Born: December 11, 1984 Primary Instrument: Piano
Growing up in Madison, WI, Mara discovered music at an early age, finding her voice walking alone in the tall grass of Wisconsin’s prairie land, dancing on the piers, and listening with consistently open ears. Inherently drawn to the piano, both Mara’s playing as well as her compositions have been described by many as organic, honest, and lyrical.
Mara’s passion for music as well as human diversity and interaction eventually drew her to New York City, where she studied jazz composition & piano at New York University, graduating magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies in 2008. Throughout her 6 years in New York City, Mara studied closely with Grammy award winning arranger & composer Gil Goldstein (Paul Simon, Michael Brecker, Jill Scott, Jonatha Brooke), Internationally acclaimed arranger & pianist Jim McNeely, jazz heavyweight Kenny Werner, and trumpeter/founder for the School of Improvised Music Ralph Alessi, among others.
Recently Mara released her debut album as a leader, School of Fish, an album of Mara’s original compositions celebrating community and human interaction - how we forge unspoken bonds, react, drift apart, and out of inherent need, find each other again. Mara performs regularly in the New York area with her own quartet (the Mara Rosenbloom Quartet) featuring Darius Jones, Maeve Royce, and Nick Anderson, as well as wide variety of other ensembles. Mara’s works for large ensemble have been premiered at the Blue Note Jazz Club NY, as well as showcased and conducted by Jim McNeely. In addition to her own music, Mara also has a constantly growing interest in Afro-Peruvian music, and has arranged for and performed with Internationally acclaimed Peruvian singer Eva Ayllon, and the Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet (performance at Festival Jazz Peru 2008).
Mara is also a committed educator, and currently teaches both composition and piano privately out of her Brooklyn home.
“Fresh. Honest” Jason Lindner
“It's fairly infrequent that my attention is captured by good jazz as of late, but fellow NYU alum Mara Rosenbloom's new record School of Fish has been spinning steadily in my stereo this week. Mara is an incredibly talented composer and pianist whose use of space has sometimes amazed me, sometimes confounded me. On School of Fish, her modular tunes give her similarly talented band plenty of room to function as an elastic unit, stretching and contorting her melodies into shifting shapes and forms.” Justin Goldner, Subdiversity
“Mara is amazing...Beautiful sensitive original music...sounded so real.” Ines Kuusik, All The Things...New York Jazz and More
Primary Instrument:
Piano
Location:
Brooklyn, NY
Willing to teach:
Intermediate to advanced students
