I’m chasing the lofty goal of being able to play
everything,” says the pianist, composer and educator Dave Meder, discussing the
panoramic, genre-bending approach that has earned him slots in the Thelonious
Monk International Jazz Piano Competition and the American Pianists Awards.
At only 28, Meder has already found a uniquely versatile
artistic voice, evident in his debut album, Passage (Outside In Music), a
dynamically interactive piano-trio outing with appearances by
generation-defining saxophonists Chris Potter and Miguel Zenón. Traversing an
affecting gospel standard, a bold deconstruction of Monk, a title track
inspired by minimalists Philip Glass and John Adams, and pieces featuring the
most progressive ideas in jazz harmony, rhythm and improvisation, Passage is
the work of a young artist whose defining aesthetic is his remarkable sense of
stylistic adventure. Indeed, his most appropriate touchstones are historically
resourceful postmodernists like Jaki Byard—a hero to whom Meder paid tribute at
Jazz at Lincoln Center—and two of Byard’s proteges, Jason Moran and Fred
Hersch.
On top of the album’s next-level playing, Passage is an
ideal showcase for Meder’s cultivated gifts as a composer-arranger, talents
that earlier earned him an ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award, the FirstMusic
Commission of the New York Youth Symphony and a slot in the BMI Jazz Composers
Workshop. In the way of live performance, his abilities have been no less
lauded. Meder has performed in some of New York’s most hallowed jazz rooms,
with dates at Smalls Jazz Club, a multi-night solo-piano engagement at Jazz at
Kitano and several headlining stands at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. His
international bookings have included a Tokyo Jazz Festival appearance with a
big band led by Makoto Ozone, as well as a guest appearance with the Tom Jobim
Youth Orchestra at São Paulo’s iconic Ibirapuera Auditorium. In 2013 he won the
esteemed Jacksonville Jazz Piano Competition, formerly the Great American Piano
Competition. Meder has also been named a finalist for the 2019 American
Pianists Association Cole Porter Fellowship—like the Monk competition, among
the most prestigious contests in jazz.
As the Assistant Professor of Jazz Piano at the University
of North Texas, Meder is the youngest instructor employed in one of the
nation’s most renowned music programs. Before he relocated from New York to
Texas for the UNT post, he taught at NYU and Juilliard; he also served as a
guest instructor abroad in Italy, as part of the Juilliard Jazz Workshop, and
Honduras, in a program facilitated by the U.S. State Department.
Remarkably, the beginnings of Meder’s jazz education were
mostly self-guided. Born, raised and classically trained in Tampa, Florida, he
was still a teenager when he began teaching at a local music shop, while also
building his own private teaching practice. While ensconced in his classical
studies, he was persuaded by friends to help them form a jazz band in their
middle school, whose music department lacked a formal jazz program. With
oversight from a generous band director, the jazz ensemble became a reality and
Meder became enamored of the art form, working at it largely on his own until
college.
During undergraduate studies at Florida State
University—from which Meder graduated summa cum laude in 2013 with degrees in
music, Spanish and political science—tutelage under Marcus Roberts bolstered
the pianist’s strikingly authentic handle on historical jazz styles. He was
able to immerse himself in the music’s legacy firsthand in 2011, when he took
part in two of jazz education’s most crucial incubators, the Kennedy Center’s
Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program and the Steans Music Institute at the Ravinia
Festival. Through these opportunities, Meder interfaced with and learned from
such jazz legends as George Cables, Nathan Davis, Curtis Fuller and David
Baker.
A move to New York in 2013 afforded Meder a chance to study
with jazz’s leading edge. In the city, his mentors included Kenny Barron, Dave
Douglas, Ari Hoenig, Mark Turner, Jean-Michel Pilc and Fred Hersch, as well as,
from the classical world, Julian Martin and Philip Lasser. After earning his
master’s from NYU, he continued on to Juilliard, where he received an Artist
Diploma and toured as part of the premier ensemble of the school.
Concurrent to his graduate studies, Meder worked for three
years as the music director of Fordham Lutheran Church in the Bronx, furthering
another creative through-line in his life. “I was raised in the church, and
I’ve always played there,” Meder says. “In the context of all the other
‘brainy’ stuff I’ve studied in school, [the church] forced me to make a soulful
connection to it—to try and make what I was absorbing more personal and
musical.” Indeed, his music conveys a tremendous depth, yet remains eminently
soulful, a common aspiration not often attained in modern jazz.
Website: https://www.davemeder.com/
