Jazz Pianist Gerald Clayton & Trio Releases Debut Album “Two-Shade”: So far a great success!
Jazz pianist Gerald Clayton and his trio have really outdone themselves, releasing a new album Two Shade July 1st, 2009. It has debuted on Jazz Week Radio at #25, leading the station in most increased spins, and was the 3rd most added album. Two Shade, released by ArtistShare, is Gerald’s debut CD, and features a the dynamic trio work of Joe Sanders on bass and Justin Brown on drums.
Two Shade showcases Clayton’s compositions, with 11 original pieces, and a great take on the Dizzy Gillespie tune “Con Alma”. For more information, and to check out the project, please visit www.artistshare.com/twoshade.
Artist Information:
Born in the Netherlands in 1984, Gerald Clayton grew up mainly in Los Angeles with a musical family that includes his father, bassist/composer John Clayton, and uncle, saxophonist Jeff Clayton. At the age of six Gerald began eleven years study of classical piano with Linda Buck before enrolling in the Jazz Studies program at the University of Southern California. In college in Los Angeles and a year at the Manhattan School of Music, Gerald studied piano and composition under Shelly Berg, Billy Childs, and Kenny Barron.
Professionally, Gerald has had the honor of performing nationally and internationally with some of the most established names in Jazz such as Lewis Nash, Al Foster, Terrell Stafford and Clark Terry. Duo piano concerts with Gerald have featured artists as celebrated and diverse as Hank Jones, Benny Green, Kenny Barron, Mulgrew Miller and Tamir Hendelman. Gerald also relishes playing with Jazz’s next generation of innovators: Ambrose Akinmusire, Dayna Stephens, Kendrick Scott and many others.
Gerald Clayton’s dynamic and award-winning sound has been praised in print by JazzTimes and The Los Angeles Times. The New York Times has saluted his “Oscar-Peterson like style” and “huge, authoritative presence” and Down Beat Magazine’s 2008 Readers’ Poll named him one of the top up-and-coming pianists to watch.
As a composer, his work has been commissioned by the Jazz Gallery in New York City and performed overseas by the BBC Orchestra. He has been honored with a Level 1 award by the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts (NFAA), the title “Presidential Scholar in the Arts,” and second place in the Thelonious Monk Institute Jazz Piano Competition. Dodging early pressures to emerge as a prodigy, Gerald instead honed his talents and his resolve to ensure that this next generation is never lacking for intricate, swinging pieces and performances that are steeped in tradition while always facing the future.
A quarter of the age of Jazz, Gerald Clayton stakes his claim in the history and the present of this vital music with the following words, “Tradition and innovation can peacefully coexist.” In libraries and on drawing-boards around the country this statement might be true, but with Gerald behind the piano this coexistence is anything but peaceful.
