David Lopato Quintet

A concert of original compositions spanning the wide range of jazz improvisation.

Hudson Valley-based pianist/composer David Lopato has performed as a leader and sideman throughout the world. As a composer he has received multiple grants from the N.E.A., New York Foundation for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the Beards Fund, as well as a Fulbright Fellowship to study Javanese Gamelan in Surakarta, Indonesia, where he lived for a year. Lopato has toured his own music in configurations ranging from solo piano to 10-piece ensembles, having performed with Dave Liebman, Dewey Redman, Joe Lovano, Mark Helias, Ray Anderson, Wadada Leo Smith, Jane Ira Bloom, Steve Gorn and numerous others. His most recent recording, Gendhing for a Spirit Rising (Global Coolant-02), a Gamelan-influenced work for large ensemble, was hailed by Downbeat Magazine as one of the “Best Albums of 2017”…“unlike anything you are likely to hear this year (or any year).

Ed Neumeister is a musician’s musician, as his elders and peers are glad to tell you. Influential trombonist arranger and educator Bob Brookmeyer hailed him early on as “a gifted improviser,” while composer arranger Manny Albam, co-founder of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop, extolled Neumeister as “the perfect mixture as a musician. He knows Ellington as well as Bartok.” Saxophone star Joe Lovano has valued Neumeister as a colleague for some four decades, praising him as a conductor of “infectious flair” as well as “a soloist of deep expressive passion.” Another renowned saxophonist, Dave Leibman, simply dubbed him “one of the best trombonists in the business.” And veteran pianist Jim McNeely has said about Neumeister: “Whenever I play a gig with Ed, I know the music will be interesting. By the end of the evening, I will have asked myself a couple dozen times: ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ ” Then there are the critics, with DownBeat calling Neumeister “a highly distinctive solo voice” and JazzTimes admiring his “compelling” compositions.