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Roger Kellaway |
view all recordings A brilliant pianist, composer and all-around musical polymath, Roger has performed with everyone from Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins to Yo Yo Ma, Joni Mitchell, Elvis Presley and Michael Tilson Thomas.
After graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music, Roger moved to New York in the early 1960s where he freelanced as a pianist and became one of the busiest musicians in the city. He moved to Los Angeles in 1966, spent nine months with the Don Ellis band, and became musical director for singer Bobby Darin from 1967 to 1969.
Since the late 1960s, in addition to touring, he has composed for films, television, chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras. His acclaimed "Cello Quartet" albums were the first of an eclectic array of composition projects that have included a ballet for George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet, orchestral pieces commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony and the New American Orchestra, and "Songs of Ascent," a Tuba Concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premiered under the leadership of Zubin Mehta.
In addition, Roger has written more than twenty-five film scores, including Barbara Streisand's "A Star is Born" for which he received an Academy Award nomination.
Roger's initial recordings for IPO comprise a tribute to Bobby Darin and feature tunes that Roger performed with Darin when he was Darin's musical director in the late 1960s. "Remembering Bobby Darin" also represents the initial recording of Roger's new trio, with Bruce Foreman on guitar and Dan Lutz on bass. This trio will be Roger's main pereforming platform for the foreseeable future and additional releases have been scheduled on the IPO label.
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Featured Artists
Roger Kellaway & Eddie Daniels
(From BillBoard review of latest IPO release)
Clarinetist Eddie Daniels and pianist Roger Kellaway have been both revered and sublimated by critics and listeners during their long and sometimes obscured careers. Make no mistake, though -- they are great musicians who somehow do not get the credit they deserve as true jazz masters. When Daniels has played more commercially oriented music, he's branded a sellout, while Kellaway's profile is so low-key, he's practically off the radar except when releasing a recording. Fact is, Daniels is as limber, facile, tuneful, and literate as any clarinet player on the contemporary scene, while Kellaway's understated brilliance is balanced by a sense of wonder and empowerment tempered by a veteran's common sense and deep wisdom. Both have made important strides in recent years to change minds and hearts with several very fine efforts in the modern mainstream idiom, but these duets recorded live at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles have to be a high watermark for them, individually and together... This is a wondrous duet date featuring extraordinary musicians taking chances and thankfully succeeding on all levels, not the least of which are in the enviable elements of pace, placement, and depth.
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