April 20, 2024 Masterclass Series with Uli Geissendoerfer
German-American pianist, composer and educator, Uli Geissendoerfer has been living and working in the US since 1987. In 2009 he moved from his spiritual home New York as musical director for Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis production to Las Vegas. While teaching at UNLV (invited by Dave Loeb), his Latin ensemble won six Downbeat awards including 1st place in 2015. In 2011 he initiated a lecture series at the University bringing in over 50 guest artists since. He founded the Jazz Club at the Dispensary Lounge in 2012 (winning Best of Las Vegas), which revived the Las Vegas Jazz scene and featured luminaries such as Wynton Marsalis, Brandon Fields, Sam Most, Rick Margitza, Dick Griffin, Scott Henderson, Danny Gottlieb, George Garzone and many more that performed there with his Trio and Quartet. In 2021 he started a new club, The Gambit.
In 2012 he recorded his first Vegas production “Colors” featuring a great quintet with Charles McNeal, Pascale Elia, Derek Jones and Ryan Rose. The opening tune of album “3-41” won 1st place in the 13th IMA awards.
In the Fall of 2017, he joined the new Jazz Program at the Nevada School of the Arts and founded Vegas Records, promoting the local Jazz scene and music from UNLVC’s Jazz department (now 18 releases). In 2018 he received the part-time-teacher-of the-year award from the Fine Arts department at UNLV.
His current projects the Uli Geissendoerfer Trio, backbone of the Jazz Club, with their CD “Long Way Home”, the “Beregovski Suite”, a duo with the fabulous, award winning violin virtuoso Alicia Svigals and his World Music group Colors featuring Pascale Elia.
Last Fall a Jazz History text book written with Robert Shipley for Kendall Hunt Publishing came out and this the first in a series of five books “The Natural Hand – The Art of Practicing” was published by Innovative Ink.
Two new albums a Duo and a Quartet with Julian Tanaka and are released in the Spring and the Fall on Vegas Records. He is also producing several singers including Ray Brown Jr., the new albums of Michelle Johnson’s Merry Christmas, and Linda Woodson’s Come A Little Closer.
He has worked with, among others, William Cepeda (Grammy nomination), Groove Collective, Giovanni Hidalgo, Blood Sweat & Tears, Leslie Uggams, Cirque du Soleil, Ute Lemper, David Cassidy, Tito Puente, several Symphonies, the Connecticut Opera, a bevy of Jazz greats and many African Artists such as Kofo the Wonderman and Sheik Tediane Seck.