Brian Haas
| Brian Haas | |
|---|---|
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Brian Roy Haas |
| Born |
March 18, 1974 Kansas City |
| Origin | Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Website | www |
Brian Haas (born March 18, 1974) is an American jazz pianist, composer, band leader, and producer best known as the founding member and leader of the band Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey.
Brian Haas spent his formative years in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma - a suburb of Tulsa. He began studying classical piano at age 5 and quickly gained attention at the local and regional levels for winning piano competitions at a young age. At age 16, Brian won the Oklahoma Concerto Competition and performed with the Tulsa Philharmonic nine times in the Tulsa metro area. After graduating Broken Arrow High School with honors, Brian was awarded a full tuition music scholarship at The University of Tulsa. In a 2008 interview from the TU Alumni Magazine Haas said "It was hard not to notice how much fun the guys in the jazz program were having. They were always hanging and jamming together, and there was a very communal vibe to it. I was immediately attracted to it." While attending TU, he began playing with the school’s many jazz ensembles and discovered that jazz seemed to come more naturally than the classical music he had been playing his whole life.
In 1993, during his sophomore year at TU, Brian founded The Sphere Jazz Quartet with Sean Layton, Matthew Leland and Dove McHargue. During the summer of 1994, Haas was accepted to attend The Aspen Music Festival and School to study composition with Lucas Foss. After spending that summer within the confines of classical aesthetics, he decided to focus only on jazz and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey was started with the Sphere Jazz Quartet line-up plus Reed Mathis, Rod Mackey, Matthew Edwards and Kyle Wright. Almost immediately, JFJO found national acclaim with its second release, Live in Tokyo.
In 1999, after four years of constant touring, JFJO became a trio, secured record, management and agency deals all within a six-month period, and suddenly the jazz band from Tulsa was playing the biggest jazz clubs & festivals in America and touring with many of their heroes. From 2000 to 2004, JFJO averaged nearly 250 performances a year in Canada and the U.S. In late 2004, the now nationally renowned ensemble secured a record deal with a sister company of Rykodisc called Hyena Records. With their critically acclaimed albums being distributed worldwide, JFJO was now playing all over the world to huge crowds.
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