The Konrad Paszkudski Trio w/ Pasquale Grasso and Dylan Shamat

Special Program: Tunes from the Great American Songbook

After studying jazz piano in his native Australia, Konrad moved to the U.S. and toured extensively with jazz greats such as trumpeter James Morrison and the John Pizzarelli Quartet, leading more than 1,000 performances in just four years. In 2017 he became artistic director of the legendary Ballroom on the West Coast and founded his own trio. Their focus is on standards — tunes collectively known as the American Songbook. Direct, simple, yet intriguing, they improvise solo narratives with a toe-tapping nonchalant grace.

The trio also features 2021 Downbeat Rising Star jazz guitarist Pasquale Grasso and bassist DylanShamat.

About the Trio

Sharing a love of classic jazz and the great standards of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, all members of the trio tip the hat to those that have influenced them—Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Israel Crosby, Ahmad Jamal, and Joe Pass, to name a few. The trio has a sound steeped in tradition but always remains creative and inventive. They are the ultimate modern-day swingin’ unit!

The three artists, also known for their nimbleness on their respective instruments, pride themselves on clean, graceful, toe-tapping execution. Listening to the trio play is a swingin’ party of sophisticated, melodic warfare, with Paszkudzki and Grasso constantly bouncing lines back and forth over the immovable bass lines of Dylan Shamat. The result is fiery straight-ahead jazz with melodic elegance and nonchalant grace and a worthy homage to the jazz greats.

More information and details to read about this spectacular trio:

Sharing a love of classic jazz and the great standards of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, all members of the trio tip the hat to those that have influenced them—Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Israel Crosby, Ahmad Jamal, and Joe Pass, to name a few. The trio has a sound steeped in tradition, but always remains creative and inventive. They are the ultimate modern day swingin’ unit. ​

The three artists, also known for their nimbleness on their respective instruments, pride themselves on clean, graceful, toe-tapping execution. Listening to the trio play is a swingin’ party of sophisticated, melodic warfare, with Paszkudzki and Grasso constantly bouncing lines back and forth over the immovable bass lines of Dylan Shamat. The result is fiery straight-ahead jazz with melodic elegance and nonchalant grace and a worthy homage to the jazz greats.

Called by Jazz Times, “a rising-star pianist,” Australian-Polish Konrad Paszkudzki began his career at the age of 15 when he went to university in Perth. He finished his undergraduate degree at 18 and quickly established a reputation as a leading jazzman in Australia—including becoming the first pianist to win the James Morrison Scholarship in 2008. It was James Morrison who said of Konrad, “To put it simply, he is Jazz!”

After relocating to the United States in 2009, Konrad received his master’s degree at the University of Miami and went on to play with the likes of the Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and the Jeff Hamilton Trio before moving to New York to lead the house trio at New York’s 54 Below. In 2013, Konrad joined the John Pizzarelli Quartet. Since then, Konrad’s 1000+ performances with Pizzarelli have taken him on extensive tours of Asia, Brazil, Canada, and Europe and the greatest jazz clubs, concert halls, and venues around the world, including: New York’s Café Carlyle, Bemelman’s, Birdland, The Blue Note, The Standard, and Dizzy’s Club CocaCola; DC’s Blues Alley,  The Palm Beach Colony, Jazz Alley, The Venetian Room, The Montreal Jazz Festival, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and Ronnie Scotts.

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​It was the kind of endorsement most rising guitarists could only dream of—in his interview for Vintage Guitar magazine in 2016, Pat Metheny was asked to name some younger musicians who’d impressed him. “The best guitar player I’ve heard in maybe my entire life is floating around now, Pasquale Grasso,” said the jazz-guitar icon and NEA Jazz Master. “This guy is something so amazingly musical and so difficult… He has somehow captured the essence of that language from piano onto guitar in a way that almost nobody has ever addressed. He’s the most significant new guy I’ve heard in many, many years.”

Born and raised in Italy’s Campania region, Pasquale learned to fuse his jazz technique with classical refinement at the Conservatory of Bologna. These days, Grasso teaches and maintains a packed gig schedule around New York, including frequent solo performances at the popular Greenwich Village haunt Mezzrow.

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​Dylan Shamat is a bassist, composer, and educator based in New York City, where he studied at the Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School. He performs regularly with Lea DeLaria, Allan Harris, Tony Desare, Cyrille Aimee, the Konrad Paszkudzki trio, and countless others, as well as in the off-Broadway production Sleep No More. He can be heard on the Cyrille Aimee album ‘Live’ (2018) as well as several recordings by the Konrad Paszkudzki Trio on the Venus record label.

Since 2016, Dylan has performed pops concerts with many major North American orchestras, including Houston symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra. He has worked with current jazz legends including Peter Bernstein, Terrell Stafford, Dick Oats, and Janis Siegel. Dylan maintains an active teaching schedule through masterclasses for musicians of all ages across the United States.