John Serry is an expressive and versatile jazz improviser, composer … Video

19.01. – Happy Birthday !!! Although he has often earned a living from film, theater, and television work, John Serry is an expressive and versatile jazz improviser, composer who is as comfortable playing straight-ahead acoustic post-bop as he is playing electric fusion. In fact, some of his music has blurred the line between the two; his main influences on the piano include Chick Corea, Bill Evans, and Keith Jarrett.

Classically trained, the native New Yorker was a concerto soloist with the Long Island Youth Orchestra in 1970 (when he was only 16) and on a 1973 tour of Europe. While completing his studies at the Eastman School of Music, he composed and performed in the fusion band Auracle. Serry (not to be confused with new age artist Jonn Serrie) was 24 when, in 1978, he was featured prominently on Auracle’s debut album, Glider (Chrysalis Records, co-produced by Teo Macero, best known for his work with Miles Davis). After signing a solo contract with Chrysalis, Serry debuted on an LP as a leader with 1979’s Exhibition and followed it up with Jazziz in 1980. One of the people who heard Jazziz was magazine publisher Michael Fagien, who named Jazziz magazine after Serry’s sophomore LP before turning it into one of the top jazz publications. It wasn’t until 1995 that Serry, at 41, recorded his next album, Enchantress, which Telarc Jazz released as a result of Serry winning the grand prize in Jazziz/Steinway Piano’s 1995 Keyboards On Fire competition (for which Dave Brubeck and Bob James served as judges). The late 1990s found Serry continuing to do a great deal of teaching in addition to his extensive theater and television work.

Since 2004, he has lived in Europe (London, Spain, Prague, Germany, Italy, France) where he performs, more or less exclusively, his original compositions with his trios in various cities. His most recent albums are The Shift (recorded with his London quartet in 2006 and released in 2013) and Disquisition (released December, 2017, with Paolo Ghetti bass and Bruno Farinelli drums.) Both are available at CD Baby, Facebook (www.facebook.com/johnserry1), iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and other outlets. John Serry was nominated fora Grammy for his arrangement of his composition, Sabotage from his 1979 debut album, Exhibition.