Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff stands out as a pianist and composer whose urbane jazz draws from post-bop, fusion, and world music sources. He first surfaced in the 1970s as a performer and arranger alongside Cal Tjader, later collaborating with figures such as Airto Moreira and Nancy Wilson, and achieved broader recognition in the 1990s while serving as musical director for Arsenio Hall. Among his solo releases are the 1995 album Jumpstart!, 2000’s Impure Thoughts, and 2009’s Joe’s Strut. He also handled much of the scoring for Nickelodeon’s The Naked Brothers Band, a series created by his wife, actress Polly Draper, and starring their sons Nat and Alex Wolff. After overcoming a rare cancer diagnosis, Wolff resumed his recording career with the 2019 album Swirl.

Born Michael Blieden Wolff in Victorville, California, in 1952, he spent his formative years in Memphis and New Orleans. Displaying prodigious talent, he began playing piano at age eight, an ability nurtured by his father, a physician and jazz enthusiast. After brief stints at UCLA and UC Berkeley, he departed college at nineteen to tour for two years with vibraphonist Cal Tjader, contributing to the 1973 release Tambu. Relocating to New York by the mid-1970s, he performed regularly with Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins, Jean-Luc Ponty, Airto Moreira, Tom Harrell, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. From 1989 to 1994 he also served as musical director for The Arsenio Hall Show while writing scores for various film and television projects.

Wolff’s first solo outing, the self-titled Michael Wolff, appeared in 1993, followed by the trio recordings Jumpstart! in 1995 and 2AM in 1996. Around this time he received a diagnosis of Tourette’s Syndrome, a condition present since childhood; he has since advocated publicly for greater awareness, notably teaming with Polly Draper on the 1998 film The Tic Code, which drew directly from his experiences. That same year he issued the trio album Portraiture, The Blues Period. Wolff and Draper are the parents of Nat and Alex Wolff, who rose to prominence in the Draper-produced Nickelodeon series The Naked Brothers Band, which aired from 2007 to 2009.

During the early 2000s Wolff collaborated with percussionists Badal Roy, Frank Colon, and Café da Silva on world-music-oriented projects that included 2000’s Impure Thoughts, 2001’s Intoxicate, and 2004’s Dangerous Vision. The folk-tinged Love and Destruction followed in 2006. In 2009 he delivered the jazz- and fusion-focused Joe’s Strut, featuring saxophonists Steve Wilson and Ian Youn. He subsequently formed the Wolff & Clark duo with longtime drummer Mike Clark, releasing several albums. After a four-year struggle with cancer, Wolff resurfaced in 2019 with the trio recording Swirl, joined by bassist Ben Allison and drummer Allan Mednard; the same group returned the following year for Bounce.