DAVID BENOIT feat. Sara Gazarek

Since launching his recording career in 1977, David Benoit's expansive career as a contemporary jazz pianist and composer has included over 25 solo recordings. His '80s releases This Side Up, Freedom at Midnight and the GRAMMY-nominated Every Step of the Way are considered influential genre classics. Among his other GRAMMY nominations are those for Best Instrumental Composition (for "Dad's Room," from 1999's Professional Dreamer) and Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance (for the GRP All-Star Big Band). His prolific output since 2000 includes several prominent Charlie Brown related projects (including Here's To You, Charlie Brown: 50 Great Years and the
star-studded 40 Years: A Charlie Brown Christmas) that reflect his lifelong passion for the music of original Peanuts composer Vince Guaraldi and solidify Benoit's role as his musical heir. Benoit has also released the Billboard Contemporary Jazz charting albums Fuzzy Logic, Right Here, Right Now, Full Circle and Heroes, which paid homage to the pianist's top jazz and pop influences.

Benoit's ever expanding slate of orchestral music endeavors include his ongoing role as conductor of the Asia America Symphony Orchestra and leading such eminent orchestras
as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the symphonies of London, Nuremberg, San Francisco, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Jose. Concurrent with his burgeoning career as a conductor, he recorded 1996's American Landscape with The London Symphony Orchestra and 2005's Orchestral Stories with members of the Asia America Symphony Orchestra and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Orchestral Stories featured his first piano concerto "The Centaur and the Sphinx" and his acclaimed symphonic piece "Kobe," both of which he has performed in live settings across the country. In 2009,
Benoit performed and conducted Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" with the Asia America Symphony Orchestra in a show that included Broadway great Lea Salonga; he later conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the same orchestra in his critically acclaimed debut at Los Angeles' Disney Hall.

Benoit's notable film scores include The Stars Fell on Henrietta, produced by Clint Eastwood and starring Robert Duvall; and The Christmas Tree, produced by Sally Field, voted Best Score of 1996 by Film Score Magazine. Benoit has also been a longtime guest educator with the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, winning the organization's "excellence in music education" award in 2001.

This year, Benoit will head on the road to perform compositions from his latest album, Conversation. Set for release on May 29, 2012, on Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group, Benoit gets assistance along the way from musicians representing a broad cross section of styles: electric guitarist Jeff Golub, acoustic guitarist Pat Kelley, guitarist David Pack, flutist Tim Weisberg, classical pianist Robert Theis and a cadre of
young classical players who are fearless about taking their music to less traditional and more adventurous and exploratory places.

Championed by some of music’s most celebrated figures, Sara Gazarek has emerged as a strikingly original artist with limitless potential. With three highly acclaimed CD’s under her belt at the young age of 30, Sara has been hailed by the LA Times as “the next important jazz singer,” and “impeccable,” by the Winnipeg Free Press, Sara continues to seamlessly combine the intimacy of singer/songwriter stylings with the musical and improvisational elements of jazz. Blessed with a gorgeous, translucent voice, excellent pitch, and supple sense of time, Gazarek is steeped in the jazz tradition, but is not afraid to embrace the music that moves her generation. Her newest CD, Blossom & Bee (2012, Palmetto) was released to rave reviews, as Nick Mondello of Jazz Times has noted “‘Blossom & Bee’ has all the beauty, bite and superb workings of a winner. It’s as good – or better – than some recent Grammy®-nominated or winning female vocalist efforts.” Sara is currently on faculty at the University of Southern California, leading the award-winning vocal jazz ensemble there and teaching privately.