Dan Tepfer, a pianist based in Brooklyn, has earned recognition for his harmonically nuanced and classically informed style within acoustic post-bop jazz. After arriving on the New York scene during the 2000s, he released several well-received recordings under his own name, among them 2004’s Before the Storm, 2010’s Five Pedals Deep, and 2013’s Small Constructions alongside saxophonist Ben Wendel. Additional acclaim has come from his collaborations with established figures including drummer Billy Hart and altoist Lee Konitz, the latter appearing with Tepfer on 2019’s Decade.
Tepfer was born in Paris in 1982 to American parents and raised in a household shaped by artistic pursuits, with an opera-singer mother and a grandfather who performed jazz piano. Drawn to music early, he started piano studies at age six and later attended the Paris Conservatoire-Paul Dukas. Though already committed to performance by his teenage years, he first completed a Bachelor’s degree in astrophysics at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh before turning fully to music. In 2005 he received a Master’s degree from Boston’s New England Conservatory, where pianist Danilo Perez served as his instructor. He then moved to New York and soon began working with an array of prominent musicians such as Steve Lacy, Paul Motian, Bob Brookmeyer, Joe Lovano, Ralph Towner, Billy Hart, and Mark Turner.
His first appearance as a leader came in 2005 with the trio recording Before the Storm. Subsequent releases that drew favorable notice included 2007’s Oxygen, 2009’s Twelve Free Improvisations in Twelve Keys, and the aforementioned Five Pedals Deep. A sustained association with Lee Konitz developed through joint tours and recordings. Recognition arrived in the form of first prizes at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Fest solo piano competition and the 2006 East Coast Jazz Fest competition; he was also named JazzTimes Best New Artist in 2010 and DownBeat’s Rising Star in 2011, 2012, and 2013. As a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy he has performed in locations that include Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Czech Republic.
In 2013 Tepfer turned to his classical interests with Bach: Goldberg Variations while also appearing on drummer Billy Hart’s Sixty-Eight. That same year he recorded Small Constructions with Ben Wendel, followed a year later by the live release First Meeting: Live in London, Vol. 1, which featured Konitz. Eleven Cages, a trio album, appeared in 2017. Marking more than a decade of shared work, Tepfer and Konitz issued Decade in 2019.
