Cyrus Chestnut Trio at Shalin Liu Performance Center

Jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut’s hard swinging, soulful sounds have become a staple in the jazz community. Having worked with such celebrated modern artists as Wynton Marsalis and Chick Corea and legend Betty Carter, he’s known for blending styles yet is unabashedly rooted in Gospel and touches on blues-inflected harmonies and tones of Jelly Roll Morton’s ragtime and early jazz. From touring internationally and playing big bands like the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band, Chestnut says he likes “to construct melodies that tell stories, based on what I've seen, what I feel, and what I hear."...

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Jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut’s hard swinging, soulful sounds have become a staple in the jazz community. Having worked with such celebrated modern artists as Wynton Marsalis and Chick Corea and legend Betty Carter, he’s known for blending styles yet is unabashedly rooted in Gospel and touches on blues-inflected harmonies and tones of Jelly Roll Morton’s ragtime and early jazz. From touring internationally and playing big bands like the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band, Chestnut says he likes “to construct melodies that tell stories, based on what I've seen, what I feel, and what I hear."



“The pianist Cyrus Chestnut is one of jazz’s most convincing anachronisms.... What makes his music fly is a complete security in his style, and that sense of untroubled self-assurance.”
— New York Times

“What makes Chestnut the best jazz pianist of his generation is a willingness to
abandon notes and to play space.”
- Time magazine

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