User:Noahmacneil

I am a jazz pianist living in Boston, Massachusetts. I attended NYU and am currently enrolled in Berklee College of Music.

My Background and Outlook: The music I am most interested in playing and listening to, at this point, is jazz music in the way it was played in the 1960’s, with a piano or guitar, acoustic bass, drum set, and horn. The Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis bands are currently the focus of my obsession. With my own quartet, I have been performing original and standard jazz at various venues around Boston and New York. Recently, I have been coming to realize how important it is to absorb all genres and styles, through listening, into my playing and composing.

My own music: Having plunged myself into the jazz idiom over the past four years, the harmonic sensibilities of my favorite artists – Shorter and Hancock – have started to filter into my compositional technique. The tunes that I have written most recently have been for traditional jazz instrumentation: piano, acoustic bass, drum set, and alto or soprano saxophone. Somehow, because of what I have listened to most throughout my life, these tunes are based on a more contemporary, straight groove. No matter how hard I try to incorporate, or how much I love playing swing rhythm, it has not yet become part of my compositions. Perhaps by next week this will have changed! The form of the tunes, with a loose basic structure of head-solos-head, with occasional vamps or codetta’s, pervades my repertoire.