Search - George Colligan :: Runaway

If you ve listened to Cassandra Wilson, Don Byron, Buster Williams, the Mingus Big Band, or Christian McBride, you have heard a keyboardist who is as distinctive as he is adaptable. It doesn t matter if he s accompanying a leader, or taking a spirited solo; pianist/composer/educator George Colligan swings, and has been swinging for two decades, in an almost infinite variety of moods of grooves with over one hundred credits as a sideman, and eighteen CD s as a leader.

On his Sunnyside debut, Runaway, with bassist Josh Ginsburg, drummer Enoch Jamal Strickland, drummer Tom Guarna and vocalist/keyboardist Kerry Politzer, the New Jersey-born, Baltimore-raised, New York-based Colligan unveils eleven self-composed tracks that offer a stylistic census that ranges from straight-ahead swing to free improvisation and fusion. Colligan shows off his acoustic trio cred on with the opening track End Of A Dynasty, R U Things The All? an intricately-encoded take on the standard All The Things You Are, Ghostland, Skeletons In The Closet, and the Latin-tinged title track, with Oscar Peterson-like double octave runs. But on several selections Colligan showcases his eclectic and tasteful Fender Rhodes/synth-oriented works, including The Righteous, a pulsing piece reminiscent of the Herbie Hancock/Webster Lewis-style jams from the seventies and eighties, the Quiet Storm-accessible numbers When I Go and Forlorning both with the feather-breathed vocals of Kerry Politzer, and an equally-pop friendly ballad, Be Gentle.

I always loved Rhodes, Colligan said in an interview on All About Jazz in May 2007. In fact, my first gigs as a jazz pianist were on a Fender Rhodes. I guess from listening to Herbie and Chick Corea records in the seventies, I always liked the sound ... I love playing different types of keyboards ... When people talk about fusion, they tend to talk about what was happening in the late sixties and the seventies, and really what it was, was serious, straight ahead jazz musicians, traditional jazz musicians who were on a super high level, not only using electronic instruments, but using lock beats, using different forms there were a whole lot of different things going on, a whole lot of different elements besides electronics.

Born on December 29, 1969, Colligan soaked up mainstream and fusion influences. He grew up playing drums, switched to piano in his teens, and studied at the Peabody Institute majoring in classical trumpet and music education, and also matriculated at the Banff Summer Jazz Workshop in Canada. After working in metropolitan Baltimore-D.C. area for a few years, Colligan moved to New York in the nineties, and became the sideman of choice for an impressive array of musicians from Cassandra Wilson, Phil Woods, and Ravi Coltrane, to Melissa Walker, George Coleman, and Vanessa Rubin. His many critically-acclaimed CD s as a leader include Unresolved (Fresh Sound, 1999), Twins (Steeplechase, 2000), Return to Copenhagen Solo Piano (Steeplechase, 2002), Mad Science (Sunny Sky, 2003), and Blood Pressure, (Ultimatum, 2006). In 2002 he won the Jazzconnect.com Jazz Competition. The following year he received a grant from the Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation for his commissioned work, Post 9-11; a suite of jazz pieces based on impressions of life in America after 9/11/01 in 2003. He is also a faculty member at Julliard.

With the release of Runaway, the days of George Colligan being a best kept secret are over!