Indianapolis Jazz Trio

This Indianapolis Jazz Trio specializes in Brazilian jazz and jazz standards. They have played at major jazz festivals like Indy Jazz Fest but are equally at home in intimate settings like restaurants, hotels, small clubs, and private parties.

Indianapolis Jazz Trio members

Each member of the trio leads an active career in jazz performance, composition and jazz education in the Indianapolis region. The leader of this Indianapolis Jazz Trio has won multiple awards for both his jazz piano playing and jazz compositions, including the John Lennon Songwriting Contest's Maxell Song of the Year and multiple Downbeat and ASCAP Awards.

The leader of this Indianapolis Jazz Trio enjoys a versatile and prolific career as an award-winning composer, arranger, jazz pianist and educator. For over two decades, his music has garnered widespread critical acclaim, with JAZZIZ hailing the artist as a "rising-star pianist" who has "found his own voice in the modern mainstream."

Indianapolis Jazz Trio leader

In 2004, the leader of this Indianapolis Jazz Trio was the first jazz songwriter to win the coveted John Lennon Songwriting Contest Maxell Song of the Year. Other notable awards and honors include The ASCAP Foundation/Symphonic Jazz Orchestra Commissioning Prize (2016), the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers Symposium SONIC Award for Best Arrangement (2017), Composer Scholar at the Henry Mancini Institute in Los Angeles, the ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award (three-time winner), participant in the ASCAP Television and Film Scoring Workshop in L.A. where he received the ASCAP David Rose Scholarship and the DownBeat Student Award for Best Extended Length Composition.

The leader of this Indianapolis Jazz Trio is an established symphonic jazz arranger with commissions from Grammy-winning ensembles and artists like the Dutch Metropole Orkest and Howard Levy. His original works and Pops arrangements have been commissioned and premiered by the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra and the New York Youth Symphony, among many other fine ensembles. World premieres include Austria, Romania, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Poland, Norway, China, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, and domestic premieres include Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. He is a featured arranger on Jeremy Monteiro's album "Tapestry Live" (2024), Singapore's first symphonic jazz album.

​The leader of this Indianapolis Jazz Trio has performed with internationally renowned jazz musicians the likes of Howard Levy, Miguel Zenón, Steve Davis, Ryan Keberle, John Fedchock, Christian Howes, and Alexis Cole, and has opened for jazz guitar legend John Scofield. Jazz festival and club performances include the Montreux Jazz Festival, Jazz à Vienne, the North Sea Jazz Festival, Indy Jazz Fest, Elkhart Jazz Fest, the Gainesville Jazz Festival, The Green Mill (Chicago), The Jazz Kitchen (Indianapolis), The Velvet Note (Atlanta), Rudy's Jazz Room (Nashville), The Home Smith Bar at the Old Mill (Toronto, Canada), and The Palladium (Carmel, IN).

His Indianapolis Jazz Trio debut album on Summit Records, Every End is a Beginning (2017), reached #65 on the JazzWeek radio chart, #33 on the Roots Music Report Top 50 Jazz Albums, and was named Jazz Album of the Week by soulandjazz.com. The Creative Source's Dr. Brad Stone hailed the album as "an early candidate for jazz record of the year." The trio's sophomore album SUPERMOON (2018, Summit Records) received critical praise as "a work of unified expression from a charismatic trio...with substantial moments of gratification" (Jazz Trail). Jazz Weekly described the album as "a decalogue of his compositions...rich in lyricism," declaring that "the modern jazz piano trio is alive and well." SUPERMOON received wide airplay on dozens of jazz stations nationwide and abroad. Praised as "a fine display of the power of the mind" and an "unforgettable studio production," [INSIDE] (2020, Summit Records) is a genre-bending, pandemic-inspired home studio album recorded during quarantine that explores the artist's electro-acoustic nu jazz roots.

His Indianapolis Jazz Trio film credits on IMDB.com include director Peter Krygowski's award-winning film noir short "The Joes" (2021). In 2007 he was commissioned by Day 1 Studios and Lucas Arts to write demo music for the video game Fracture (PS3/XBox360).

The leader of this Indianapolis Jazz Trio is tenured Associate Professor of Jazz Piano at Ball State University School of Music, where he received the 2018-2019 College of Fine Arts Dean's Creative Endeavor Award for the School of Music. His students have played the Montreux Jazz Festival and Dizzy's Club at Lincoln Center and have won scholarships and awards including the DownBeat Student Music Awards. He served twice on the jury for the prestigious American Pianists Association Jazz Piano Competition Premiere Series, where he helped choose the $200,000 Cole Porter Fellowship winners Emmet Cohen and Isaiah J. Thompson (the largest jazz prize in the world). The leader of this Indianapolis Jazz Trio is a graduate and Featured Studio Music and Jazz Alumnus of the University of Miami Frost School of Music and an alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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