BIO

New York-based pianist and composer Taylor Eigsti started playing the piano when he was 4 years old, inspired by his sister Shannon, a jazz and rock pianist. His musical journey since has been filled with many exciting opportunities to grow as a musician, artist, and educator. Eigsti started bandleading at age 12, was quickly labeled a prodigy, and released 4 early albums as a leader before having the opportunity to sign with Concord Records. Eigsti released "Lucky to Be Me" in 2006, which was nominated for two GRAMMY awards for Best Instrumental Compostion and Best Instrumental Jazz Solo.

The past few years have been especially exciting for the 26 year old California native. Building on the momentum of the previous record, Eigsti was featured on the cover of both Keyboard Magazine and Jazziz Magazine, and was featured in his own BET Television special. Eigsti then released "Let it Come to You"(Concord) 2008, quickly garnering many four-star reviews from such publications as Downbeat Magazine and All Music Guide, and went to #2 in National Jazz Radio Airplay. This album also featured Eigsti's original visual art within the packaging. The national spotlight has allowed many more listeners to become accustomed to Eigsti, which has led to the good fortune of performing or recording with such luminaries as Dave Brubeck, Christian McBride, Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton, James Moody, Ernestine Anderson, David Benoit, Frederica Von Stade, Gretchen Parlato, Dave Douglas, The Clayton Brothers, and Red Holloway, among many others. He has also performed internationally for 11 years with GRAMMY nominated guitarist Julian Lage, his close musical collaborator. Eigsti has been featured on many radio shows, including Marian McPartland's award-winning NPR program "PianoJazz" on three occasions. Eigsti has been recognized by critics internationally for his unique touch and rhythmic control, and his innovative improvisational storytelling.

Eigsti has also incorporated a diverse educational career, leading numerous masterclasses and clinics for 15 years at music workshops and camps, and various colleges such as the University of North Texas, UC Berkeley, Skidmore College, NYU, San Jose St, and many more. He is on the advisory board of Stanford Jazz Workshop, where he has taught for 11 years, and has been the featured guest artist artist at the prestigious Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific, and artist in residence at the Jazzschool Institute in Berkeley, CA.

Recently, Taylor has recently released a brand-new recording for the Concord Music Group - his seventh - entitled "Daylight at Midnight" which features the great singer-songwriter Becca Stevens, Harish Raghavan on bass, and Eric Harland on drums. A departure from previous albums, this project integrates the influence of lyrically-driven acoustic rock music through covers of songs by Coldplay, Feist, MuteMath, Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, and many others, in addition to originals.

www.TaylorEigsti.com

Taylor Eigsti
Daylight at Midnight

Concord Jazz


On his third Concord Jazz album, Daylight at Midnight, pianist-bandleader-composer Taylor Eigsti continues to challenge the norm of what constitutes jazz today. He ranks among a growing contingent of innovative artists in their twenties who are committed to broadening the scope of repertoire. While Eigsti pays full respect to the jazz tradition, he also exercises his passion for melodies of esteemed songwriters from his generation and explores a variety of music that piques his curiosity. In the new CD´s liner notes, he writes that he listens to music across the stylistic map, including jazz (primarily), experimental electronica, the Bulgarian Women´s Choir, modern folk, progressive R&B and classical (Ravel, Dvorak). "[I listen] to just about anything…I can get my hands on that sounds inspiring and new," Eigsti writes. "My taste in music remains naturally diverse, as I tend to crave inspiration from everything I listen to, and I´m open to absolutely everything."

This polyglot listening approach informs Daylight at Midnight, making the album Eigsti´s boldest statement to date in his evolution as an artist. He not only finds resonance in such top-tier pop-oriented composers such as Nick Drake, Rufus Wainwright, Elliot Smith, Imogen Heap and Feist, but he also brings to light a doubleheader of personal revelations: 20th-century Catalonian classical pianist Federico Mompou ("my new favorite composer") and up-and-coming vocalist/songwriter Becca Stevens ("one of my favorite musicians of all time"), who sings five of the 11 tunes, as well as plays ukulele and charango.

Some of the pieces on Daylight at Midnight are tunes "made famous by groups that reside within my iPod," Eigsti says, including inventive instrumental interpretations of Coldplay´s "Daylight" and MuteMath´s "Chaos." Producer Matt Pierson also hipped the pianist to pop-oriented songs by other musicians. "I love playing the jazz standards, which are great," says Eigsti. "But some of those jazz tunes, recorded in the ´50s and ´60s, were from Broadway plays or songs popular 10 to 20 years earlier. I´m 25, so I´m calling on strong songs that are contemporary to me. I can play those old standards the rest of my life. But I wanted to step away to see what I could do that was different." In addition to the covers, Eigsti contributed "Speaking Song," a trio-showcase original that features his bassist Harish Raghavan, and collaborated with Stevens on two songs, including the beautifully lyrical "Magnolia" and the title number.

As fitting for such an adventurous CD, Eigsti augments acoustic piano (the main voice in the mix) with Fender Rhodes, Rhodes PianoBass, Wurlitzer electric piano and Mellotron samples to add color and texture to the tunes. He´s joined by his simpatico rhythm team of drummer Eric Harland and Raghavan on acoustic and electric bass. Guests include longtime musical partner guitarist Julian Lage, with whom Eigsti often performs duo concerts. As for Lage, he says, "We both decided to spend some time musically apart to do our own things. We were playing together in Victoria, Spain, and we started brainstorming about ways in which we each could do something different." (On Daylight at Midnight, the chemistry between the two is still potent, including their duo on Drake´s "Pink Moon," which is a multilayered, double-lined gem that was popularized several years as the soundtrack to a VW television commercial.)

Melody is central to Daylight at Midnight. In the liners, Eigsti wrote, "More than anything else, I wanted tunes with a prevailing sense of melody, something we jazz musicians often put on the back burner…These tunes were not chosen by the ability to ´blow´ over them or by their complexity in structure. They are just good songs for songs´ sake." He adds, "I´ve been listening to a lot of music by singer/songwriters and relearning the importance of melody. I listened to my iPod, and it was full of songs with melody." But he hastens to add that there´s " a world of subtleties on this record. I consciously set out to play simpler, but I didn´t dumb it down. We delved into a quieter jazzy realm, which was my first opportunity to do so as a recording band leader."

Even though he´s still young, Eigsti is a veteran of sorts. Daylight at Midnight is his seventh CD overall, including a couple recorded for Japanese labels. He was signed to Concord and made his debut album, Lucky to Be Me, in 2006. It garnered two Grammy nominations. The follow-up, 2008´sLet It Come to You, further advanced Eigsti´s reputation.

Daylight at Midnight opens with Coldplay´s "Daylight," which Eigsti treats to a compelling structure of suite-like interludes. "It´s a fun tune to play," he says. "We usually start out our live shows with this." This is followed by a couple of tunes that Pierson suggested: Wainwright´s "The Art Teacher" (Eigsti: "It´s such a simple tune that gave the trio a lot of room for interplay, and I love the melody") and Feist´s beauty "The Water" ("This worked great as a ballad with Becca singing it perfectly").

Stevens also stars on Heap´s "Little Bird" (a whimsical tune that is performed as a duo), Smith´s reflective beauty "Between the Bars" (the oft-covered, emotionally charged number that is played here in a different key) and the collaborative original, "Midnight After Noon." Of the latter, Eigsti says, "I´d been trying to finish this song for some five years, but I kept putting the melody on a shelf. I had countless demos. When Becca and I were playing together, she came up with lyrics that were emotionally strong. Once the words came, I realized that the loop melody I had written started sticking in my head."

In the middle section of the CD, Eigsti strips his band down to duo (first with Lage on "Pink Moon," then with Stevens on "Little Bird"). Then he goes it alone on piano on Mompou´s hauntingly emotional "Secreto." So pleased with the tune´s simple lyricism and minimalism, Eigsti decided to play it straight. "I´m all for embellishing classical tunes," he says, "but to me it would have almost been offensive to do that to a song written in 1920 but has barely ever been played or heard." He fell in love with Mompou´s music when he was visiting the famous Gaudi house in Barcelona and heard one of his pieces as the background to the museum documentary. "I spent $120 on iTunes that night getting everything that he had recorded. I knew I had discovered the piano player that I always wanted to play like."

After the stripped-own section, Eigsti re-enlists the band and punches out "Chaos," written by Paul Meany of the new-buzz New Orleans rock band MuteMath. Harland leads the charge with spanking drumbeats. "Yes, this is a welcome back to Eric," says Eigsti with a laugh. "It´s actually in the same key as ´Secreto,´ so it´s a great segue. It feels good to move from one to the other. I love MuteMath. They´re one of the most inspired new rock groups that has an athletic stage performance and innovative use of layers in their music."

The most compelling collaboration between Eigsti and Stevens, "Magnolia," came together at the eleventh hour of the recording session. The pianist originally wrote a tune to a poem by a famous poet, whose estate denied use of his words in any kind of musical form. "We were panicked because I saw the original piece of work as the centerpiece of the album that best represented the direction I was moving in," Eigsti says. "With time running out to finish the record, we contacted Becca who was in Europe to write new lyrics. She came up with such a deeper, more meaningful image and a real story. I´ve grown to accept this version much more than the original. Becca´s words fit the music I wrote better."

Even as Eigsti gushes about how important Daylight at Midnight is to his growth as an artist, he´s already thinking about his next musical exploits, which came into focus when he and Lage looked into the crystal balls of their respective futures. In addition to continuing to work with Stevens, Eigsti also wants to bring into the mix vocalist Gretchen Parlato who he´s been touring with in her band the past year. Add an additional keyboardist, an electric bassist and a drummer/sampler and you come up with the band Free Agency, which has already played a few selective gigs. "To go into Free Agency before Daylight at Midnight would have been too much a leap from my last couple of albums," Eigsti says. "But that´s where I´m headed. With Daylight at Midnight, I started to get into the singer/songwriter space. For my next phase I´ll be composing my own material from that melodic place."

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Julie Murray Porter
Director Publicity, Concord Music Group
100 N Crescent Drive, G Level
Beverly Hills CA 90210
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