ransom a rest for his piano concerto.

As Pollick began her most impressive performance of the afternoon, a two-part piece titled Solo Blues for Violin and Piano, many audience members stood up to get a better look at the brilliant, ambidextrous musician.

Switching her hand from the neck of the violin to the keys of the piano, Pollick juxtaposed the piano's often staccato chords unto the violin's humming song, creating many interesting effects by doing so. On one occasion, Pollick laid the violin in her lap and plucked its strings to the staccato rhythm and dissonant melody which she played on the piano.

As the piece built, the piano part evolved into a flowing melody that the violin suddenly began to follow, causing Pollick's hands to become increasingly separate, with each one keeping to its own instrument, yet together, as the music they played resolved into one flowing melody.

James Orbeck, retired curator of the Margaret Mitchell Collection at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, said that he was particularly fond of the location because its small size allowed the sound to reverberate.

But Orbeck was even more impressed by Pollick's performance.

"She's just an incredible musician and such a treasure for Emory University," he said. "And the talent here is just hard to imagine. Playing the piano and the violin at the same time is incredible."

But whether or not multitasking on the piano and the violin was enough to stir everyone in the audience, the concert certainly made the already good Friday even better."

--Emory Wheel