Cliff Korman Trio at Savassi Festival at Smalls Jazz Club

Cliff Korman
An accomplished jazz pianist and composer, and highly regarded educator and researcher, Cliff Korman has developed numerous jazz projects featuring Brazilian and American musicians and presenting a variety of original compositions and arrangements. His understanding of the diversity of sound, instrumentation and harmonic patterns of Brazilian music of the twentieth century enables him to continuously explore the complex interconnections that link the music of the Americas. His duo record Mood Ingênuo: Pixinguinha Meets Duke Ellington (Jazzheads, 1999) with Grammy Award winner Paulo Moura represents one of the first cross-cultural explorations of jazz and choro. Korman produced the recording Entre Amigos (Chesky, 2003) which pairs Brazilian vocalist Rosa Passos with American bass master Ron Carter. His most recent work includes Trains of Thought, a recording of solo piano improvisations, Empatia, a series of duos with Brazilian partners, and Gafieira Jazz, a sextet which draws on the exciting ballroom dance and jazz traditions of Rio de Janeiro. He has performed and recorded with many Brazilian artists including Astrud Gilberto, Toninho Horta,and Leny Andrade, and was featured in a two-piano production with Wagner Tiso and Milton Nascimento at the International Festival of MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira) in São Paulo. Commisioned and supported by the Savassi Festival, in 2013 he presented Interventions, his work for jazz symphonic orchestra, at the Palácio das Artes in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He is currently on faculty at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, where he is assisting in the implementation of a course in Popular Music Studies, and under the auspices of the Instituto Paulo Moura is music coordinator of the project to digitalize Paulo Moura’s archive....

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Cliff Korman
An accomplished jazz pianist and composer, and highly regarded educator and researcher, Cliff Korman has developed numerous jazz projects featuring Brazilian and American musicians and presenting a variety of original compositions and arrangements. His understanding of the diversity of sound, instrumentation and harmonic patterns of Brazilian music of the twentieth century enables him to continuously explore the complex interconnections that link the music of the Americas. His duo record Mood Ingênuo: Pixinguinha Meets Duke Ellington (Jazzheads, 1999) with Grammy Award winner Paulo Moura represents one of the first cross-cultural explorations of jazz and choro. Korman produced the recording Entre Amigos (Chesky, 2003) which pairs Brazilian vocalist Rosa Passos with American bass master Ron Carter. His most recent work includes Trains of Thought, a recording of solo piano improvisations, Empatia, a series of duos with Brazilian partners, and Gafieira Jazz, a sextet which draws on the exciting ballroom dance and jazz traditions of Rio de Janeiro. He has performed and recorded with many Brazilian artists including Astrud Gilberto, Toninho Horta,and Leny Andrade, and was featured in a two-piano production with Wagner Tiso and Milton Nascimento at the International Festival of MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira) in São Paulo. Commisioned and supported by the Savassi Festival, in 2013 he presented Interventions, his work for jazz symphonic orchestra, at the Palácio das Artes in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He is currently on faculty at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, where he is assisting in the implementation of a course in Popular Music Studies, and under the auspices of the Instituto Paulo Moura is music coordinator of the project to digitalize Paulo Moura’s archive.

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