Geoff Vidal: Bio
From his richly emoted accompaniment to solos that are luxuriant and flavorful, Geoff Vidal’s lion-hearted creativity is reflected not only in his own charts and performance, but the quality with which he executes life itself.
Since first arriving on the New York scene as a New Orleans transplant in 2006, Geoff's fraternal demeanor and musical boisterousness have been conspicuous traits on the local jazz-scape. Contrasting the tightly-polished conservatorialism that dominates the New York jazz community—a culture that makes it easy to forget the adventurousness that gave rise to this art form—unbridled adventure was clearly something the newcomer has been bountifully endowed with.
Geoff’s professional career took flight at age fifteen with his recruitment into the Stage Door Canteen, a noted Cape Cod big band, and later the prestigious sax studio of Lynn Klock at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Geoff’s collegiate honors included early induction into Grammy winner Jeff Holmes’s UMASS Jazz Ensemble and multiple mentions in the Down Beat Student Music Awards, including “Best Collegiate Soloist.”
In New York Geoff’s career has been no less auspicious. After several years touring and performing out of New Orleans, he arrived in NYC to quickly become a tenor-of-choice for a host of notable bandleaders and appear in some of the city’s most prominent clubs.
While Vidal’s sound is easily comparable to the breathy warmth of Coleman Hawkins or Sonny Rollins’s colossal purr, the years leading up to his first headlining release, "She Likes That," have seen the total ripening of Geoff’s unique musical character. At once insatiably unique and deliciously accessible, his unharnessed energy has effloresced into a performance both playful and deliberate, liberated yet totally in control.
GROUPS GEOFF IS A RESIDENT MEMBER OF:
Fat Cat Big Band
Brother Joscephus & the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra
Gregorio Uribe Big Band
Cecilia Coleman Big Band
Alexi David's PATRIOT ACT
Michael O'Brien's Greater Than 5
David Sanford & the Pittsburgh Collective
Geoff Vidal/Noah Preminger Quartet
AWARDS & HONORS
Named DownBeat Student Music Awards' Best Collegiate Instrumental Soloist, 2003
Accepted into Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead program for emerging young jazz composers and performers at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2003
Member of DownBeat Student Music Awards' Best Collegiate Studio Orchestra, 1998-2003
Member of DownBeat Student Music Awards' Best Collegiate Blues/Rock/Pop Ensemble 2000-2002
University Chancellor’s Talent Award Scholarship, UMASS 1998-2002
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