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Greg Reitan

“I have been paying attention to Greg Reitan for several years now, finding him to be a pianist and composer who is already quite impressive and who seems to have a great deal of rapidly developing potential.” - Orrin Keepnews, from the liner notes for Antibes, released January 12, 2010 on Sunnyside Records

A native of Seattle, WA, Greg Reitan’s interest in music began at the age of ten. “I was fortunate to study with a number of great musicians,” he says, ‘[including] pianists Joni Metcalf, Dave Peck and composer/drummer Jerry Granelli. Summers were spent at the Bud Shank Jazz Workshop at Port Townsend, WA, where I studied piano with Hal Galper and arranging with John Clayton.” He won two scholarships to the Berklee School of Music, and the Kreielsheimer Scholarship at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

Greg relocated to Los Angeles in 1991, attended the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music as a Herb Alpert Merit and Dean’s Scholar, studying composition with Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli and Erica Muhl; piano with Milcho Leviev and Terry Trotter, and film composition with David Raksin and Christopher Young. Also in 1991, Reitan was a finalist in the John Coltrane Competition and was awarded the Harry Warren Prize for Film Scoring in 1995. Greg was a finalist in the Great American Jazz Piano Competition and the 1996 Hennessy Cognac Jazz Search in New York. Greg was a winner of the inaugural 2002 ASCAP Jazz Composer Award.

Reitan has also been a film composer/producer since 1995. He’s worked with Score Productions in New York, and composed music for ABC, CBS, and CNN. After leaving Score Productions, he composed the original score for the independent film, Dumbarton Bridge, for which he won the Grand Prize for Best Score at the 1999 Providence R.I. Film Festival. In 2001, he formed Evergreen Point Music, a Los Angeles based production company, whose clientele includes NBC News, XM Satellite Radio, Warner Bros, and various film projects.

Reitan performs internationally, and has had a long-standing relationship with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2000, two of his compositions were featured in the motion picture, Bark, starring Lisa Kudrow, which was an official selection of the Sundance Festival. In 2002, he won the inaugural ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award for his composition, “Man Overboard”, and became an official Steinway Artist that same year. The USC Symphony performed two of his works: Clarinet Concerto: In Three Movements and Los Angeles Fanfare. Source: Eugene Holley Jr.

Awards

ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award, 2002, Finalist, Hennessy Cognac Jazz Search, New York, NY, 1996, Finalist, Great American Jazz Piano Competition, FL, 1995, Finalist, John Coltrane Competition, 1991, Grand Prize: Best Score “Dumbarton Bridge” Providence, RI Film Festival, 1999, Harry Warren Award for Film Scoring, 1995, ASCAP Fred Karlin Film Scoring Fellowship, 1996

Gear

Greg Reitan is a Steinway Artist


Tags

4
Album Review

Greg Reitan: West 60th

Read "West 60th" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Pianist Greg Reitan is based in Los Angeles, a good place to take advantage of the work he has found in film and television. He has also served up four previous top-shelf jazz trio recordings, beginning with his terrific debut, Some Other Time (2009), followed up by Antibes (2010), Daybreak (2011) and Post No Bills, all on Sunnyside Records. Moving on to the tail end of the new millennium's second decade, we find Reitan offering up another piano trio outing, ...

4
Album Review

Greg Reitan: West 60th

Read "West 60th" reviewed by Peter J. Hoetjes


The collaboration of musicians unaccustomed to each other often yields unexpected and occasionally brilliant results. There is no substitute however, for familiarity. Greg Reitan has played with the same trio consisting of bassist Jack Daro and drummer Dean Koba for over two decades, and their resulting musicianship is versatile yet comfortable. It may have been recorded in Reitan's native Los Angeles, but West 60th began its conception in Manhattan, as the pianist gazed out at the city through the panoramic ...

8
Album Review

Greg Reitan: Post No Bills

Read "Post No Bills" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Los Angeles-based pianist/composer Greg Reitan's Some Other Time (Sunnyside Records) vied for the honors of “Debut of the Year" in 2009. Using his same trio--with bassist Jack Daro and drummer Dean Koba--Reitan followed up that auspicious start with two more outstanding sets, Antibes (2010) and Daybreak (2011), both for the Sunnyside label. With this same trio--they have been together since 1996--he has honed an elegant and polished sound, drawing on a Bill Evans influence--the light touch, subtle dynamics, ...

170
Album Review

Greg Reitan: Daybreak

Read "Daybreak" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Greg Reitan has, since 1995, carved out a career as an award-winning composer for television and film. It wasn't until 2009, however, that the Los Angeles-based pianist released his first jazz CD, one of the top piano trio recordings of the year, Some Other Time (Sunnyside Records). Reitan followed up this excellent debut with another top-level outing, Antibes (Sunnyside Records, 2010), and now he adds Daybreak, again using the trio format, and again with outstanding results.There's something to ...

232
Album Review

Greg Reitan: Antibes

Read "Antibes" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Los Angeles-based pianist Greg Reitan's debut, Some Other Time (Sunnyside Records, 2009), introduced a surprisingly mature talent. With a mix of American Songbook gems, some fine originals, a surprise or two, and a couple of jazz standards--all rendered with a distinctively sure and elegant touch--the pianist announced himself as a top tier talent in the crowded and ever-vibrant piano trio field.Antibes, Reitan's sophomore effort, is more of the same.Recording with the same interactive trio he employed ...

268
Album Review

Greg Reitan: Antibes

Read "Antibes" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose


Greg Reitan began the year with Some Other Time (Sunnyside, 2009), a spectacularly graceful record. He ends the year with another that equals--if not surpasses--the maturity of that album. Antibes is a work of exacting pianism and expansive grandeur. The record also dispels the notion that Reitan's music is an amalgam of his influences (Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett), for Reitan is a singular pianist with a technique becoming of a virtuoso of the highest order. His ...

381
Album Review

Greg Reitan: Some Other Time

Read "Some Other Time" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Elegance is a difficult quality to pin down, but you know it when you see it--or hear it. Duke Ellington, of course. Lester Young: Oh yeah. Or to take it into the piano trio game: Bill Evans, Hank Jones, Jessica Williams, Ahmad Jamal.With his debut Some Other Time, Los Angeles-based pianist Greg Reitan can also be added to the elegance category.Boundaries are being stretched in the piano trio format, with jamband approaches and added electronics coming ...

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146

Recording

Pianists: Matthew Shipp and Greg Reitan

Pianists: Matthew Shipp and Greg Reitan

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

Why consider in the same piece albums by pianists as unalike as Matthew Shipp and Greg Reitan? Because in different ways the ghost of Bud Powell informs their music; because pairing them may lead partisans of one to listen to the other and find unexpected rewards; because the profound dissimilarity between the iconoclast Shipp and the modern traditionalist Reitan typifies the wide variety of satisfactions to be found in jazz; and because they are more or less simultaneously releasing new ...

256

Recording

Greg Reitan 'Antibes' Released Today on Sunnyside Records

Greg Reitan 'Antibes' Released Today on Sunnyside Records

Source: Sunnyside Records

Greg Reitan: Antibes Sunnyside Records Release Date: 12-Jan-2010 “I have been paying attention to Greg Reitan for several years now, finding him to be a pianist and composer who is already quite impressive and who seems to have a great deal of rapidly developing potential." - Orrin Keepnews, from the CD liner notes

This quote is not a standard line from a music flack: Its from a man ...

361

Recording

Greg Reitan Releases 'Some Other Time' on Sunnyside Records

Greg Reitan Releases 'Some Other Time' on Sunnyside Records

Source: All About Jazz

“An old-school trio record of the highest order, Greg Reitan's Some Other Time harkens back to the day when great tunes played by a swinging band were reason enough to make an album." - Keyboard Magazine, February 2009 The modern jazz pianist not only has to master the voluminous contributions of the idiom's giants: He must also be conversant with every musical tradition that has crossed the eighty-eight keys. Sunnyside ...

Reviews for Antibes (2010):

“Greg Reitan began the year with Some Other Time (Sunnyside, 2009), a spectacularly graceful record. He ends the year with another that equals - if not surpasses - the maturity of that album. Antibes is a work of exacting pianism and expansive grandeur. The record also dispels the notion that Reitan's music is an amalgam of his influences (Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett), for Reitan is a singular pianist with a technique becoming of a virtuoso of the highest order.”

—Raul d'Gama Rose, All About Jazz

“Reitan closes the disc with “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” done most famously by Frank Sinatra on the 1955 Capitol Records album of the same name. The pianist, performing solo, plays the melody straight - and such a lovely melody it is, especially in Reitan's hands; and what a spare and perfect close to a first-rate CD by a bright new talent.”

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

West 60th

Sunnyside Records
2019

buy

Post No Bills

Sunnyside Records
2014

buy

Daybreak

Sunnyside Records
2011

buy

Antibes

Sunnyside Records
2010

buy

Some Other Time

Sunnyside Records
2009

buy

Antibes

Sunnyside Records
2009

buy

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