Chris Cody, piano
Michael Avgenicos, sax
David Groves, bass
James Waples, drums.
Pianist and composer Chris Cody has performed and recorded internationally for the last 25 years while based in Paris. He has headlined at many international festivals including Paris Quartiers d’Eté, London, Rome, Brussels Jazz Marathon, Marciac, Nantes, and Algiers and at a vast array of concert venues throughout the USA, Europe and Africa. He has worked with many outstanding international musicians including Rick Margitza, Roy Hargrove, Glenn Ferris, Carla Bruni, Annie Whitehead, Tina Arena, Michel Jonaz, Rhoda Scott and Herb Geller.
With nine CDs of his music released on international labels he has received glowing reviews and featured on radio and television around the world, and has collaborated on over thirty other albums.
His compositions have been commissioned for the inauguration of the Australian Music Centre Paris, as well as for the Sydney Theatre Company, American Academy of Dance, Pillow Book Dance Company Pittsburg, and other French and American theatre companies, and he has composed the music for eight films, and several TV and Radio documentaries.
He was a member of the judging panel for the 2014 and 2015 Freedman Fellowship Jazz Prize, Australia.
"Magical!" Piano Magazine, France
"Exhilarating ... a feast of melody… an inspiration never at fault" JazzHot, France
"Full of music and future!" Le Monde, France
"A marvellous climate, between subtle arrangements and vast spaces of improvisation..." Jazz Magazine, France
"Very luminous jazz!" Télérama, France
"This is jazz that takes off for the heights" Figaroscope, France
"A European sensibility with a nod to Debussy" Rolling Stone
"Splendidly rich and varied" Jazzwise, U.K
"A performance full of colour, humour and rhythmic movement." Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
"A fine mix of superior technical talent and youthful inventiveness" Variety USA
Launched one year ago, Chris Cody's album Not My Lover continues to do well - here are some recent media highlights:
“A piano style that enthuses, is luminous and breathes, with slicing attacks, a left hand in support with unique chords, a right hand that sings…For Satie, revisited by the blues and the Balkans, is a minor masterpiece…very inspired…a fine and solid quartet and especially a remarkable pianist, like a fish in water in piano trio.” Jazz Hot, France
“The City of Light has the strongest of Jazz associations and Cody captures that intimate relationship perfectly .You can feel the ebb and flow of the city’s life running through his fingertips as he plays. The beauty of the architecture, the elegant Seine, the mad driving through the twisted maze of streets. Cody is a man of great charm and warmth and the compositions echo his urbane humanity.” JazzLocal - John Fenton, NZ
“You feel a particular cosmopolitanism seeping through the music: jazz colliding with European sensibilities and France colliding with African ones. Cody is an equally sophisticated composer and pianist who likes to create mood-based pieces and solos in which a touch of ambiguity or mystery compounds the interest. … Cody generates a striking luminosity from the piano's upper register. “ Sydney Morning Herald
“Cody works with flair and sensitivity... This is an album of talented performers playing varied compositions, adding an unusual jazz piano style that’s incorporates interesting classical ideas and flourishes”. The Australian
“Solid pleasure…a very solid and satisfying disc…a fast, happily frantic dance…top flight musicians…the piano suggests both abandon and contemplation…his playing is often funky with a modern boogie or shuffle feeling to it… a very beautiful re-working of Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3” Loudmouth, John Clare
“Polished composition and pianism … Modern contemporary improvised music doesn’t get much better or more enjoyable than this and Cody proves he is the master of form.” Fine Music Magazine
