MARC CARY
Artist Website: Marc Cary 
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Streaming Links: Bandcamp
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“The main thing is the intention behind what you say musically; [that’s] the beauty. If you’re thinking something and you hit that note, the resonance of what you’re thinking actually goes through that note. It’s like a telephone frequency carrying your voice--literally. That’s the power.” – Marc Cary 

In a jazz world brimming with brilliant and adventurous pianists, Marc Cary stands apart by way of pedigree and design as one of New York’s best jazz pianists. None of his prestigious peer group ever set the groove behind the drums in Washington DC go-go bands nor are any others graduates of both Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln's daunting bandstand academies. Cary hails from a musically literate family--his mother is a cellist; his great grandmother was an ivory-tickler in silent movie houses back in that day who also rocked barrelhouse and stride duets with Eubie Blake. Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams was a cousin of Cary's grandfather.  
 While New York City is Cary's birthplace he was raised between Providence RI and the nation's capital. The player-composer and improviser is a graduate of DC's world-renowned Duke Ellington School For The Arts, also the professional spawning ground for Dave Chappelle, Wallace Roney, Denyce Graves and Meshell Ndegeocello whom Cary jammed with in the school's orchestra. 

 Cary's Ellington education prepared him to take on the daunting Big Apple at the ripe age of 21. Besides Carter and Lincoln, the next decade of his life found him sharing stages and cultivating craft with Dizzy Gillespie, Arthur Taylor, Carlos Garnett, Jackie McLean, Wynton Marsalis and one more goddess-figure among jazz vocalists, Carmen McRae. His comfort with women bandleaders also made him a favorite accompanist among other modern chanteuses, notably Ndegeocello, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Ani Di Franco. 

The pianist's debut recording as a leader was released in 1995. Since then Cary's released a baker's dozen albums of music under his direction--three of those within the past two years for Motéma. Devoted fans know Cary's ensemble profile has three distinct and mesmerizing faces, revered among critics alike with this year’s DownBeat Critics Poll ‘Rising Star – Keyboardist ’ honor: his Focus Trio (well-documented live on his 2013 Motéma side Four Directions); and his pan-ethnic collective Indigenous Peoples, which merges poetic rhyme flow, soulful chanting and a sense of groove at home in the stellar realms of'interplanetary funkmanship.' (Cary's homegrown connection to his Native American heritage, instilled by his Wampanoag mom, is also a percussive factor. In the group's recent Cosmic Indigenous incarnation the deep web of continental African ties is woven tighter by the electric presence of Malian vocalist Awa Sangho.)  

Then there is Cary's Rhodes Ahead series--which his current Motéma recording indexes as Volume 2--the first of which on Jazzateria earned him the debut annual Billboard/BET ''Best New Jazz Artist'' award in 2000. What both volumes put on exhibit front and center is Cary's spectacular ability as a keyboardist  and improviser to interweave electronic textures into a fast-moving improvisational context, sacrificing none of his musical complexity in the bargain. 
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The Critics Speak:
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'Rhodes Ahead Vol 2: This is a disc beautifully dedicated to exploring groove, sound and culture, blurring the lines between musical style and setting to create one of the most enjoyable albums of the year so far.' - Frank Alkyer, Downbeat Magazine

'Cary shows how creatively he can stretch cool piano-jazz swingers over complex and cutting-edge rhythms, producing music that sounds old and new at once' - John Fordham, Guardian

'Cary is deeply rooted in African-American piano playing traditions that encompass anybody from Bud Powell to Mal Waldron and McCoy Tyner, particularly in terms of his lightning chromaticism and sophisticated yet rugged bluesiness, but his embrace of non-western rhythms, be they Asian, African or Latin American, is a key part of his aesthetic.' - Kevin Le Grende, JazzWise

'there isn't much in the modern-jazz-musician tool kit that Marc Cary hasn't mastered, but he has a particular subspecialty in the area of groove...with a range of rhythmic strategies, from a deep-house pulse to a swinging churn'.  - Nate Chinen, The New York Times

'The New York City pianist and keyboardist has long maintained one of the best working combos in jazz, the Focus Trio,' - Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Classical Voice
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