Pianist | Keyboardist | Composer | Arranger
After 13 albums as a leader, O’Connell has established himself as one of the main forces of Latin jazz in NYC. While his piano playing has influenced many others in the city, his composing and arranging skills have made him a legend.
“Known in particular for his participation in Chet Baker and Sonny Rollins groups, pianist Bill O’Connell has become a master of Latin Jazz…”
— Nouveautes and Reeditions (France)
There is no doubt this jazz cat (Bill O’Connell) has a game, more like fire-breathing musical passion tempered with immense intellectual dominance of Jazz and Latin music, that may be good enough to rival some of the great Latin Jazz pianists of the last quarter century: Chucho Valdes, George Dalto, Gonzalo Rubalcaba and others.
This is a pianist with immense “player power,” as it were. The range of his artistic spectrum seems limitless, and I suggest my readers will be moved by this colossus of musical dignity and improvisational authority.
Bill O’Connell’s Savant recording (A Change is Gonna Come”) cements his place as a master of the broadest spectrum of musical styles, a giant of modern jazz, and a member of Latin jazz royalty.