Guy Mintus Trio
“Connecting the Dots” New York release party
6pm doors • 7pm show
About
Award-winning pianist and composer Guy Mintus brings his celebrated international trio to National Sawdust for a vivacious show celebrating their new album. Combining Horace Silver and Zohar Argov, Barbra Streisand and Fairouz, neighborhood vibes from NYC and the silk road, this event will be a splendid multicultural vision served with spontaneity, groove, and depth.
Tickets
The Artists
Israeli pianist and composer Guy Mintus is a true citizen of the world. Coming from a mixed heritage of Iraqi, Moroccan, and Polish Jews, he is based between Tel Aviv and New York while constantly on the go, having recently performed in Brazil, India, Bulgaria, Switzerland, France, Germany, and different cities in the US and Canada. Guy is equally at home whether he’s sharing the stage with jazz legends, composing for classical orchestras, collaborating with masters of traditional music, working with kids, or guesting as a soloist with Ska-Punk band Streetlight Manifesto, with whom he performed at a sold out Beacon Theater.
Guy’s music is a meeting point between different rivers of inspiration flowing freely into each other, a trained concert pianist with the energy of a rock-star and a jazz musician’s sense of adventure who’s unafraid to throw his native middle-eastern scales and rhythms into the mix. “Guy is mad scientist”, proclaimed Grammy-winning artist Arturo O’Farrill, with whom Guy performed several times at the legendary Apollo Theater, “no one does it like him”.
Guy’s awards include the Leonard Bernstein Award from ASCAP and the Bernstein Family Foundation, the Prix du Public in the Montreux Jazz Festival’s solo piano competition, and two of ASCAP’s Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award.
Guy has been commissioned to compose works by the American Composers Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and the Jerusalem East and West Orchestra. In 2018, he performed Rhapsody in Blue with the Bayerische Philharmonic, composed music for Fiddler (the new documentary on Fiddler on the Roof from HBO director Max Lewkowicz), and premiered his first piano concerto with the Israeli Chamber Orchestra.
The Guy Mintus Trio started with the need to create a musical home in which different identities and influences could co-exist and come together as a unique unified voice. The electricity and kinetic listening between the three musicians are well-felt and have been described as “keeping the entire hall with held breath” (Barka Fabianova, Full Moon Zine Magazine). The trio’s debut record has been selected as DownBeat Magazine’s Editor’s Pick, leading to performances of the trio at NY’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, Winter JazzFest, and at the Montreal Jazz Festival.
The group’s sophomore recording, Connecting the Dots, has been recently released on the French label Jazz Family; it brings together Horace Silver and Zohar Argov, Barbra Streisand and Fairouz, a neighborhood in NY’s SoHo and the Sufi poet Jalal Uddin Muhammed Rumi. The album includes guest appearances by Israeli vocalist Sivan Arbel and saxophone legend Dave Liebman (Miles Davis, Elvin Jones). In 2019, the trio will give its debut shows in Turkey and Kazakhstan, preceding a European tour in celebration of the new album.
Guy is also a passionate educator, having taught workshops in numerous institutions, from the Royal Conservatory of Madrid to mid-western US universities and refugee camps around Europe. Most recently, he released a semi-viral musical short film called Can You Tell the Difference?, shot at various Jewish-Arab primary schools in Israel that support the idea of coexistence.
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