Benny Green

An exciting and hard-swinging pianist in the Bud Powell mold, Benny Green ranks as one of a number of talented hard-bop keyboard stars to have graduated from Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers training ground.

Fleet-fingered and dazzling on the keys, playing delightfully inside and outside the lines, funky and hard but with a hint of Oscar Peterson – this is Benny Green.

“Benny often sounds as if he could be holding forth at a Harlem rent party in the 1930s or appearing on radio’s “Piano Playhouse” in the 1940s. He’ll lay in a chord sequence so wryly hip and modern, so personal, that it could only be Benny Green,” says Doug Ramsey of Jazztimes.

A pleasure to hear in improvisation, Green doesn’t push the envelope, but takes you on a fine ride just the same. His fast octave runs are often wondrous, says Scott Yanow.

Green has worked with the greats….Art Blakey, Freddie Hubbard, Ray Brown, Joshua Redman, Lewis Nash, Ron Carter, Betty Carter, Diana Krall and many other notable jazz musicians. As he looks over his career and personal life from what he says is a new point of understanding, he has some very basic goals. “I just want to play music that feels good, that’s enjoyable to people, that’s honest and from my heart,” he says. “That’s the highest thing I can do.”

For music samples, & current calendar of appearances, check out

http://www.amsartists.com/BG/BG_index.html

and http://www.jazzreview.com/articledetails.cfm?ID=1392

has a great interview with Benny Green and Russell Malone.