Album Notes

Elliot Steger, pianist and composer, has extensive jazz and classical training. He began classical training at the age of 4 and studied at the Manhattan School of Music as a teenager. He has studied for the past 20 years with a professor from the Berklee School of Music. He is accompanied by Lello Molinari on acoustic bass and Jon Hazilla on drums who are both on faculty at Berklee as well as the talented Christine Horn on congas and percussion. His style is strongly influenced by the great Bill Evans but distinctive in its own right.

The music on "One Red Rose" reveals an emphasis on a strong structured melody line along with a refreshing variety of songs ranging from beautiful ballads to songs that swing, to a latin groove with congas. This is his 5th CD and the 2nd one with the same quartet. The group is very together and has wonderfully inspired improvisations by all group members. Steger plays 2 solo piano songs on this CD. The first song on the CD, "Beyond Forever", was inspired by his wife and is a beautiful ballad. The last song on the the CD is the only nonoriginal standard out of his more than 60 original recorded songs. He plays his own arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" with both a ballad and swing feel which is both poetic and playful.

As with his prior 4 CD's("Joyful Blue", "Making Time", "Transition", and "Images"), he donates all profits to the American Cancer Society, the Alzheimer's Association, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society.