Piedmont Piano Company is pleased to present
Edward Simon, solo piano - birthday celebration
Multi-award-winning Venezuelan pianist and composer Edward Simon celebrates his July 27 birthday with an evening of music by Federico Mompou, Simón Díaz, and selections from his NAACP Image Award-winning album Latin American Songbook. Considered one of the strongest pianists on the jazz scene, he is part of a new generation of "multilingual" musicians who have studied classical, jazz, and Latin-American music and garnered a unique voice both as composer and instrumentalist.
$25 General Admission
Edward Simon, a native of Venezuela, has made a name for himself over decades in America as a jazz improviser, composer-arranger and band leader, with his profile heightening in recent years as he has explored the commonalities jazz can have with the folkloric sounds of Latin America. JazzTimes summed up his impact this way: “Simon is less talked about than many other important jazz pianists from the Caribbean and South America, but he may be the most complete creative artist among them.” Based in the San Francisco Bay Area as a member of the all-star SFJAZZ Collective, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow along with being awarded multiple composition grants as part of the Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works initiative. Simon, a Yamaha artist, has recorded 15 albums as a leader or co-leader; his latest is Sorrows and Triumphs, released via Sunnyside Records in April 2018. This follows Simon’s 2016 album Latin American Songbook, with the four-and-a-half-star DownBeat review praising its “grand and sophisticated” sound. Latin American Songbook also won Simon an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album. The New York Times has praised Simon’s “light, warm touch” as a pianist, while Jazz Journal International singled out “his deep emotional statements” as a composer and improviser. edwardsimon.com