Biography
Rarely do performers fuse technical mastery with imaginative depth across blues and jazz, yet Bruce Katz achieves precisely that balance by grasping the core principles of each style and bringing out their most potent qualities. Long associated with Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters, Katz began studying music at age five after surpassing his sister on the classical repertoire assigned during her piano lessons. Encounters with classic jazz recordings and a Bessie Smith album ignited his enduring interest in both idioms. His initial prominent sideman role in the early 1980s came alongside Big Mama Thornton, after which he performed and traveled with Barrence Whitfield & the Savages, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Witherspoon, Johnny Adams, and Tiger Okoshi. Exhaustion from constant touring prompted enrollment at the New England Conservatory, where he completed a master’s degree in jazz. Five months following graduation he crossed paths with Ronnie Earl, who promptly added him to the lineup.
Over nearly five years with Earl, Katz appeared on six albums and shared songwriting credit on such tracks as “The Colour of Love,” “Ice Cream Man,” and “Hippology.” His solo debut, Crescent Crawl, arrived in 1992, followed the next year by Transformation. Shortly before Mississippi Moan reached stores, he departed the Broadcasters to devote full attention to his own projects. Subsequent releases comprise 1993’s Transformation, 1997’s Mississippi Moan, 2000’s Three Feet to the Ground, 2004’s Deeper Blue, and 2008’s Live! At the Firefly. Katz has also served in Gregg Allman’s band and has performed as pianist with the Allman Brothers Band. Beyond stage and studio work, he instructs piano students and once held an associate professorship at Berklee College of Music, where he introduced the institution’s first comprehensive blues curriculum. Two instructional DVDs appeared under his name: Breakthrough Blues Piano (2016) and Play Like Ray (2018).
Over nearly five years with Earl, Katz appeared on six albums and shared songwriting credit on such tracks as “The Colour of Love,” “Ice Cream Man,” and “Hippology.” His solo debut, Crescent Crawl, arrived in 1992, followed the next year by Transformation. Shortly before Mississippi Moan reached stores, he departed the Broadcasters to devote full attention to his own projects. Subsequent releases comprise 1993’s Transformation, 1997’s Mississippi Moan, 2000’s Three Feet to the Ground, 2004’s Deeper Blue, and 2008’s Live! At the Firefly. Katz has also served in Gregg Allman’s band and has performed as pianist with the Allman Brothers Band. Beyond stage and studio work, he instructs piano students and once held an associate professorship at Berklee College of Music, where he introduced the institution’s first comprehensive blues curriculum. Two instructional DVDs appeared under his name: Breakthrough Blues Piano (2016) and Play Like Ray (2018).
Albums