Live @ Baruch Performing Arts Center’s Engelman Recital Hall
BIO - Steve Sandberg
Three-time Emmy-nominated composer/pianist Steve Sandberg plays original music that masterfully blends classical, global music traditions, and jazz with the excitement of virtuosic improvisation.
Steve was lead composer and musical director for Nickelodeon’s landmark children’s programs “Dora the Explorer” and “Go, Diego, Go!” His scoring and songwriting are informed by a lifetime of immersion in the music of many cultures.
He began playing the piano at the age of four (and is a current student of the legendary pianist and teacher Seymour Bernstein). While studying music at Yale, and African Art History with Robert Farris Thompson, he heard Felipe Luciano’s Latin Roots radio program, and it changed his life. Deeply drawn to these rhythms, Steve moved back to New York after graduating to immerse himself in the world of jazz and Afro-Caribbean music. His mentor was multi-instrumentalist Mario Rivera, a member of the Dizzie Gillespie, Tito Puente, and George Coleman ensembles. Steve was pianist, composer, and arranger for Rivera’s “Salsa Refugee” group, and also performed with Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, and Ruben Blades. A highlight of this period was an appearance in Rio and São Paolo in a duo with vocalist Bebel Gilberto.
Steve has toured with David Byrne (“Rei Momo") as keyboardist and vocalist and was musical director for Lincoln Center’s summer Brazilfest series. He has conducted and arranged for Broadway (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) and for many regional and off-Broadway theatres, including the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Steve has also studied North Indian raga singing with Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan, and performs with South Indian violinist Dr. L. Subramaniam. He has he has presented a series of concerts incorporating these wide-ranging musical explorations at the Knitting Factory, The Guggenheim Museum, and the Stone.
Throughout the pandemic, Steve has been live-streaming regularly from Brooklyn's Soapbox Gallery, in collaboration with many New York musicians including Zach Brock, Rudy Royston, Boris Koslov, Vitor Goncalves, Jay Hoggard, Jay Rodriguez, and Vinicius Gomes. In August of 2021, Steve and Zach performed a duo concert at New York’s Bargemusic series.
Steve also teaches classical and jazz piano and composition at the 92nd Street Y, as well as in his private studio. He teaches students of all ages and levels, in-person and online. He has also presented masterclasses on Improvisation for Classically Trained Musicians via the Global Music Foundation and at the New School.
In 2019, Steve was commissioned by Kelly Hall-Tompkins’ Music Kitchen project, which presents classical music at New York City homeless shelters, to write an original song for tenor and string quartet. The song, setting lyrics by former Music Kitchen clients to music, will be premiered at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in April 2022.
BIO - Luiz Simas
Composer/singer/pianist Luiz Simas was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1948. He performed and recorded with some of the greatest Brazilian artists, and many of his original compositions were recorded in Brazil and abroad.
He studied classical piano and was a founding member of bossa-nova and rock groups in Brazil. Simas was the first musician in Rio to use a synthesizer. He composed and recorded the trademark signal for tv Globo, Brazil’s largest tv network.
Simas moved to New York in 1989 and has since then performed in venues such as the Birdland Jazz Club, the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Room and the Iridium in New York, the Gamle Logen Hall in Oslo, the Pheasantry in London, the Philharmonia Hall in Odessa and Sala Cecilia Meirelles in Rio. He’s performed in Jazz Festivals in the US, Norway, Ukraine, and Brazil. Simas has also been touring Europe every year since 2015.
In 2018 he formed the Simas & Amorim Duo with brilliant Brazilian guitarist Wesley Amorim. His style is influenced by classical music, jazz, rock, choro, bossa-nova, and other genres of popular Brazilian music.