What's Up?
My debut album ‘Dorly’s Song’ is out, released via Concord Jazz!
Life & Work
Bio:
Tom Oren is the celebrated winner of the 2018 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition (currently the Herbie Hancock Institute). He was judged by a jury of piano giants: Herbie Hancock, Monty Alexander, Joanne Brackeen, Cyrus Chestnut, Jason Moran, Danilo Perez and Rene Rosnes.
Oren was born in Tel Aviv, Israel and began his music training at age six. An honors graduate of the Israeli Conservatory of Music Classical Department, as well as the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts Jazz Department; he studied at the renowned Rimon Jazz Institute and attended Berklee College of Music on a full scholarship. In December of 2019, he graduated from Berklee with honors.
Oren's achievements include winning first prize in Rimon’s annual Jazz Musician Contest and numerous America-Israel Cultural Foundation Excellency Scholarships. As a pianist, an arranger and a composer, he has performed and recorded with a host of leading Israeli jazz musicians, most recently as a core member of the Eli Degibri Quartet.
Oren has appeared on world-class stages including the JazzAhead! Festival in Bremen, the Jazz à Juan Festival in Antibes, Jarasum Jazz Festival in Korea, the International Jazz Day celebration in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the Newport Jazz Festival and the Red Sea Jazz Festival, just to name a few.
Tom has just finished recording his debut record for Concord Records which is scheduled for 2020 release.
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).