Dick Hyman

Throughout a busy musical career that got underway in the early '50s, Dick Hyman has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, conductor, and composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in well over 100 albums recorded under his own name and many more in support of other artists.

While developing a masterful facility for improvisation in his own piano style, Mr. Hyman has also investigated ragtime and the earliest periods of jazz and has researched and recorded the piano music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake, and Fats Waller which he often features in his frequent recitals.

Other solo recordings include the music of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington. Recent recordings with orchestra are From The Age Of Swing, Swing Is Here, and Cheek To Cheek, while his early explorations on the Moog synthesizer have now been reissued.

Mr. Hyman's concert compositions for orchestra include his Piano Concerto, Ragtime Fantasy, The Longest Blues in the World, and From Chama to Cumbres by Steam, a work for orchestra, jazz combo, and prerecorded railroad sounds.

Among his recent chamber music performances are a Quintet for Piano and Strings which was recently performed by Ruth Laredo and the Shanghai Quartet; and a Sextette for Piano and Strings which Mr. Hyman performed as a premiere in Sarasota with members of La Musica.

Mr. Hyman has often been heard in duo-piano performances with Derek Smith, in Three-Piano Crossover with Marian McPartland and Ruth Laredo, and in various pops concerts under the direction of Doc Severinsen. Since 1985 he has acted as artistic director of the acclaimed Jazz in July series of concerts at New York's 92nd Street Y, and more recently has been named jazz advisor to the Oregon Festival of American Music.

In 1995 Mr. Hyman was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the New Jersey Jazz Society. Since then he has received honorary doctorates from Wilkes University, Five Towns College, and Hamilton College.

In addition to his activities in the jazz and concert worlds, Mr. Hyman had a prolific career in New York as a studio musician and won seven Most Valuable Player Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He acted as music director for such television programs as Benny Goodman's final appearance and for In Performance at the White House.

He received an Emmy for his original score for Sunshine's on the Way, a daytime drama, and another for musical direction of a PBS Special on Eubie Blake. He continues to be a frequent guest performer with Jim Cullum's Jazz Band on Live From Riverwalk. Other recent public radio broadcasts have been for Terry Gross' Fresh Air, where he played the music of Will Marion Cook and Eubie Blake.

In years past, Dick Hyman was music director for Arthur Godfrey and orchestrator of the hit musical Sugar Babies. He has served as composer/arranger/conductor/pianist for the Woody Allen films Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Broadway Danny Rose, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says "I Love You", Sweet and Lowdown, and The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion. Other film scores have included Moonstruck, Scott Joplin--King of Ragtime, The Lemon Sisters, and Alan and Naomi. Two of his recordings are included in the current Two Weeks Notice.

In the dance field, Mr. Hyman composed and performed the score for the Cleveland/San Jose Ballet Company's Piano Man, and Twyla Tharp's The Bum's Rush for the American Ballet Theater. He also arranged and performed for Miles Davis: Porgy and Bess, a choreographed production of The Dance Theater of Dallas.

Dick Hyman's 100 Years Of Jazz Piano, an encyclopedic CD-ROM, is based on his frequent recital-lecture. New recordings include "Berlin Lieder", with Marilyn Horne and Robert White, a second duo-piano performance with Ralph Sutton, "Just You, Just Me", and Forgotten Dreams (Archives of Novelty Piano) with John Sheridan.