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Eli Yamin

Eli Yamin is a jazz and blues pianist, composer, singer, producer and educator. Raised in the bands of jazz masters Walter Perkins, Illinois Jacquet and Barry Harris, his joyful and imaginative piano playing have taken him around the world with his own groups as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. Department of State and led him to perform and teach at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City and President Obama’s White House. Yamin co-founded and serves as Managing and Artistic Director Jazz Power Initiative, a non-profit organization that transforms lives through jazz arts education. Yamin’s compositions like “A Healing Song,” about the healing power of the blues, and “Rwandan Child” about the wisdom of children awaken audiences shared sense of humanity, love, and joy. Eli’s jazz musicals for children are performed around the world and licensed by Theatrical Rights Worldwide. His CD’s are heard on Sirius XM and Jazz 88, WBGO in Newark.

As a pianist:

Eli Yamin, a Steinway artist, has performed with his quartet blues band as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. Department of State in Russia, Guatemala, Montenegro Mali, India, China, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Albania and Romania. He has performed at Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC and international festivals including The Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival (Moscow, Idaho), The St. Petersburg Jazz Festival in Russia, Guatemala Jazz Festival and Marciac in France. He has also appeared several times at the Obama White House.

His quartet’s acclaimed CD, You Can’t Buy Swing, airs nationally on Sirius XM and his Blues Band recording, I Feel So Glad released in 2011 continues strong sales internationally.

As a composer:

Eli composes lyrics and melody, such as “A Healing Song,” about the healing power of the blues and “Rwandan Child” reflecting the wisdom and importance of children. He has also written scores for films such as Phil Bertelson’s Around the Time and chamber music, Rickshaw in the Rain for clarinet, viola and piano, by Pia Clava, premiering at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Eli, with Clifford Carlson, has co-written five jazz musicals for children, including Message From Saturn about the blues and Nora’s Ark, the jazz musical a retelling of the biblical tale with swing, bebop and the blues. He recently released a CD of Holding the Torch for Liberty, the jazz musical about the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement with the Jazz Drama Singers, featuring Evan Christopher, clarinet, Sara Caswell, violin and Chris Washburne, trombone. The CD of Nora’s Ark, the jazz musical features his quintet and the Grammy Award Winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Both are produced by The Jazz Drama Program. Eli lives in New York City with his wife Lorraine and daughter Manika.

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4
Album Review

Claire Daly: Rah! Rah!

Read "Rah! Rah!" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


If you could thank your muse, to whom would you write and how? Baritone saxophonist Clare Daly recorded Rah! Rah! to thank the legendary Rahsaan Roland Kirk, an iconic multi- instrumentalist who seemed equal parts man and myth even while he was still alive. Kirk loved to stretch out cover versions as if they were his own tunes, which Daly honors by not only including “I'll Be Seeing You" but by playing and singing on “Alfie." She honors ...

3
Album Review

The Claire Daly Band: Rah! Rah!

Read "Rah! Rah!" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Award-winning baritone saxophonist Claire Daly isn't blowing her own horn on Rah! Rah! (well, she is, but more about that in a moment)--she's saluting one of her musical inspirations, the late Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a once-in-a-blue- moon talent who left us far too soon. Kirk, who lived only forty-two years, was quite literally a multi-instrumentalist, often playing two or three horns at the same time, some of which (manzello, stritch) he invented himself. Even though blind, he was part musical ...

4
Album Review

Claire Daly: Rah! Rah!

Read "Rah! Rah!" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Ask a casual fan about Rahsaan Roland Kirk's impact and you're likely to receive a remark about multi-horn madness—a man wielding three at once, brazenly blowing the walls down. But Kirk, of course, was so much more than that enduring image. His writing, performing, spirit and humanity spoke to the ages, reaching out and grabbing ahold of any listener open enough to hear the calling. Claire Daly knows that all too well. Having discovered Kirk's music through ...

5
Album Review

Eli Yamin: Message From Saturn

Read "Message From Saturn" reviewed by James Nadal


The Jazz Drama Program was founded in 2003, in New York City, by pianist and composer Eli Yamin, and educator Clifford Carlson, to stimulate youth by offering diverse and imaginative jazz, theater, and dance programs with active participation of those enrolled. Message From Saturn takes its title from a famous Sun Ra comment: “I just got a message from Saturn. We're not playing enough blues." With this statement as a launching point, the cosmological theme also draws inspiration from “The ...

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Album Review

Eli Yamin and Evan Christopher: Louie's Dream: For Our Jazz Heroes

Read "Louie's Dream: For Our Jazz Heroes" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Hero worship has long been a magnetic force that helps to draw in the next generation of musicians, yet this very concept is often pooh-poohed by a segment of the musical and artistic community. These people feel that new is always better, and that originality can't thrive if artists acknowledge their forefathers and wear their influences on their sleeves. Pianist Eli Yamin and clarinetist Evan Christopher have never bought into this line of thinking. On Louie's Dream: For Our Jazz ...

415
Album Review

Eli Yamin: You Can't Buy Swing

Read "You Can't Buy Swing" reviewed by George Kanzler


Pianist Eli Yamin is a communicator who believes jazz can foster a sense of community. His work is expansive and extroverted, populist in the best sense. As a teacher--he's now part of Jazz at Lincoln Center's education program--he's created jazz dramas and the dramatic impulse is a strong component of his music. So is swing. This album's title comes from a saying by a drummer who worked often with Yamin, the late Walter Perkins: “You can't buy swing, baby sweets. ...

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Performance / Tour

Jazz Power Initiative Kicks Off 20th Anniversary Season With The Intergenerational Jazz Power Jam Series

Jazz Power Initiative Kicks Off 20th Anniversary Season With The Intergenerational Jazz Power Jam Series

Source: Janny Gonzalez

Jazz Power Initiative (JPI), an Inwood-based non-profit organization founded in 2003 with the mission of transforming lives through jazz music, arts education and performance, kicks off its 20th anniversary season with the acclaimed Intergenerational Jazz Power Jam series starting in October. Held twice-monthly, the Intergenerational Jazz Power Jam presents professional and emerging jazz artists with a different featured guest, offering audiences cross-cultural and multidisciplinary sets of new works and jazz standards; the audience is then invited to join in and ...

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Performance / Tour

Eli Yamin And The Astro-Intergenerational Arkestra At Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola January 17, 2017 - "Message From Saturn"

Eli Yamin And The Astro-Intergenerational Arkestra At Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola January 17, 2017 - "Message From Saturn"

Source: Scott Thompson Public Relations

Eli Yamin and the Astro-Intergenerational Arkestra Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola January 17, 2017- 2 Sets One Night Only! Message From Saturn A Space Odyssey “I just got a message from Saturn. We are not playing enough blues!"—Sun Ra Eli Yamin and the Astro-Intergenerational Arkestra recently returned from their triumphant performances in Russia that amazed audiences with standing ovations, now brings his inspiring Sun Ra blues to Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola for one night only on Tuesday, ...

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Performance / Tour

Russia Welcomes Sun Ra - November 19 With The Jazz Drama Program Presentation Of "Message From Saturn"

Russia Welcomes Sun Ra - November 19 With The Jazz Drama Program Presentation Of "Message From Saturn"

Source: Scott Thompson Public Relations

Sun Ra Heads To Russia! Euro-Asian Premiere November 19, 2016 “Saxophonist Knoel Scott told me Sun Ra came into rehearsal and said, 'I just got a message from Saturn. We are not playing enough blues!' I thought about this for ten years, then joined up with Clifford Carlson to write this story." —Eli Yamin Eli Yamin and friends bring the Blues to Russia for the Euro-Asian premiere of Message From Saturn in Yekaterinburg on November 19! ...

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Recording

Sun Ra Tribute "Message From Saturn" by Eli Yamin - Available on October 10th

Sun Ra Tribute "Message From Saturn" by Eli Yamin - Available on October 10th

Source: Scott Thompson Public Relations

"Saxophonist Knoel Scott told me Sun Ra came into rehearsal and said, 'I just got a message from Saturn. We are not playing enough blues!' I thought about this for ten years, then joined up with Clifford Carlson to write this story." —Eli Yamin Liner notes from Message From Saturn A Space Odyssey of three young people on a galactic adventure to learn the healing power of The Blues. The Jazz Drama Program is a non-profit organization that helps youth ...

Event

BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center Presents Eli Yamin Blues Band on October 26

BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center Presents Eli Yamin Blues Band on October 26

Source: Allyson Morgan

BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, the longest operating performance venue in lower Manhattan, proudly presents the Eli Yamin Blues Band performing on Friday, October 26 at 8PM. The band will kick off our annual Tribeca Spotlight series, The Next Voice You Hear, with its debut recording, I Feel So Glad and a number of other rich and culturally insightful tunes off the newly minted album. Exploring a range of sounds, the Eli Yamin Blues Band’s music touches on spiritual, classical, ...

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Performance / Tour

Eli Yamin and Friends at Sweet Rhythm, Sunday April 30th

Eli Yamin and Friends at Sweet Rhythm, Sunday April 30th

Source: All About Jazz

Eli Yamin and Friends Sweet Rhythm 88 7th Avenue Sunday April 30th 8 and 10PM

Dear Friends: As some of you know, Eli has been undergoing chemotherapy. He and Lorraine are doing well under the circumstances and would love for you to join them at Sweet Rhythm for an uplifting musical event! Eli's treatment is working and his prognosis is good.

Sunday, April 30 Sweet Rhythm 88 7th Avenue (near Barrow Street) ...

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Performance / Tour

Count Basie Centennial Celebration with EYO ~ The Eli Yamin Orch. Tues., Dec. 28th at the Cornelia Street Cafe

Count Basie Centennial Celebration with EYO ~ The Eli Yamin Orch. Tues., Dec. 28th at the  Cornelia Street Cafe

Source: All About Jazz

December 23, 2004 To: Listings/Critics/Features From: JAZZ PROMO SERVICES Press Contact: JIM EIGO, [email protected] Cornelia Street Cafe 29 Cornelia Street Greenwich Village, NY 10014 Tel: 212-989-9319 Fax: 212-243-4207 Web: corneliastreetcafe.com “a culinary as well as a cultural landmark" Mayoral Proclamation, City of New York1987 Tuesday, December 28th 8:30 - 11 PM Count Basie Centennial Celebration with EYO ~ The Eli Yamin Orchestra Eli Yamin, piano Brad Leali, alto saxophone Harold Ousley, tenor saxophone Claire Daly, baritone saxophone Ravi Best, trumpet ...

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Rah! Rah!

Ride Symbol
2020

buy

Message From Saturn

Self Produced
2016

buy

Louie's Dream: For...

Self Produced
2013

buy

You Can't Buy Swing

Self Produced
2008

buy

Videos

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