Dan Knight

 

All Photos by Rod Strampe

A few words about Dan Knight

“Man, you’re great.”                                                                                     Jazz legend Sonny Rollins

 

“He is incontestably one of the finest solo pianists in the world.”

Claude Nobs, Founder and Artistic Director, Montreux Jazz Festival

 

“Dan Knight is a composer who uses twentieth century artists to inspire his work.   His palette is made up of musical notes and scales:  his brushes are the keys.   His ‘piece de resistance’ is a CD of compositions based on the visual art of Philip Guston, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Jackson Pollack and others.   The CD is called “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Christopher Lydon,  National Public Radio’s “The Connection with Christopher Lydon.”

 

“  . . . An excellent composer/pianist who can communicate well with a wide variety of audiences . . . A fine musician . . . Personable and articulate . . . I recommend him to you without hesitation.”                                                                                  Jazz legend Dr. Billy Taylor

“Calling Dan Knight a pianist is like calling Michael Jordan a basketball player.”

Richard Rives Bird, President, Rives Audio

 

“His musical heritage . . . is a fusion of the best of both the classical and the jazz worlds, combining the passion and the technique of Paderewski with the improvisational virtuosity of Art Tatum.”

Encyclopedia of Jazz, Rutgers University

BIOGRAPHY

 

Look at the photos around you and you’ll see Dan Knight is not a “young lion.”   Far from it.  

He was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, in 1953.   By the time he was three years old he could sing any melody he heard after hearing it only once.   He began playing keyboard instruments ate age four by singing the melodies he knew and matching the pitches on his older sister’s chord organ.  

The problem for Danny was that his sister’s keyboard was “off limits” for him.   His parents forbade him to play it for fear that he’d break it, so he practiced in secret.   So Danny’s ability didn’t become known to his family until almost a year later, when they visited an aunt who owned a piano.  

As his older sister and cousin attempted to play the “Dragnet” television show theme on the piano, with no success, Danny walked to the piano and played the theme.   Correctly. 

His secret was out.   Danny’s parents went home and bought a piano.

His mother spent the better part of the next year coaxing Tillie Maither,  a former student of the great Ignace Jan Paderewski, into accepting Danny as a student.   By the time Mrs. Maither consented, Danny had a repertoire of over thirty songs, including church hymns, television show themes, popular songs, and a two-handed, boogie-woogie version of “Sentimental Journey.” 

He began piano lessons with Maither in 1958, just before his fifth birthday.   Her influence and instruction laid the groundwork for the technical prowess that was to become a hallmark of his musical career.   She taught her “little Paderewski” the finer points of technique at an early age, with music theory and ear training as well.

Knight’s love of jazz came from his uncle, Charles W. Knight, who lived with their family.   “Uncle Charlie” was himself a fine pianist, and shared his record collection of 78 rpm recordings of pianists Meade Lux Lewis, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Thomas “Fats” Waller, and Teddy Wilson and others with his young nephew.  This love was solidified forever when Danny saw a 1958 NBC Television series entitled “The Subject is Jazz.”  The first television series ever to feature jazz, it’s Musical Director was a young jazz pianist named Billy Taylor.   Danny not only watched — he insisted his parents watch, too.

Maither discovered Danny’s interest in jazz after he heard Dave Brubeck’s recording of “Take Five” for the first time, when he ran to her house to ask if it was possible to have five counts in a measure.   She was furious.   For her, classical music was the only “serious” music.   As she lectured him sternly regarding the “evils of jazz,” he determined he would just have to learn to play it without her help.

And learn it he did.

Knight spent the next few years transcribing every jazz record he could get his hands on.   A middle school teacher, Miss Corinne Gilbert, made her personal record collection available to him, and through her he heard many of the jazz masters for the first time:  John Coltrane; Dizzy Gillespie; Sonny Rollins; Bill Evans; Billy Taylor; Teddy Wilson;  Thelonious Monk, and Art Tatum.  

As a young adult a near-fatal accident and years of ensuing illness almost ended his life.   Through it all Dan held on to the dream of a career in music.   But when a brief marriage ended in divorce and his infant son died, he was heartbroken.   He laid his dreams of music aside.

It was a 1988 stint as a restaurant pianist and a chance glimpse at an advertisement for a summer jazz program at the University of Massachusetts that would change his life forever.   The restaurant gig brought Dan back into the world, and to the piano again.   And the summer jazz program in Massachusetts featured Dr. Billy Taylor — the same Billy Taylor whose playing had captured Dan’s heart as a five-year-old.

The experience of studying with Taylor brought Dan musically and spiritually back to life.  With Taylor’s encouragement, Knight began again to make music his life’s work.  

Dan met his wife-to-be, Julie, a year later, and as they say, the rest is history.

As a protégé of Dr. Taylor, and with his wife by his side, Dan Knight proceeded to quietly demolish each obstacle in his way, culminating with his inclusion in 1996 on the Worldwide Steinway Artist Roster.   Paderewski had been a Steinway Artist.   So was Duke Ellington.   George Gershwin.   Cole Porter.   Rachmaninoff.   Horowitz.   Rubenstein.  And Dr. Taylor.   It had been Tillie Maither’s dream that someday Danny Knight’s name might be also listed among the legends on the Steinway Artist roster.  

That dream came true.

Dan Knight’s life and career has now come full-circle.

His career, like his life, is a fusion of the best of the classical and jazz worlds.   He now performs across the globe in some of the finest venues and music festivals in the world.

At the forefront of the modern “classical” movement, Knight is a composer and performer in the great improvisational tradition of the masters of the Baroque period.   His compositions range from solo piano pieces to works for symphony orchestra.   They are often inspired by masterworks of visual art, and include both composition and improvisation in a seamless synthesis of creativity, spontaneity and structure. 

His performances of his own modern “classical” suites, which include “Pictures at an Exhibition,” “From Corot to Picasso,” “Les Jardins de Monet (The Gardens of Monet),” and “The Kandinsky Suite” have received both national and international acclaim.   His suite for piano and spoken word, “The Walt Whitman Suite,” based on Whitman’s immortal “Leaves Of Grass,” was produced by the legendary record producer Christopher Huston.

Knight’s personal worldwide “firsts” in the jazz world include performances in the Acoustic Concert Series at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival for three consecutive years (1997, 1998 and 1999).   No less than saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins has said of him, simply, “Man, you’re great.”

After years of “paying his dues,” Tillie Maither’s “little Paderewski” has become of the finest solo pianists in the world.

He’s not a “young lion” anymore.

He’s much, much more than that.

Dan Knight is a powerful, adult lion now, at the peak of his powers.  

And he roars.