Steve Rudolph

Born in 1949 in Evansville, Indiana, jazz pianist, arranger, and composer Steve Rudolph first took up the trumpet before switching to piano at age twenty-two. In 1977 he joined a tour with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, sharing stages with Helen O’Connell and the Mills Brothers. The following year he settled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he established and led the nonprofit Central PA Friends of Jazz. He later performed worldwide with both the Harrisburg Symphony and Miami’s New World Symphony, appearing as soloist with the latter, and received the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Jazz Fellowship in 1995 along with its Jazz Composers Fellowship in 2001. At the 1998 JazzTimes Convention in New York City he was named Best Emerging Artist, and in 1999 he won first place in Jazziz Magazine’s Seven Springs Jazz Festival Piano Competition, sharing the bill with Louie Bellson, Grammy winner Mark Murphy, Al Grey, John Blake, Jeanie Bryson, Clark Terry, Paquito D’Rivera, Herb Ellis, Carl Allen, Buddy DeFranco, and Terry Gibbs. As a recording artist he released the 1995 album Everything I Love with Roger Humphries, Dwayne Dolphin, and Steve Varner; the 1997 album Pure Imagination with Robin Work, Paul Langosch, and Bill Goodwin; the 1998 release Crabtree & Evelyn—Music for Romance with the Steve Rudolph Trio; and Christmas with the Steve Rudolph Trio (1998), which featured Paul Langosch and Matt Wilson. He also produced and performed on Cathy Chemi’s 1999 debut CD, You & I.