Piedmont Piano Company is pleased to present
Debbie Poryes, piano & Bruce Williamson, reeds



Tunes, standards, originals, free and anything goes!

Sunday, July18 at 4PM
at Piedmont Piano Company's new store located at
18th & San Pablo, Oakland (1728 San Pablo Ave.)

$15 donation requested for the musicians -
please call 510-547-8188 to reserve tickets with your credit card

Excerpts from current reviews from “Catch Your Breath” 2010 CD:

Brad Walseth, Jazz Chicago:

“A musician you should be aware of is Bay-area pianist Debbie Poryes. We loved her 2007 CD - A Song in Jazz and this follow-up is even better - in part due to the lucky presence of saxophonist Bruce Williamson on some of the tracks...
and the result is a gleaming recording that mixes buoyant ensemble playing with a setlist of standards and interesting originals. Poryes' piano technique is unique - the result of overcoming tendonitis - and highly sophisticated harmonically.”

C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz:

“Debbie Poryes colors outside the lines, her quartet's style bleeding into avant-garde and high-IQ adult contemporary. Expanding the trio to a quartet with the addition of a horn, Poryes bounces between the sharp post-bop of her composition "Catch Your Breath," and the moody, Lisztian, almost Baroque figures of her interpretation of Sammy Cahn's "I Should Care." Poryes plays to challenge and compel, but never forgets to entertain. She closes the disc with her original "Lake Dream," a drowsy atonal reverie that extends from Monk to saxophonist Steve Lacy and beyond.”

John Barron, All About Jazz:

“Poryes' approach to arranging involves sophistication with warmth and open-ended possibilities. As a result, Amercan songbook gems like "I've Got the Sun in the Morning" and "My Heart Stood Still" sound fresh and invigorating, coupled nicely alongside the pianist's original compositions...Poryes and Williamson, both adaptive performers who swing their lines with confidence.”

Reviews of “A Song in Jazz” 2007 CD:

"Poryes' playing is confident, yet playful, thoughtful, but full of life." Brad Walseth, JazzChicago

“A stellar outing that introduces a piano trio that plays with an interactive verve and elegance…a knockout listening experience.” Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz

“Her music is pleasant and powerful at the same time and I can picture a time when musicians will claim her as a major influence.” John Book, Music for America

Debbie Poryes discovered the piano at age five, and loved practicing Chopin and show tunes until Simon and Garfunkel came along. She then switched to singing and playing guitar. Those early guitar years of figuring out music from records was the beginning of a lifelong fascination with harmony, music theory and listening closely and passionately to the structure of music. When she heard jazz for the first time at age 18, she wondered where this incredible music had been all her life. It inspired her to return to the piano, listening to and learning from her new and continuing heroes -- Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, and other greats.

Throughout the 1970s she performed in many clubs and restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as for private parties of all sorts. During this time, Debbie studied with various classical and jazz teachers in the Bay Area, including Art Lande and Jeanne Stark. She also started teaching privately, and taught ear training in Art Lande's jazz school in Berkeley, CA.

Debbie spent most of the 1980s in The Netherlands, where she held tenured positions in the jazz departments of two Dutch conservatories in Hilversum and Arnhem. During these years she also recorded a trio record for Timeless Records. German and Dutch jazz magazine reviews for that record praised her playing as "crystal clear"...."with the swinging elegance of Tommy Flanagan combined with the depth of Bill Evans." She returned to the United States in 1990 as a well seasoned, world-traveled veteran.

After developing tendonitis in her wrists, Poryes was unable to play for two years. Beginning in 1991, she completely revised her technique, adopting the principles of coordinative movement of the hands, fingers and arms, developed by Dorothy Taubman and Edna Golandsky. She was able to resume a full-time career as a jazz musician and teacher and credits this approach with helping her to have more complete control of her touch and sound.

In 2007, she recorded her second CD, "A Song in Jazz," on the Jazzschool Records label. It features Bill Douglass on bass (Marian McPartland, Mose Allison) and David Rokeach on drums (Ray Charles, Jersey Boys). The highly acclaimed recording received outstanding reviews, and sold copies across the country as well as in Japan and England.

Poryes has been a faculty member of the Berkeley Jazzschool since 2000, teaching jazz piano and functional harmony. She also maintains a large private teaching studio with more than 30 students. Her recent solo and ensemble performances include appearances at Yoshi's Jazzclub, the Oakland Museum, the Jazzschool, the Berkeley Piano Club, the 2009 Healdsburg Jazz Festival, and many other venues.

Poryes has released a new quartet CD, "Catch Your Breath," Origin/OA2 Records (voted 2009 Jazz Label of the Year at the JazzWeek awards in New York) in March 2010. The CD reached the #16 slot on the National Jazzweek Charts after just a few weeks of release.

For more information please visit www.debbieporyes.com

Multi-instrumentalist Bruce Williamson was active in the San Francisco music scene until moving to New York City in the mid-1980s. In California he performed in blues bands, Brazilian bands and with jazz artists such as Mark Levine and Benny Green. He was also a member of the experimental jazz group Rubisa Patrol with pianist Art Lande and trumpeter Mark Isham.

Shortly after moving to New York he joined organist Jack McDuff's band (with Dave Stryker on guitar), giving him the opportunity to meet and play with Jimmy Smith, Stanley Turrentine and George Benson. More recently, he has performed with his own groups in various New York City clubs and has been a featured soloist in Japan and Europe. Over the years, Bruce has also performed with Gary Peacock, Fred Hersch, Dave Douglas, Tom Harrell, Mark Soskin, Jim Pepper, Randy Brecker, Paul McCandless, Toshiko Akiyoshi Orchestra and many other jazz notables. Bruce can be heard on more than fifty recordings playing saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, piccolo, piano and synthesizer.

In New York City's theater world, he has performed in many of Julie Taymor's productions; Juan Darien at Lincoln Center (1996), Lion King at the New Amsterdam Theater (1998) and The Green Bird at the Cort Theater (2000). He also performs regularly in the orchestras of many Broadway shows. In film, Bruce has been a featured soloist in many of Elliot Goldenthal's filmscores; Butcher Boy, In Dreams, Public Enemies, Titus, Frida (Academy-award winning score - 2003), and Across The Universe (the last three directed by Taymor). Bruce was also featured with the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra in Goldenthal's 1997 ballet Othello (choreographed by Lar Lubovitch) and with the NYC Opera Orchestra in the 2006 Taymor/Goldenthal opera Grendel performed at Lincoln Center.

Bruce has been awarded Jazz Composition grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Armour Foundation. His compositions can be heard on various recordings, including his Timeless CD Big City Magic, the Turtle Island String Quartet CD Metropolis and a recent release called Resonance. A new quartet recording on Origin Records, Standard Transmission (with Art Lande) will be available this summer (2010)_ Bruce is currently on the Music Faculty at Bennington College in Vermont and has been a jazz clinician in both the U.S. and Europe.