Lewis Porter, pianist, keyboardist, and composer, appears on 30 albums with Dave Liebman, Marc Ribot, Gary Bartz and many others, and his 2018 album Beauty And Mystery features John Patitucci, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Tia Fuller. His latest are the exciting jazz-rock album Transcendent with guitar virtuoso Ray Suhy, on Sunnyside, and Solo Piano on the new label Next To Silence. AllAboutJazz writes that Porter’s music draws from many sources to make “a beautifully creative whole” and that he is “a first-rate pianist,” to which NYC Jazz Record adds that he has “a mind-boggling array of approaches at his …fingertips.” He received a Grammy nomination in 1995. He has performed across the USA and Europe with Liebman (who premiered one of Dr. Porter’s saxophone concertos), Joe Lovano, Wycliffe Gordon, Ravi Coltrane, Ribot, and many others.
Awarded a Ph.D. in musicology in 1983, he is well-known as a jazz educator, researcher, and author, most notably of a celebrated book on John Coltrane. A long-time former music professor at Rutgers in Newark and at Tufts U, he also taught at The New School, The Manhattan School of Music, NYU, William Paterson U, and Brandeis, as well as being a guest teacher throughout the USA and Europe. He also teaches private students worldwide by Zoom/Skype/Facetime/GoogleMeet, etc. You can follow him at Lewisporter.com and on Facebook.
Lewis will be appearing at the 1905 Jazz club in Portland on Sunday, October 13th. He’ll also be joined by Chris Brown who has played drums with the Marsalis family, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Heath, and many other legends; John Nastos on sax; and Garrett Baxter on bass. At the beginning of each show, Porter, with the help of Chris, will talk and take questions about Trane and Monk and jazz.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.