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Erica Corbo

Erica Corbo is a professional musician and performance artist native to the Philadelphia area. Implementing her talents mainly on the piano, she also performs as a flutist, vocalist, and dancer. Her work spans the disciplines of jazz, free improv, and original music. Believing in music as a universal language, Erica approaches her playing from a strong melodic standpoint, while leaving room for experimentation with dissonance and atonality. Extensive knowledge of the Alexander Technique empowers her playing with a physical balance and grace.

Believing in music as a universal language, Erica Corbo approaches her playing from a strong melodic standpoint, while leaving room to experiment with dissonance and atonality.

Erica works as a jazz musician, playing solo piano and small ensemble-jazz in Philadelphia area restaurants, venues, and for weddings and events. She leads her own small jazz ensemble on piano in which she also sings and tap dances. Ms. Corbo works extensively with the Philadelphia Jazz Project as a pianist, vocalist, music director, and creative director, and also serves as a pianist and bandleader for the jazz vocalist collective DivaNation Philly. She collaborates regularly with Pamela Hetherington and Take It Away Dance as a pianist, accompanist, vocalist, and music director, and is a member of the piano trio, Swing Three, with Pamela Hetherington on tap shoes, and Tim Price on sax. Erica plays with and manages the free improvisation ensemble Space Whale Orchestra, and performs as a solo improv artist on piano, flute, and as a dancer. She works substantially with the Impermanent Society of Philadelphia, participating in performances, festivals, workshops, and conferences on improvisation. Erica produces her own monthly concert series, Warp Factor 9, which takes place every third Thursday at the Philadelphia Suzuki Piano Academy. The series features solo artists and chamber ensembles of all genres, and seeks to soften the divide between the avant-garde and other genres of music. Ms. Corbo is the pianist and Minister of Music at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd in Yeadon, PA. “I, America,” her first solo album of original material, was released in February 2017, and another is on the way. She performs her original music in the genre-bending stage show, “An American Odyssey Through Space and Time.”

Erica has studied privately with mentors Brian Marsella (John Zorn, Cyro Baptista) and Farid Barron (Wynton Marsalis, Sun Ra Arkestra.) She has had the pleasure of performing and collaborating with artists such as Tim Price, Pamela Hetherington, Terry Lawson, Elliott Levin, Richard Hill, Bert Harris, Kimpedro Rodriguez, John Lamkin, Michael Szeleky, Raphael Xavier, Dan Blacksberg, V. Shayne Frederick, Tara Middleton, DM Hotep, Carol Harris, Arturo Stable, Loren Groenendaal, Monnette Sudler, Michelle Lordi, Kyle Press and many more!

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Album Review

Space Whale Orchestra: Born into Beauty

Read "Born into Beauty" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


The Philadelphia based Space Whale Orchestra is a collaborative improvisational quartet that has been successfully forging a singular style. Led by keyboardist Erica Corbo, the group's Born Into Beauty goes beyond conceptual cohesiveness—it is, in fact, a single, spontaneously created, 17-part suite. The band members perform this stimulating, genre defying work with sensitivity and panache. On the opening title track, trombonist Connor Przybyszewski sets a tense and introspective mood with reverberating vamps. As saxophonist Steve Davit and clarinetist ...

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"Erica is an awesome mind and artist and we are excited to work with her again." —Philadelphia Jazz Project

"Erica Corbo is a vivid woman with creative independence and...a soulful mindset. Killer player." — Tim Price, Philly sax player and multi-instrumentalist

​"Part cabaret diva, part steampunk traveler through space and time.... with Corbo’s prancing jazzy piano and bright voice front and center." —John Vettese for WXPN's The Key http://thekey.xpn.org/2017/02/26/items-tagged-philadelphia-music-chance-sounds- silence/

Primary Instrument

Keyboards

Location

Philadelphia

Willing to teach

Beginner to advanced

Credentials/Background

Piano and flute at Dreaming Tree Music in West Philly Piano and flute at Rockdale Music in Media Suzuki Piano levels 1 and 2 at the Philadelphia Suzuki Piano Academy

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Born into Beauty

Self Produced
2021

buy

Born in Beauty

Self Produced
2021

buy

Quick, said the thrush

From: Born into Beauty
By Erica Corbo

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