Artist Biography

Michael Wolff is a genuine hipster -- a Manhattan-based family man and internationally acclaimed pianist-composer-bandleader who returns to his roots with the release of his eleventh album, 'jazz, JAZZ, jazz'. This soulful, instrumental collection is everything fans have come to embrace in Wolff's virtuoso jazz piano playing.

A baby boomer in his prime, Wolff is renown for his old school jazz roots, melodically fresh and rhythmically compelling multi-keyboard style, and ever-expanding media presence. A New Orleans native who’s father taught him blues on piano before he began classical lessons at age eight, Michael also grew up in Memphis and Berkeley, California, getting his first significant professional gig when he was 19 from Latin jazz vibist Cal Tjader. He made his recording debut with Cannonball Adderley’s band in 1975, and has worked extensively with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Christian McBride and others including his late friend Warren Zevon and singer Nancy Wilson, for whom he wrote orchestral arrangements and conducted more than 25 major symphony orchestras during world-wide tours. Wolff’s own band Impure Thoughts, launched in 2000, is an infectious improvising ensemble, richly percussive thanks to Indian tabla player Badal Roy, drummer Mike (Headhunters) Clark and electric bassist John B. Williams (on his new Trio CD, Wolff is joined by Williams and drummer Victor Jones.) Wolff’s recent performances include an Impure Thoughts concert at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms and a trip to the British Virgin Isles. He tours the U.S. regularly, and will perform a series of Trio dates in support of 'jazz, JAZZ, jazz'.

'jazz, JAZZ, jazz', Wolff's second release on Wrong Records, will be sold digitally via itunes, on his website and other downloadable formats. A limited run of CDs will be available for purchase at live shows and via www.MichaelWolff.com. Wolff's recently-revamped website, by Scott Design, has won a Silver ADDY Award in the 'Consumer Website' category of the Silicon Valley ADDY Awards competition.
Wolff's growing corpus of movie soundtracks includes “Dark Angel” and “The Tic Code” (2000), a feature for actor-dancer Gregory Hines, that was semi-autobiographical in its depiction of the Tourette’s Syndrome with which Wolff copes. His five-and-a-half year stint as musical director of the “Arsenio Hall Show” heightened his visibility and gave him the occasion to meet his wife, actress and writer/director Polly Draper. He is producer, and Draper writer-director of the smash hit Nickelodeon cable TV series “The Naked Brothers Band,” starring their sons Nat, 12, and Alex, nine (Wolff appears regularly as the boys’ “hapless, accordion-playing dad”), and he produced his first music video for 2006's 'Love and Destruction’s' plaintive “Underwater,” shooting on location in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
Described as a “Renaissance Man” by Miami New Times, Wolff won praise for his surprising CD 'Love and Destruction,' his first to feature vocals on all songs. Add to that his virtuoso piano playing, his amalgam of rock-jazz and his World music-inspired live performances, and you have the makings of a multi-faceted artist, unafraid of labels and boundaries. In fact, The New York Times praised Wolff as "A pianist and vocalist with a style both global and contemporary." “It’s not a sudden departure,” Wolff says of his video efforts, as well as his affectively husky and hushed singing on 'Love and Destruction'. “I’m making developmental steps. I’ve had some interesting years doing a lot of different things, and that was where I arrived." Wolff's late night, blue light singing on the CD brought new cool to an inspired selection of rock/pop classics as well as his own tunes about the well-lived life, now. JazzTimes Magazine raved that Michael Wolff is "one of the most innovative and dynamic pianists of his generation." "Wolff proves himself an exceptionally astute vocal stylist. His sound, a rock-jazz hybrid that exists somewhere in the vast expanse between Donald Fagen and Mark Murphy, is at once as distinctly powerful and as cunningly seductive as his playing."

Music Influences

Alternative Links

• Rock-infused jazz, Alt Jazz, jazz, pop, world music
  Michael Wolff is a genuine hipster -- a Manhattan-based family man and internationally acclaimed pianist-composer-bandleader who returns to his roots with the release of his eleventh album, 'jazz, JAZZ, jazz'. This soulful, instrumental collection is ever