Bio

Gay Pearson received a B.M. in applied piano from Lawrence University in 1965 and a B.S. in Meteorology from Purdue University in 1983.  

During her 12 years of employment as Sr. Environmental Specialist in air quality evaluation at NJDEP, she started studying jazz harmony, theory and improvisation with teachers in the Philadelphia area, which culminated with the brilliant contemporary jazz pianist Jim Ridl of Trenton NJ. During that time she  performed with the local big bands, combos at coffee houses, museums and bookstores in the Princeton area, and cocktail piano at restaurants and private parties. Between 1997 and '99 Gay self-produced three releases, and in 2004, her last studio release "Sea Journey-So Far Away".

Tyrone Brown commissioned her Neo-Baroque arrangement of Romberg's famous standard 
"Softly as in a Morning Sunrise" for his  2000 chamber jazz release "Song of the Sun".
Gay's original arrangement  can be heard on her 1998 release "Alone, Independent and Unresolved".

Since relocating to Maine in 2004 she performed on Rich Tozier's Friday night live jazz show in June 2005. From 2005-2010 she taught classical and jazz piano and theory at the Portland Conservatory.

From late 2007 through 2017 she studied with Armenian jazz pianist/composer Vardan Ovsepian, first at the Musical Suite in her home town of Newburyport MA, then via Skype. From 2011-13 Gay occasionally performed with the jazz vespers ensemble at the Unitarian Church, and from 2011-2015 performed her compositions for the annual Back Cove Contemporary Composers Festivals.

From 2012-2016 Gay presented annual chamber jazz concerts of  her compositions and jazz standards in Newburyport. Her 2014 and 2015 concerts "A Sinister Endeavor" and  "Goin' Home-A Retrospective" respectively, were released through PARMA on bigroundrecords.com. Her 2016 concert "Quintessence"  was broadcast on CTN, Portland's Community TV station.

From April-August 2017 Gay had lessons first with jazz and classical pianist/composer Jesse Feinberg of Bath, ME., then jazz pianist Tom Snow of Yarmouth, ME.

"Pearson gives her audience a double barrel of swinging excitement that's married to a love of the lyrical melody".
-Jim Santella, Cadence 1998

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Awards

Of the few compositions I submitted to the American Composers Forum and Composer's Voice for performance competitions, "Density Gradient" was selected by The Verismo Trio for their October 24 2015 concert at U. of Wyoming. My 2014 jazz trio piece "Decomposition" was chosen to be choreographed for the MaD circle dance program July 13 2014 in NYC.

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Concerts

The 2012 concert was all original works, for different combinations of flute, piano, cello, bass and drums. Some pieces were strictly for jazz piano trio.  My sister Lea, the flutist, brought her interpretive skills which were useful to my music, as I often don't write in 4/4 or 8 measure phrases. I had had sessions with her drummer Phil McGowan for about 2 years previous to the concert series, to learn more techniqes and approaches to interacting with a combo, which paid off for my jazz compositions.

The 2013 concert "Floating On Waves" was a mix of jazz standards (3 of which were my reharmonizations) and my new jazz and classical pieces composed specifically for that concert. My featured quintet work was "Floating On Waves" 

For the 2014 concert "A Sinister Endeavor",  the featured quintet work was my arrangement of Steve Swallow's "Ladies and Mercedes". The rest was a mix of jazz standards 6 new originals (including a one minute solo piano piece), and arrangements of a couple of contemporary pop and classical composers' music, and a reading of a Bert and I story to free improvisations, by bass and drums.

For the 2015 concert I added tenor sax player Tracy McMullen, featuring only one sextet, where I revisited my classical arrangement with six reharmonizations of the famous jazz standard "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise." Each reharmonization was a different duet combination of flute, synthesized trumpet (on keyboard), cello, and bass.
 
The 2016 concert "Quintessence" I eliminated the cello and kept the sax. The music was mostly my originals, plus two contemporary jazz charts I had transcribed. The featured quintet work was my original "Lower and Upper Level Divergence" .

DEFINING WHAT DROVE ME TO WHAT I HAVE BECOME MUSICALLY.

Except for my father playing Gershwin and Porter by ear during my childhood,
I was  only allowed to listen to and play music from the  classical music eras, so in the 50's I secretly recorded rock and roll when my mother was not around.
By 1978 while living in Lafayette IN, I finally had to get as far away from my classical background as possible for very dark and complex reasons not to be discussed here, and turned to studying meteorology(one of my father's hobbies), thanks to Purdue professors I had musical connections with,  who literally ended up saving my life.

Already close to age 40, not having even heard of Miles Davis I finally serendipidously discovered jazz during my  5 years at Purdue.
This is mentioned in the liner notes of  my debut release "Nature Girl".
A year after graduation I was very lucky to have  been employed by NJDEP in the Bureau of Air Quality Evaluation.
Soon after  that I started going to clubs to hear jazz pianists, both in solo and combo settings.

After harmony, theory, and improvisation lessons with 4 jazz teachers in the Philadelphia and Princeton area from the late 80's to late 90's,
 followed by four self-produced releases between '97 and 2003, I realized soon after I relocated to Falmouth Maine late 2004, that in whatever venue I was  performing, I felt stuck, playing the same music with the same old ideas and techniques.

The turning point came with my having made a timely discovery of the Armenian jazz pianist/composer Vardan Ovsepian in mid 2007,
who saved my musical life by opening my ears and mind to brand new topics and technics with which to improvise.

This in turn led to my discovery of how these new tools inspired me to start writing, so
 from  2008-2016 my whole life revolved around  these lessons  to which I was intensely committed.
However lessons became
less frequent as I began to feel  more competent and confident making my own compositional decisions, without having to rely so heavily on Vardan's input.
I realized more and more how my huge repertoire of solo piano and chamber music works that accumulated from my classical background could further expand these new found tools both for written and improvised sections of a composition.
My works( 50 or so by now) are mostly written for quartets or quintets, tho some purely jazz trios or quartets.
The most recent 5 have not yet been performed.
Since my last concert I've  written mostly for my core group: flute, piano, bass and drums.
I sometimes either arrange an existing work for string quartet , or write intially for string quartet when I find an appropriate opportunity for a competition submittal.
My music usually evolves from sketches I"ve collected over time, usually harmony based, often starting with a harmonic sequence( a common technique used in Baroque music).
I often sketched rhythms and chord progressions similar to what I heard  from contemporary jazz and classical pianists I kept hearing on online radio, youtube, and PARMA recordings( with whom  two of my live recordings have been released).
With each composition came the big challenge of deciding what sketches I wanted to connect, how I wanted to connect them,
 what I wanted to assign to improvisation and for which instruments,  the overall form, and where i felt it should end.
The improvised sections were often based on chord progressions I extracted from the written portion, which is  a typical approach for jazz composers to take.

IN 2012 as I began launching my annual concert series, I realized more and more how this classical and jazz blend of written and improvised music  was what drove me musically, becoming my niche.
I knew by then that I would never make my mark as a straightaway jazz pianist.
My classical background had become an integral part of my musical energy from which I could not escape, so it was time to embrace it.
By 2015 , as my left hand developed osteoarthritis, I began focusing  on mostly linear and broken chord techniques for accompanying right hand soloing, as opposed to the standard left hand "comping" during piano solos. Being left handed, this  was a perfect combination of circumstances, since  broken chord technics have their origin in the classical era, mostly Mozart.
I made my own use of it.