A Gershwin Playground

Description

The young (29) Israeli pianist, vocalist, composer Guy Mintus today living in Tel Aviv and New York feels today at home equally when he is on stage with the Jazz legends, composes for classical orchestras, works with masters of traditional music or works as guest soloist with the Ska Punk band Street Light Manifesto he had a sold out concert with at the Beacon Theatre in New York.
His background is a mixed Jewish tradition of Polish, Iraki and Moroccan families, in his music
different influences meet. A highly educated classical pianist with the energy of a rock star and the Jazz musician's feeling for adventures who does not shy away to jump into a mix of Jazz, classics and Near-Eastern lines and rhythms.

Guy`s awards stretch from the ASCAP and the Bernstein Family Foundation to the Prix du Public of the Montreux Jazz Festival. His own and selfdistributed debut production CONNECTING THE DOTS was selected by the Down Beats Editors Pick was presented in concerts in the USA, Canada, France, Switzerland, Germany, Khazakstan with great success and sold over 1000 copies at concerts. In New York the NY Times praised it . Other festivals were the Paris Festival, the Winter Festival NY, the Montreal Festival.
Guy was commissioned to write for the American Composers Orchestra, the famous Jerusalem East-West Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony. 2018 he performed Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Bayrische Philharmonie and worked in the sold out Jazz cLub UNTERFAHRT where he was immediately booked for autumn 2020.
He intends to concertize all over Europe in Autumn and Winter 2020 if CORONA permits.

Guy Mintus about his brand new trio production A GERSHWIN PLAYGROUND:
"After two albums of mainly original music, I felt ready to take on this adventure and make an artistic statement revealing my own voice through some of the most well known pieces in jazz, some of which I know since I'm about 10 years old, while bringing them into 2020 with a new light. All of the interpretations take their cues first and foremost from the lyrics/ the story telling of each song - at times with a more "poppy-singer songwritery" approach, at other times with some grooy middle-eastern elements or with a medidative, "prayer like" mindset but above all with lots of swing, playfulness hum and joie de vivre.
Making a Gershwin album in 2020 is also important for me as an Israeli and Jewish person who has spent quite a big chunk of his life in NY. It is a way to highlight and celebrate the long tradition of Jewish African-American allyship, very much present in the lineage of Gershwin who fought for integration of African-Americans in the opera world (Gershwin refused to premiere Porgy & Bess at the Metropolitan as they wouldn't include African-Americans in their productions when the opera was written) and was the first composer to write anti-war musicals.
Lastly, my relationship to Rhapsody in Blue (featured on the album in a solo version) is kind of special for me having performed it for my first time with Bayerische Philharmonie at a concert commemorating 70 years for a concert Leonard Bernstein gave in Landsberg with the "Displaced Person's Orchestra" (comprised of survivors of world war II). Since then, this piece, which is essentially a celebration of life, is part of my DNA I've got to perform it with several orchestras, dozens of solo concerts and even in the salon of Jamie & Nina Bernstein, the daughters of the maestro."