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Dick Hyman
Richard Hyman (born March 8, 1927) is an American jazz pianist and composer. Over a 70-year career, he has worked as a pianist, organist, arranger, music director, electronic musician, and composer. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters fellow in 2017.
As a pianist, Hyman has been praised for his versatility. DownBeat magazine characterized him as "a pianist of longstanding grace and bountiful talent, with an ability to adapt to nearly any historical style, from stride to bop to modernist sound-painting."
His daughter Judy Hyman is a founding member of The Horse Flies, an American alternative rock/folk band based in Ithaca, New York. His grandson is designer and artist Adam Charlap Hyman.
Hyman was born in New York City on March 8, 1927 to Joseph C. Hyman and Lee Roven (née Rovinsky), and grew up in suburban Mount Vernon, New York. His older brother, Arthur, owned a jazz record collection and introduced him to the music of Bix Beiderbecke and Art Tatum.
Hyman was trained classically by his mother's brother, the concert pianist Anton Rovinsky, who premiered The Celestial Railroad by Charles Ives in 1928. Hyman said of Rovinsky: "He was my most important teacher. I learned touch from him and a certain amount of repertoire, especially Beethoven. On my own I pursued Chopin. I loved his ability to take a melody and embellish it in different arbitrary ways, which is exactly what we do in jazz. Chopin would have been a terrific jazz pianist! His waltzes are in my improvising to this day."
Hyman enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1945, and was transferred to the U.S. Navy band department. "Once I got into the band department, I was working with much more experienced musicians than I was used to," Hyman once stated. "I’d played in a couple of kid bands in New York, playing dances, but the Navy meant business — I had to show up, read music, and be with a bunch of better players than I had run into." After leaving the Navy he attended Columbia University. While there, Hyman won a piano competition, for which the prize was 12 free lessons with swing-era pianist Teddy Wilson. Hyman has said that he "fell in love with jazz" during this period.
After graduating from Columbia, Hyman married his wife, Julia, in 1948.
Relax Records released Hyman's solo piano versions of "All the Things You Are" and "You Couldn't Be Cuter" around 1950. He recorded two honky-tonk piano albums under the pseudonym "Knuckles O'Toole" (including two original compositions), and recorded more as "Willie the Rock Knox" and "Slugger Ryan".
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Dick Hyman
Richard Hyman (born March 8, 1927) is an American jazz pianist and composer. Over a 70-year career, he has worked as a pianist, organist, arranger, music director, electronic musician, and composer. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters fellow in 2017.
As a pianist, Hyman has been praised for his versatility. DownBeat magazine characterized him as "a pianist of longstanding grace and bountiful talent, with an ability to adapt to nearly any historical style, from stride to bop to modernist sound-painting."
His daughter Judy Hyman is a founding member of The Horse Flies, an American alternative rock/folk band based in Ithaca, New York. His grandson is designer and artist Adam Charlap Hyman.
Hyman was born in New York City on March 8, 1927 to Joseph C. Hyman and Lee Roven (née Rovinsky), and grew up in suburban Mount Vernon, New York. His older brother, Arthur, owned a jazz record collection and introduced him to the music of Bix Beiderbecke and Art Tatum.
Hyman was trained classically by his mother's brother, the concert pianist Anton Rovinsky, who premiered The Celestial Railroad by Charles Ives in 1928. Hyman said of Rovinsky: "He was my most important teacher. I learned touch from him and a certain amount of repertoire, especially Beethoven. On my own I pursued Chopin. I loved his ability to take a melody and embellish it in different arbitrary ways, which is exactly what we do in jazz. Chopin would have been a terrific jazz pianist! His waltzes are in my improvising to this day."
Hyman enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1945, and was transferred to the U.S. Navy band department. "Once I got into the band department, I was working with much more experienced musicians than I was used to," Hyman once stated. "I’d played in a couple of kid bands in New York, playing dances, but the Navy meant business — I had to show up, read music, and be with a bunch of better players than I had run into." After leaving the Navy he attended Columbia University. While there, Hyman won a piano competition, for which the prize was 12 free lessons with swing-era pianist Teddy Wilson. Hyman has said that he "fell in love with jazz" during this period.
After graduating from Columbia, Hyman married his wife, Julia, in 1948.
Relax Records released Hyman's solo piano versions of "All the Things You Are" and "You Couldn't Be Cuter" around 1950. He recorded two honky-tonk piano albums under the pseudonym "Knuckles O'Toole" (including two original compositions), and recorded more as "Willie the Rock Knox" and "Slugger Ryan".