Bill Stevens Jazz

Bill Stevens Bio

Bill Stevens is an active jazz pianist, band leader, and educator. He is the host of The Bill Stevens Jazz Hour at Ruggero Piano, a monthly concert series featuring rotating guest artists. He has performed at New Yorks legendary jazz club Birdland with Hilary Kole, recorded with singer Renn Woods, and lead a jazz + visual art quintet for The Walden School Summer Concert Series. A resident of North Carolina, Bill was the house pianist at The Know Bookstore and Restaurant in Durham NC from April of 2008 through March of 2010. He has also lead groups in regular performances at The Irregardless Cafe, The Broad Street Cafe, The Blue Coffee Cafe, The Salidelia Cafe, The Lands End Clubhouse, and numerous private parties, working with a range of fine musicians including Eric Mrozkowski (drums), Pete Kimosh (bass), Chip Newton (guitar), Aaron Mills (bass), Weldon Kollock (trombone), and Tim Smith (winds).

Bill is also a seasoned educator. He was Artist in Residence at The Dublin School in Dublin New Hampshire, April - May of 2010, teaching classes in Musicianship and giving a concert with his trio. Bill has been on the faculty of The Walden School's Young Musicians' Program since 2000 and Teacher Training Institute since 2006. He has been exploring how to apply the unique pedagogy of The Walden School Musicianship Course to jazz instruction since 2000 and has been offering classes in Jazz Musicianship since 2001. Bill is the author of Jazz Musicianship: A Guidebook for Integrated Learning, volume 1 of which, edited by Tony Makarome and Whit Bernard, is slated to be published by The Walden School Press in 2012.

Bill is an alumni of The Oberlin Conservatory, graduating Pi Kappa Lambda in 2000 with a major in Music Composition and an independently designed major in Oral Music - focusing on listening and improvisation. His teachers included John Luther Adams, Randolph Coleman, Param Vir, Sanford Margolis, and Neal Creque. He has a Masters Degree in Piano Performance from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, graduating Pi Kappa Lambda in 2002, where he studied with Andrew Willis.

As a young composer, Bill's work received national recognition. He was named a level 1 Arts finalist by the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts (NFAA) and received The Presidential Scholars award in the arts (1995).

Bill holds a Three-Year Teaching Certificate in Deep Listening (tm) from The Deep Listening Institute (formerly The Pauline Oliveros Foundation). He has also served a year's apprenticeship with composer Pauline Oliveros, studying and teaching Deep Listening under her mentorship. Deep Listening is a practice of listening to sounds with meditative awareness, using this awareness as a point of entry into creativity in general and improvisation in particular.

Contact Information

Email: Bill@BillStevensJazz.com
Phone: (919) 788-9358
Facebook: Facebook.com/BillStevensJazz