Newton Piano Summit
2016 — Where It Began
When nine painted Artful Pianos were placed around the city by Linda Plaut and Maria Beatriz Arvelo, the Waban Improvement Society thought it would be great to have some of the region’s finest performers come play on Saturday afternoons. The Newton Piano Summit was born.
The first season at a glance
| Performance |
|---|
| Alexei Tsiganov — the pianist who helped launch it all |
| Tim Ray — from Lyle Lovett and Tony Bennett to the Boston Pops |
| Kevin Harris — Berklee faculty, festival veteran |
| Nina Ott & Chris Lopes Trio — Latin jazz via San Francisco |
| Alan Rowe & John Lockwood — a jazz master and Boston’s bass legend |
Alexei Tsiganov
At 17, Alexei was working at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall and by 1991 he had arrived in the USA to begin a career that now spans genres and continents. His prowess has made him a first call among top names in jazz including Claudio Roditi, Antonio Sanchez, Chico Freeman, Esperanza Spalding, Bob Moses and Greg Osby. A founding spirit of the Summit, Alexei would return in 2017, for the COVID Concerts in 2020, and for the 2026 season finale with David Kikoski — four seasons and counting.
Tim Ray
If you’ve heard a great pianist behind a legend, there’s a fair chance it was Tim Ray. He spent more than fifteen years touring as Lyle Lovett’s pianist, and went on to serve as pianist and music director for Tony Bennett until the singer’s retirement. Along the way he has appeared on more than a hundred recordings and performed with an astonishing range of artists — Aretha Franklin, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Jane Siberry, and Soul Asylum on the pop side; Phil Woods, Esperanza Spalding, Dave Douglas, and Brian Blade in jazz; Gunther Schuller, the Boston Pops, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in the classical world. His Tim Ray Trio — with Summit family members John Lockwood and Mark Walker — earned acclaim for Windows, a tribute to the great piano trio tradition. When not on the road, he teaches in the Piano Department at Berklee College of Music. Tim helped launch the Summit in this first season and would return in 2017 and 2018 with Dominique Eade.
Kevin Harris
Kevin Harris came to the piano the way so much great American music begins: in church. Raised in the black gospel tradition at Greater Liberty Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky — in a house where his mother’s singing ranged from Shirley Caesar to Sinatra and his father kept Nina Simone on the turntable — Harris earned his music education degree at Morehead State before heading north to the New England Conservatory. There he completed his master’s in jazz piano studying with Fred Hersch, Danilo Pérez, Ran Blake, Cecil McBee, and George Garzone, and performed with legends including George Russell and Benny Golson.
Seasoned by years of listening and playing at Wally’s, Boston’s historic jazz landmark, Harris built the Kevin Harris Project into an internationally touring ensemble — Havana, Panama, Umbria, Lima — while joining the piano faculty at Berklee College of Music. A performer at festivals in Cuba, Panama, Italy, Denmark, Peru, Israel, and the USA, he had just released his fifth album when he took the first Summit stage. DownBeat Magazine: “Harris’ compositions deal with themes of strength, love, courage, and self-awareness.” Fred Hersch puts it simply: he “plays and writes with flair and real soul.” He returned again in 2023.
On drums was Steve Langone — not a hired hand but one-third of the Kevin Harris Project’s longtime trio. One of Boston’s most active drummers, Langone has performed and recorded with George Garzone, Jerry Bergonzi, Greg Osby, Rufus Reid, Miguel Zenón, Antonio Sanchez, Anat Cohen, and the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall — along with Summit family members John Lockwood, Leo Genovese, Hélio Alves, and Dominique Eade. His debut as a leader, Finders Keepers, written largely with bassist Fernando Huergo (another Summit alum), drew DownBeat’s praise as music that “summarizes the skills that have made him so successful and prophesizes an even brighter future.” He teaches at Berklee, Wellesley College, and the University of Rhode Island, is the author of the Advanced Rhythmic Concepts for the Modern Drummer series — and his session credits run from National Geographic to Sesame Street.
Nina Ott and Chris Lopes Trio
A Detroit native, pianist and organist Nina Ott came up the hard, honest way: as house pianist for the fabled midnight sessions at Chicago’s Green Mill, gigging with players like guitarist Jeff Parker and drummer Ralph Peterson Jr., then leading a quartet residency in Singapore before immersing herself in the Afro-Cuban and salsa communities of San Francisco. Known for blending jazz with Afro-Caribbean sensibilities and a sprinkling of classical music, she taught at Berklee for six years before heading west — and her return east ran right through the Summit stage. Her stature as a composer was later confirmed in the best possible way: Terri Lyne Carrington selected one of Ott’s pieces for New Standards, the landmark collection of works by women jazz composers.
Bassist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Chris Lopes — Nina’s husband and musical partner — has performed everywhere from small clubs to the Chicago Jazz Festival and San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. His recording credits include the Jeff Parker Trio, and his compositions have been featured in the New York Times, Jazziz, and on NPR. The duo had just released their second album when they played the first Summit — and they returned in 2017. Rounding out the trio on drums was Bertram Lehmann, one of the region’s foremost experts in Caribbean and South American drumming; a rare combination of player and scholar, holding a masters in ethnomusicology from Tufts with a thesis on the syntax of the Cuban clave. A Berklee faculty member since 2004, he has performed or recorded with Paquito Rivera, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Antonio Sanchez, Danilo Perez, and Grammy-winning Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza, appearing on more than fifty recordings across jazz, Latin, Brazilian, and world traditions. For a trio steeped in Afro-Caribbean rhythm, there was no better seat-holder.
Alan Rowe & John Lockwood
Some jazz masters build their legend on records; Alan Rowe built his in the room. For more than three decades he has been one of New England’s most trusted pianists, playing for Kennedys, Rockefellers, and Bushes, and sharing stages with the region’s A-list artists. His reputation rests on creative reinvention of the classics — standards you know, turned over until they catch new light — and this performance showed first hand why players across Boston speak his name with respect.
Boston bass legend John Lockwood joined Alan — and began a Summit tradition of his own. Lockwood has toured the U.S. and Europe with Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Gary Burton, the Mel Lewis Big Band, and The Fringe, and he has anchored Summit stages in every era since this first afternoon at the Waban Library.