5 Sections

Develop performance skills in the piano, bass, and drums trio format. Each section is open to four pianists and one drummer, with accompaniment provided by a professional upright bassist.

Prerequisites: the ability to play and improvise over jazz standards.

Section 1: Mondays 5 – 6:30 pm
7/10 – 8/14 (6 weeks)  Performance Date: 8/21
Peter Horvath, $275 (in-person)

Section 2: Mondays 6:30 – 8 pm
7/10 – 8/14 (6 weeks)  Performance Date: 8/21
Peter Horvath, $275 (in-person)

Section 3: Mondays 8:15 – 10 pm
7/10 – 8/14 (6 weeks)  Performance Date: 8/21
Peter Horvath, $275 (in-person)

Section 4: Wednesdays 6:30 – 8 pm
7/5 – 8/9 (6 weeks) Performance Date 8/16
Ben Stolorow, $275 (in-person)

Ensembles take place IN-PERSON at the California Jazz Conservatory.

All ensembles require a placement audition.

For audition guidelines and to application instructions, please visit the Ensemble page here: https://jazzschool.cjc.edu/jazzschool-ensembles/

About Peter Horvath

Contemporary jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer Peter Horvath has been perfecting his craft since the age of six when he began taking classical piano lessons. Born in Budapest, Hungary, he attended the Bela Bartok Conservatory of Music.

At age 17, he won the National Jazz Combo Competition in Hungary and two years later moved to Austria to attend the Vienna Conservatory of Music.

In 1983, Peter moved to the United States, where he studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has since performed, recorded, and toured nationally and worldwide with a long line of world-class artists, including jazz greats Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, Richie Cole, Ernie Watts, Eddie Henderson, Charles McPherson, Benny Maupin, the Victor Bailey Group, Lenny White, Arturo Sandoval, Randy Brecker, Marcus Miller, Pee Wee Ellis Funk Assembly, Bob Mintzer, Bob Sheppard, Craig Handy, Tiger Okoshi, Lalah Hathaway, Melba Moore, Ledisi, Keith Washington, Rosie Gaines, Ray Obiedo, Pete Escovedo and the Oakland Symphony. Peter composed for and performed with David Garibaldi for his critically acclaimed Warner Brothers video/CD series and recorded the tracks for Aretha Franklin’s performance of the National Anthem at the 1993 World Series.
Peter is on faculty at the California Jazz Conservatory, Saint Mary’s College of California, and Stanford Jazz Consortium.

Peter Horvath’s first solo recording, FOREIGN MATTER, has received enormous national contemporary jazz radio airplay. In its first week of release, it was the #1 most added recording to Gavin’s Adult Alternative Chart and #2 most added to Radio & Record’s NAC Chart.

His new album, ABSOLUTE REALITY, features some of the greatest names in jazz, like Bob Mintzer, Randy Brecker, Victor Bailey, Lenny White, Dean Brown, the late Ricky Lawson, Ray Obiedo, Larry Kimpel, Walfredo Reyes, Jr, Karl Perazzo, Peter Michael Escovedo, and others. All original compositions, the music fuses various elements from hard-hitting funk jazz with horns to pieces with Latin and straight ahead jazz influences, along with some beautiful mid-tempo tunes and ballads, even a solo piano performance to close the album. The sound represents the musical diversity of the Bay Area, along with the influences of years of touring and recording with some of the greats in jazz and beyond.

About Ben Stolorow

Bay Area pianist/composer Ben Stolorow’s first album, I’ll Be Over Here (2008), has been called a “beautiful, introspective body of work reminiscent of some of the greatest piano trios” by Susan Muscarella (founder/director of the Jazzschool in Berkeley, CA). Ben’s latest album, Almost There (2011), brings the sensitivity and lyricism of the first album as well as a new fire and emotional intensity, reflecting Ben’s desire to find for himself and to share with the listener the freedom, release, and renewal which he feels can be achieved through making music. Joining Ben on this album are two beautiful Bay Area musicians, Dan Feiszli on bass and Jon Arkin on drums.

As the title suggests, this album takes the listener on a journey, and the feeling of being on the way to someplace unknown is a theme that drives the music throughout. Of the album’s ten tracks, seven are Ben’s original compositions. The remaining three tracks are renditions of Thelonious Monk’s “Hackensack,” the standard “You and the Night and the Music,” and a bonus track which is a vocal song entitled “Firefly,” written and performed by Ben’s sister Stephanie Stolorow with Ben accompanying.

Ben has spent many years studying classical piano and the great jazz pianists and composers, as is evidenced by his compositions and playing on his latest album. With the variety of touch and range of expression that one can hear in his music, he displays the wide scope of his influences, from Bach and Bill Evans to Thelonious Monk and McCoy Tyner.

Shortly after graduating from UC Berkeley in 1998, Ben was awarded the Hertz Travelling Fellowship by the music department to live and study in New York. Since that time, he has continued to travel to New York regularly and has been fortunate to receive guidance from great contemporary pianists, including Fred Hersch, Stanley Cowell, James Williams, and David Hazeltine. Ben still practices Bach and other classical music, and continues to devote himself to the study of the great jazz pianists and composers. The feeling of being always “almost there” continues to drive him to improve himself and search for his own voice in music.

Since moving to the Bay Area from Los Angeles to attend UC Berkeley in 1994, Ben has become one of the most in-demand jazz pianists in the area, both as a leader and sideman. He has performed at Yoshi’s, The Jazzschool, and the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, at the Healdsburg and SF Jazz Festivals, at Oakland’s Art and Soul Festival, and has also toured and performed throughout Japan. He has performed with many great musicians, including Craig Handy, Akira Tana, Danya Stephens, Lorca Hart, Andrew Speight, Vince Lateano, Noel Jewkes, Michael O’Neill, and vocalist Kenny Washington.