Bio:
Justin Kauflin is a prodigiously talented young pianist who has performed in the Blue Note, Village Vanguard, Jazz Standard, Dizzy's Club Coca Cola, The Kitano, and The Kennedy Center, as well as up and down the east coast.
In 2011, he was one of twelve pianists selected worldwide to compete in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition.
It was around this time that he was followed around by a film crew, appearing as an important part of a documentary on his mentor, jazz legend Clark Terry (Keep on Keepin' On).
Justin's eyesight was taken from him as a child, but his vision remains undiminished. He is a member of Quincy Jones' artist roster.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
MANAGEMENT
Quincy Jones Productions
Adam Fell/Thomas Duport
+1 (310) 471-4353
NORTH AMERICA BOOKING
United Talent Agency
Darcy Gregoire
+1 (310) 273-6700
EUROPEAN BOOKING
MusicWorks International
Katherine McVicker
+1 (781) 300-7580
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"Make sure you have enough time to absorb all of the beautiful things in Justin's talent - his timing, technique, rhythm, and exactness. See if you'll agree with me. He's a monster on the piano! And, he's one of the greatest people I've met."
– Clark Terry
"Simply beautiful cat...
you can feel it in every note he plays!"
– Quincy Jones
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).