Edward Simon

Born in Punta, Cardón, Venezuela, in 1969, jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Edward Simon first reached the United States in 1981 at age twelve and enrolled at Philadelphia’s Performing Arts School. He completed his studies there by fifteen, then pursued classical piano and performance training on scholarship at the University of the Arts before transferring to the Manhattan School of Music to focus on jazz piano. Professional work began in 1988 with an appearance on Greg Osby’s Mind Games; the next year he entered saxophonist Bobby Watson’s Horizon band, staying through 1994 and contributing to The Inventor (1990), Present Tense (1992), and Midwest Shuffle (1994). Between 1994 and 2002 he served as pianist in trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s group, recording on Romantic Defiance and the Spike Lee film score Clockers (both 1995), The Heart Speaks (1996), the Kasi Lemmons film score Eve’s Bayou (1997), and Let’s Get Lost (2001). Additional sessions during this period paired him with guitarist Kevin Eubanks, alto saxophonist Dave Binney, flutist Herbie Mann, and tenor saxophonist Mark Turner.

His first album as leader, Beauty Within, appeared on Audioquest in 1994 and introduced the Edward Simon Group, a trio completed by electric bassist Anthony Jackson and drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernández. The following year he issued an eponymous trio date featuring bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Adam Cruz, with guest tenor saxophone from Mark Turner and percussion from Milton Cardona. Expanding beyond the piano-trio format, Simon released La Bikina in 1998, adding saxophonists Turner and Binney, trumpeter Diego Urcola, bassist Ben Street, drummer-percussionist Cruz, and percussionist Pernel Saturnino, with Cardona supplying vocals. Subsequent trio explorations included 2003’s The Process (bassist John Patitucci, drummer Eric Harland), 2004’s Simplicitas (bassist Avishai Cohen, drummer Adam Cruz), and three further projects with Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade: Unicity (2006), Poesía (2009), and Trio Live in New York at Jazz Standard (2013).

In 2000 Simon and Binney formed the creative jazz quartet Afinidad, which issued its self-titled debut in 2001 and Océanos in 2007 with bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade. Simon established Ensemble Venezuela in 2003 to fuse creative jazz with traditional Venezuelan music; a 2005 Chamber Music America commission supported the composition Venezuelan Suite for the ensemble. Ten musicians drawn from the United States, Venezuela, and Colombia—including saxophonist Turner and drummer Cruz—recorded the work at Brooklyn’s Systems Two studio in 2012, and Sunnyside issued Venezuelan Suite in January 2014. Simon also belongs to the SF Jazz Collective.