Rick Bottari

Rick has been playing music and piano since he was 5 yearsold, and comes from a very musical family. Early memories from the 1970's include Rick playing his sister JoAnn's Fender Rhodes, Crumar Organ, and Moog keyboards along with a wide variety of music ranging from Stevie Wonder, TheBee Gee's, George Benson, Donna Summer, ELO. Duringthis time Rick's father introduced a reel to reel 2 track recorder and Rick's productions began ! In the early 1980's Rick further developed an affinity for NYC Dance Music, New Wave, R&B, Rock, and Funk. Enter the Teac 4 track cassette recorder Ricks production skills grow even more. Songwriting, production, sound design and a new serious Jazz interest start brewing all coming together. Throughout  his High school years Rick studied privateley and was mentored by New England Conservatory alumnus Frank Doyle who was instrumental in fostering Rick's talents and varied interests.
 Soon after Rick graduated from high school, he met up with dance music's legendary producer/ DJ, Tommy Nappi and worked on many now classic freestyle dance records as a synthesizer player, beat programmer, and engineer. The pair made legendary dance music which then opened the ears and eyes of producer Ric Wake, who placed Bottari in Taylor Dayne’s band for her hit album “Tell It To My Heart”.Through this opportunity, Rick toured the world in Taylor Dayne’s band and also became the opening act for the Michael Jackson “Bad” Tour in Europe. After the tour ended in1989, Rick went on to be a highly prolific artist palying in local NY bands, producing records and artists, and performing with artists such as Bob Geldof, Snow, Kevin Grivois, performing on records with New Kids on the Block, Queen and Larry Corryel. In 1996, Creed Taylor of famed CTI records brought Rick in under his wing to produce five songs for the acid Jazz record entitled, "Thus Spoke Z Evolution". The millennium brought about a major turn inward return to Long Island not far from his home town. Rick went off the radar determined to be closer to family, nature, and to further explore poetry, art creation, his singing voice, the guitar, videography, photography and literature. Today Rick divides his creative time between his private students, writing, composing, and producing music in his home studio then releasing it to the world.

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