George Cotsirilos

George Cotsirilos Bio

Originally from Chicago, George Cotsirilos has been a member of the San Francisco Bay Area jazz community for many years and has performed with a wide variety of artists, from San Francisco jazz fixtures like Eddie Marshall, Mel Martin, Pharaoh Sanders and Mark Levine to internationally recognized blues singer Etta James, Bill Evans bassist Chuck Israels, and the vocal group, The Whispers. His most recent 2018 CD, “Mostly In Blue” (OA2/Origin Arts Records), spent over three months on the Jazz Weekly Top 50 radio charts, rising to number 15, received excellent reviews and was chosen by Downbeat Magazine as one of the best CD's of 2018. Prior to the release of “Mostly In Blue”, Cotsirilos recorded six CD’s as a leader and co-led the quintet, San Francisco Nighthawks (Monarch Records), with venerated drummer Eddie Marshall, bassist Robb Fisher and pianist Paul Nagel. His three prior trio CD’s on OA2/Origin Records with current quartet members Fisher and Ron Marabuto received widespread critical praise (“Sublimely fluid jazz guitar skills...this is about as tight a jazz trio as you'll ever be lucky enough to hear with eloquent bass lines and delicately nuanced percussion”— David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle). Cotsirilos’s last trio CD, “Variations,” was chosen by erstwhile Washington Post jazz critic and Jazztimes editor, Royal Stokes, as one of the most notable jazz instrumental CD’s of 2013.