Mark Gelfand

Welcome to the official Mark Gelfand website. Mark is a versatile keyboardist from the San Francisco bay area celebrating his debut C.D. "Concept A" featuring his latest jazz compositions." Concept A has been warmly accepted from a surprisingly wide range of music listeners, from the true contemporary jazz connoisseur, to those who just like to hear good music. "When creating this project I had never imagined that my music would be appreciated by such a wide variety of ages. I didn't want to stick with any one particular style of jazz on this recording. The 10 selections were aimed to please our listeners and ourselves alike. I am strongly influenced by the greats whom I've listened to in depth and seen in concert for many years now. To name just a few: Chick Corea, Eliane Elias, Jeff Lorber, Tom Coster, Russell Ferrante, Joe Sample, John Scofield and Joe Zawinul. I wanted my C.D. to have more of a live studio sound as apposed to the over produced recordings that so many record companies are putting out nowadays. In the end, we came up with sort of a cross between 80's fusion, and 90's smooth jazz with a latin flavor. Being independently produced, we (Mike Vanderhule and I ) were calling our own shots. You can really feel the music the way Mike produced it. We put our hearts and souls into this." --mark gelfand

If you subscribe to CJAZZ, you must have seen John H's notes column "semi-review" the last few months where he mentioned " Concept A" as being one of his two favorite new independent jazz releases. An honor considering the amount of talented artists that send their material to CJAZZ.

Unless you live in the San Mateo CA area where you can find "Concept A" at Borders, it is for sale exclusively right here on Mark's Web site for $14.99 (checks or money orders accepted) on the order form page.

Along with Mark at keyboards, the C.D. features 7 fellow S.F. bay area artists: Drummer-Producer Mike Vanderhule, Bass: Endre Tarczy, Sax: Scott Barnhill and Tom Politzer, Trumpet: Modesto Briseno, Guitar: David Rampley and Tony Baker.

Evolving from this project comes the "Mark Gelfand Quintet", a fine mix of very special performers. The Mark Gelfand Quintet features: Keyboards: Mark Gelfand. Sax: Tom Politzer,Trumpet: Don Beck, Bass: Andrew Higgens, and Drums: Mike Vanderhule just recentaly playing a memorable debue concert at the San Jose Jazz Festival.

In your spare time in between concerts make sure to stop by my fellow InterJazz buddy Ricky DellaRatta.