Liz Story
Liz Story is one of the most distinctive female composers and solo pianists of new instrumental music that emerged in the 1980s, combining influences of contemporary jazz and classical music. She is Grammy-nominated and one of the most successful Windham Hill recording artists, producing 10 albums with Sony Music and scores of tracks for the popular Winter’s Solstice collections.
“…Story has an….extraordinary gift for creating music that is at once thoughtful and moving.” — PEOPLE MAGAZINE
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Touring Formats: Solo
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Liz Story established herself as one of the most distinctive composers and solo pianists of the 1980s. Her achievements have made her an inspiration, in particular for female pianists and composers worldwide.
Liz’s illustrious, forty-year career began when she was discovered by the legendary Will Ackerman, the founder of the iconic record label Windham Hill. After hearing Liz’s work he signed her to record what would become her debut album, Solid Colors, released in 1983. Between 1983 and 2005, Liz released ten full-length albums: seven albums of primarily original solo piano compositions (Solid Colors, Unaccountable Effect, Part of Fortune, Speechless, Escape of the Circus Ponies, 17 Seconds to Anywhere, and Night Sky Essays); two albums of jazz standards (My Foolish Heart and LizStory with Joel DiBartolo); and a beloved holiday album, The Gift. Liz also wrote or arranged several songs that were released in Windham Hill collections over the years. She received a GRAMMY nomination in 1988 for her song “Reconciliation,” and her original compositions have been featured in television commercial and movie soundtrack.
“A student of both jazz and classical music, Ms. Story is a West Coast impressionist who composes and plays tuneful, song-length non-improvisational pieces that are conservative in their tonal rootedness and wide-ranging in their stylistic borrowings. One hears echoes of Chopin, Debussy, Gershwin, Scott Joplin, the minimalist side of Keith Jarrett and even Joni Mitchell in her compositions. But the strongest underlying influence Ms. Story displayed at Tuesday’s early show was that of Spanish folk and classical music. Harmonically and rhythmically, her pieces suggest the austere, formal flavor of flamenco music and its keyboard extensions in the classical jazz of Chick Corea. She gave even her airier music a resolute percussive edge, eschewing syncopation and swinging rhythms to give each song a scrupulous sense of compositional unity.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Her marvelously lissome performance and compositional style place her right up there with Keith Jarrett and John Jarvis… Rhythmically and melodically, there is a wonderful ebb and flow to her compositions. Story has an extraordinary gift for creating music that is at once thoughtful and moving.” — PEOPLE MAGAZINE
“Liz Story is one of our more soulful pianists, her playing redolent of youthful angst and weltschmerz, with soaring sonorities evoking a romanticism that is delicate and pensive, rife with the sorrow of first heartbreak, before the scar tissue. She’s a storyteller, a compelling one.” — THE BOSTON GLOBE
“Story’s piano says volumes without uttering a single spoken syllable.” — THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS
“Liz Story has remained both emotionally complex and harmonically austere.”
— JOHN DILIBERTO, “ECHOES”
“Arresting. Story displays not only a graceful command of the keyboard but also a thoughtful improvisor’s gift.” — THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“Story is a master of her chosen language. Her compositional style has been compared to that of Keith Jarret and John Jarvis… It does not require a linguistics expert to decipher the language Story so eloquently speaks.” — JAZZIZ
“Contemplative pauses, whispery trills and articulate right-hand figures that betray classical training.” — THE WASHINGTON POST
“Liz Story is closer to Liszt than Jarret. Moods ranged from a stately ‘Church of Trees’ to the bouncy ‘Frog Park,’ a carefree romp that Story tempered with dark, low-pitched rumbling.” — THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
“A personal style centered in ringing chordal passages, but still graced with poise.”— BILLBOARD
“Her marvelously lissome performance and compositional style place her right up there with Keith Jarrett and John Jarvis… Rhythmically and melodically, there is a wonderful ebb and flow to her compositions. Story has an extraordinary gift for creating music that is at once thoughtful and moving.” — PEOPLE MAGAZINE
“Liz Story is one of our more soulful pianists, her playing redolent of youthful angst and weltschmerz, with soaring sonorities evoking a romanticism that is delicate and pensive, rife with the sorrow of first heartbreak, before the scar tissue. She’s a storyteller, a compelling one.” — THE BOSTON GLOBE
“Story’s piano says volumes without uttering a single spoken syllable.” — THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS
“In the glut of solo pianists that followed in the wake of George Winston, Liz Story has remained both emotionally complex and harmonically austere.” — JOHN DILIBERTO, “ECHOES”
“Arresting. Story displayed not only a graceful command of the keyboard but also a thoughtful improvisor’s gift.” — THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“Story is a master of her chosen language. Her compositional style has been compared to that of Keith Jarret and John Jarvis… It does not require a linguistics expert to decipher the language Story so eloquently speaks.” — JAZZIZ
“Contemplative pauses, whispery trills and articulate right-hand figures that betray classical training.” — THE WASHINGTON POST
“Liz Story is closer to Liszt than Jarret. Moods ranged from a stately ‘Church of Trees’ to the bouncy ‘Frog Park,’ a carefree romp that Story tempered with dark, low-pitched rumbling.” — THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
“A personal style centered in ringing chordal passages, but still graced with poise.” — BILLBOARD