Steve Thomas
STEVE THOMAS is a composer-lyricist, jazz vocalist, percussionist, and performance artist based in Somerville, MA. He released his latest CD of original jazz songs, SPIRITS PASSING THROUGH by Steve Thomas and the Co-Conspirators, on his Not Two Five Records in the fall of 2006. His first CD of original songs, GOT THE MAP, vocal/piano duets with pianist Ben Schwendener, was released on Gravity Records in 2002. He’s performed with his band, the Co-Conspirators (John Funkhouser, bass; Rich Greenblatt, vibes; Gary Fieldman, drums), Too Tall Trees (a vocal/bass duo with John Funkhouser), with the trios of pianists Mollly Flannery and Mark Shilansky, and pianist Ben Schwendener around the Boston area - at the Acton Jazz Cafe, Wellesley Free Library, Zeitgeist Gallery, Rutman's Violins, Third Life Studio in Somerville's Union Square, McIntyre and Moore Booksellers, and the odd house concert; with the Cambridge-based Brazilian percussion ensemble Samba Tremeterra (Cambridge River Festival and numerous parades and private functions); in the Get Up choir with pop/rock singer-songwriter Bleu (Boston Music Awards at the Wang Center, the Hatch Shell, and rock clubs the Paradise, the Middle East, and T.T. the Bear's Place). He’s also had a parallel career as a performance artist, developing solo and collaborative pieces that combine a cappella singing, talking, and movement, with performances at Mobius, Wellesley and Middlebury Colleges, and other venues in Boston and northern Vermont. He received a Somerville Arts Council grant for his hour-long solo piece RECLAMATION PROJECT. He’s studied theory and composition with Ben Schwendener, jazz voice with Dominique Eade, and Brazilian percussion with Jose Ricardo de Souza and Deraldo Ferreira.
The Co-Conspirators
JOHN FUNKHOUSER (bass): Educated at Cornell University and at New England Conservatory of Music, John is now a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In recent years, he has had an increasingly visible national and international performing career: he has appeared on numerous TV shows and documentaries, including NBC’s Today Show, CNN, Lifetime, CBS’s 60 Minutes, German Public Television, appeared on NPR, played at the Blue Note and Birdland in NYC, the Kennedy Center and the National Gallery in DC, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Festival du Jazz a Toulon, and concerts in Paris, Singapore, Curacao, and over a dozen major US cities. John performs professionally on both bass and piano, drawing on an unusually wide variety of styles, including Cuban, Brazilian, North Indian classical, klezmer, Bulgarian, Greek, Irish, Western classical from Bach to avant-garde, film music, and all kinds of American popular traditions, including folk, blues, bluegrass, gospel, funk, rock, hip-hop and, of course, jazz. John has performed as a sideman with the New England Philharmonic Orchestra, big bands, small jazz groups, and hip hop bands with dozens of the leading lights in New England and beyond: Steve Gadd, Abe Laboriel, Herb Pomeroy, Bob Gulotti, Ran Blake, Yoron Israel, Ron Savage, Laszlo Gardony, Lucianna Souza, Stephen Drury, and 14 year old autistic savant Matt Savage, to name a few. He also leads his own trio, FunkHouse, which has done two national tours and appeared at several jazz festivals.
RICH GREENBLATT (vibraphone): Rich is a vibraphonist with "dazzling speed and a truly magical tone," writes John Blenn in Good Times Magazine. Rich synthesizes the bluesy, bebop style of Milt Jackson with the four-mallet chordal approach of Gary Burton, resulting in a warm, swinging sound all his own. He has performed and recorded with jazz artists Kurt Elling, Billy Mitchell, Kevin Hayes, Winard Harper, Dennis Irwin, and Joe Hunt. Rich has recorded two CDs as a leader on Brass Taco Records: HOT AND DRY and MOOIN'. He is currently on the faculty at Berklee College of Music and was awarded the 2006 Berklee Faculty Fellowship. For more info, see http://richgreenblatt.com
GARY FIELDMAN (drums): Percussionist, composer, teacher, and bandleader, Gary is active in a number of artistic dimensions. He has performed and recorded with some of today’s most important musicians and can be found on numerous recordings, including his own project FIELD EFFECT on Rotary Records. Gary's compositions include the narration-with-music piece “Ratty’s Loving Surprise” with the Know Trio, of which he is a member. “Ratty” is the story of a rat who leaves his affiliation with a major symphony orchestra, and the associated famouseness, to answer questions of life and art in an underground realm of jazz and philosophical inquiry. Gary also has a number of websites dedicated to his muse, including http://museaid.org, a site devoted to his annual production of a Darfur relief concert, and http://bagelsandjeff.com, a cartoon and commentary starring two dogs who offer opinions and insights on topics ranging from Mahler to the state of today’s religions to the unhealthy contents of a can of dog food. For more info, see http://garyfieldman.com.