piano

Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is a jazz pianist and composer from Chicago, Illinois, United States. Hancock is one of jazz music's most important and influential pianists and composers. He embraced elements of rock, funk, and soul while adopting fre-er stylistic elements from jazz. As part of Miles Davis' "second great quintet" Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, and was later one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and jazz funk.

Brad Mehldau is an American jazz pianist born on August 23, 1970 in Jacksonville, Florida. He plays original compositions and jazz standards, as well as interpretations of non-jazz songs by The Beatles, Nick Drake, Radiohead and Soundgarden, for example. He has also contributed to movie soundtracks, including Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), The Million Dollar Hotel (2000).

A composer and performer of meditative solo piano music and reflective, inspiring songs. Influences on the piano music include the minimalism of Steve Reich and the rich harmony and melody of Eric Satie, with hints of post-rock and downtempo electronica. The piano album Valentine Court was released in 2006. An album of songs, Mindfulmess, is released in UK and Australia in 2012, blending songwriting influences such as Brian Wilson and Paul Simon with lyrics influenced by a Buddhist spiritual journey.

Sophie Hutchings is Australian pianist and composer. Having begun playing piano young growing up in a musical family, Sophie started writing properly in her teens. Sophie’s compositions move from disarmingly spare and elegant beginnings to curl out with a tingling edge, propelling its austerity into urgent and epic realms. Violin, cello, drums, percussion and organ heighten the flight these pieces can take as well as dip and swell within the more dimly lit moods of gentler nuance, casting a particular spell across the range of feeling captured in Sophie’s playing.