Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Andy Narell was born March 18, 1954 in New York City and took up the steelpan at a very young age after his father invited Ellie Mannette to bring steel pan to Queens, New York in an attempt to get kids off the street and out of gangs.

Moving with his family to California in his teens he eventually studied music at the University of California, Berkeley. He played piano with UC Jazz Ensembles and graduated in 1973. In the 1980s he worked in the project Bebop & Beyond, recording tribute albums to Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. He has performed with the Caribbean Jazz Project, Montreux, Sakésho, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.

A composer and arranger Andy has created music for Trinidad’s national steelband competition Panorama, and has also performed in South Africa. He has performed and recorded with Spyro Gyra, Taj Mahal, Toto and Mike Marshall and has recorded more than two dozen albums for Windham Hill, Inner City and Heads Up record labels and continues to compose, arrange, perform and tour.

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