Darrell Grant was born on May 30, 1962 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but his family moved to Denver, Colorado while still a young child. He started piano lessons before his teens and was considered enough of a prodigy to join and tour for two years with the Boulder-based Pearl Street Jazz Band, from the age of fifteen.

At 17 Grant won a scholarship to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York and while at Eastman focused on performance studies over theory, which he covered in his graduate studies in jazz theory and composition…