(HUDSON, N.Y.) – The Quartet, a collective of Hudson’s top jazz talents, plays an intimate gig at Spotty Dog Books & Ale on Friday, May 13, at 8pm. The group features keyboardist Tony Kieraldo, flutist Stuart Quimby, bassist Terence Murren, and drummer Otto Hauser.
Tony Kieraldo is a freelance pianist, pen & ink artist, teacher, accompanist, composer and musical director. He has shared the stage and worked with Jacques d’Amboise, Bill Irwin, Tommy Stinson, Lil’ Buck, Bobby Previte, Meshell Ndegeocello, Marco Benevento, and Sarah Jessica Parker, to name a few.
Kieraldo grew up in rural Wisconsin, where he started playing and writing music at the age of four. He studied at Interlochen Arts Academy and New England Conservatory before moving to New York City in 2003. At New England Conservatory, he studied piano and composition with jazz legends Danilo Perez, Fred Hersch, Rakalam Bob Moses and Bob Brookmeyer. He was recognized in Downbeat Magazine in 1999 for outstanding jazz piano performance and composition. Since then, he has spent ten years freelancing as a musical director for nonprofit children’s dance companies National Dance Institute and Celebrate the Beat.
Kieraldo has recorded, performed, and toured internationally with various musical groups and performed genres of all kinds since 1998, including jazz, classical, rock, hip-hop, Sufi, folk and avant-garde.
In the summer of 2000 and 2001, Kieraldo toured Peru with his jazz trio, Treeonik, performing his original material to captivated Peruvian audiences. In 2001, he released, “You Choose” independently with Treeonik. Kieraldo has recorded and played harmonium with the Brooklyn Qawwali Party since 2004. In 2006, he released, “I Pledge Allegiance to Myself” with Lizzie West on Appleseed Records. In 2008, the duo released “The Tumbleweed Cabaret” and in 2009, “Chariots Rise” independently.
From 2010 to 2011, Tony was director/arranger/lead teacher for an American elementary school youth orchestral program based on the world renowned Venezuelan, El Sistema, in Avon, Colo. In 2011, Tony moved to Hudson, where he teaches privately for piano, composition, and improvisation, and freelances as a pianist, musical director and accompanist.
In 2014, Kieraldo performed at the White House in Washington D.C. for first lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama as part of the President’s Council for Arts & Humanities program called Turnaround Arts, whose goal is to turn around failing public schools through the arts.
Stuart Quimby has been a classical and jazz composer and musician playing flute, vocals, most of the baroque wind instruments, the Balinese gamelan instruments suling bali, saron, and reong, the blues harp and chromatic harmonica, the trumpet, various keyboards (especially early synths), and several experimental instruments of his own design.
Quimby has studied with Richard Davis, Paul Robeson, Les Thimmig, Roscoe Mitchell, Robert Dick, Doc Cheatham, Jean-Pierre Rampal, and Frans Brüggen among many others. An abbreviated list of his credits include stints with Luther Allison and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and performances with Paquito D’Rivera, Ben Sidran, Vassar Clements, Jimmy Schwall, Gordon Lightfoot, the Brüggen Quartet, several chamber groups and classical ensembles, as well as the jazz quartet M.2.Q, which he cofounded. He has recorded on numerous albums over the years in multiple genres.
Quimby has spent almost four decades exploring psycho-acoustics, especially microtonal tunings. He designed and built several experimental instruments – including a guitar with movable frets and an organ that plays 43 notes per octave. He has published articles in national journals on microtonal techniques for the flute, pitch perception, and the multi-dimensional representation of wave forms.
Bassist Terence Murren is perhaps best known as one-third of the Brooklyn-based group Relations. A string bassist, electric bassist and guitarist, Murren studied classical string bass and composition with Sue Powell and Annea Lockwood at Vassar College. A jazz musician at heart, he has studied bass with Tim Ferguson, Steve Neil and Drew Gress, as well as doing course work with Mike Richmond at NYU’s Graduate program in Jazz Performance.
Along with leading his own group, the Eternal Now, Murren is an active member of the Cajun alt-country group the Doc Marshalls and Matt Bauders’ doo-wop group The White Blue Yellow and Clouds. He has performed with Tom Abbs, Daniel Carter, Butch Morris, Assif Tsahar, Lawrence Clark, Tomas Fujiwara, Steve Blanco, Le Gitan Trio and the Schul band among many others.
As an educator, Murren works with L.E.A.P. as a teaching artist, mentor, and manager and 92nd Street Y’s Musical Introduction Series.
One of the busiest musicians in the region, Otto Hauser is a musician, composer, and educator best known for his work as a drummer. In addition to solo performances, Hauser leads the ensemble Expectations and co-leads the trio Late Regulars.
Over the past twenty years, he has performed on dozens of studio albums and hundreds of live shows across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, working with diverse artists such as folk legends Kath Bloom, Vashti Bunyan, Mike Heron, Michael Hurley, and Bert Jansch; rockers the Black Crowes, Gary Louris, Jeff Tweedy, and Tony Visconti; drum legends Steve Gadd and Bobby Previte; the unclassifiable Meshell Ndegeocello; and many contemporary indie and folk acts, including Nat Baldwin, Devendra Banhart, Richard Buckner, Espers, Josephine Foster, Fruit Bats, Cass McCombs, Juana Molina, Elvis Perkins, Sharon Van Etten, Vetiver, and Jonathan Wilson.