MUSIC

Music City Masters is an interview/performance program that spotlights some of the area’s finest jazz musicians and explores their contributions in the many musical forms that make up Music City. Musical guests are pianist/arranger Jeffrey Steinberg, trumpeter Rod McGaha, and pianist Chris Walters. The program is moderated by jazz piano legend Beegie Adair.

The program takes place in the Jazz Cave at the Nashville Jazz Workshop. It is planned as the first in an ongoing series to explore the place of jazz and jazz musicians in the city’s musical landscape. The program will be presented to a live audience and also recorded for later internet broadcast. The program is made possible through support from the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

Beegie Adair is the dean of Nashville jazz pianists, with a career spanning more than 40 years. She epitomizes the versatility of the city’s jazz musicians: in addition to jazz, she has recorded and performed in the country, pop, blues, and rock vein. Her career has included radio, television, and studio work. In recent years her focus has been exclusively on jazz. She has toured nationally and internationally and her CD’s are acclaimed the world over. Her skills as an interviewer and conversationalist are also legendary. During the 1990’s she hosted “Improvised Thoughts” on WMOT radio and has had a number of live performance series that included interview and music. She has been a guest on Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz.”

Our guest musicians reflect a wide range of interests beyond jazz, including gospel, pop, classical, country, hip-hop, and world music. Their activities include writing, producing, arranging, composing, conducting, film, and studio work.

Upon graduating from the Berklee School of Music, Jeffrey Steinberg toured the world with the Glenn Miller Orchestra under the direction of Buddy DeFranco. He went on to work as a composer, arranger, producer, or performer for such luminaries as Count Basie, Maynard Ferguson, Stan Kenton, Perry Como, and Michel Legrand. He has composed and arranged for symphony orchestras, film, and television commercials. He has served as pops conductor for the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and was instrumental in the “Jazz at the Symphony” series of several years ago that featured local jazz artists performing with the orchestra. He is currently active in arranging and producing for Green Hill Music.

Rod McGaha began playing trumpet in the fourth grade in his native Chicago, and first found work playing gospel and R&B. He was “discovered” playing at a local festival in 1989 by legendary trumpeter Clark Terry, who became an important mentor for the young trumpeter. In addition to his jazz studies, Rod performed with a number of gospel, R&B, and pop artists, including Bebe and Cece Winans, the O’Jays, Lou Rawls, and Kenny Rogers. He moved to Nashville in the early 1990’s and began a busy career that included performing, composing, recording, and producing. During that time he also spent time in the band of jazz legend Max Roach. McGaha has several jazz CD’s to his credit, the most recent being “A Gentle Man,” a project with strings arranged by Jeff Steinberg.

New Orleans born pianist/singer/composer Chris Walters is an independentartist who has resided in Nashville since 1989. He served as Barbara Mandrell’s Music Director from 1989-1997 and then toured as keyboardist with the country supergroup Alabama till 2004. Chris’s varied career includes touring with his own band and performing with other groups, including J.D. Souther, Peter Mayer, and the Jeff Coffin Mu’tet. He has performed in symphonic, film, and world music settings. Chris is also a notable alumnus of the Jazz Studies Program at Webster University in St. Louis and has three jazz CD’s to his credit.

Our three musical guests and distinguished moderator offer outstanding examples of how jazz can be a foundation for many different areas of the music business. Music City Masters will explore these connections through in-depth interviews as well as lots of music.

Tickets will be available online and by phone at the Nashville Jazz Workshop beginning Monday, October 29.