Event:

Bradley Sowash - Improvising is for Everyone

Eye players read music.  Ear players improvise.  Today’s well-rounded students need instruction in both.   Learn to use the basic theory and music reading you already teach as a foundation for students learning to improvise. 

Biography:

After earning his degree in music composition at Ohio State University, moved to New York City where he worked with many modern dance luminaries including Mark Morris, Meredith Monk and Susan Hadley with whom he collaborated for 10 years. Later, while living abroad, Sowash refined his mainstream jazz piano technique before appreciative audiences in several countries while exploring the roots of concert performance.  Sowash returned to his native Ohio to develop his emerging unique piano style, which, while influenced by jazz, remains distinctly his own. His publications include numerous jazz piano books published by the Neil A. Kjos Music Company and Houston Enterprises as well as several volumes of jazz hymn arrangements published by Augsburg Fortress Press. A well-regarded jazz educator, he frequently leads master classes and teacher training workshops at universities, music stores and conferences nationwide. He is the director of The Jazz Workshop, a division of Columbus, Ohio’s Chamber Music Connection, in which student jazz combos receive weekly coaching by professional jazz musicians and he teaches at the Jazz Academy administered by Jazz Arts Group. He also maintains a private studio with students ranging from age 12 to 70.  Sowash currently serves on the board of the Worthington Arts Council and the Jazz Education Connection of Ohio. In 1999, he was the featured artist at the Arts Midwest 15-state regional conference in Cleveland, Ohio. He is listed in John Schaefer’s book, New Sounds: A Listener’s Guide to New Music and in Katherine Teck’s Movement to Music.