Brad Terry & Paul Sullivan - Jazz Jukebox

Brad Terry is a jazz legend and Maine treasure. Brad's musical journey started more than 70 years ago when legendary band leader "King of Swing" Benny Goodman told his mother to buy Brad a clarinet. "I got three free lessons when I bought the instrument and almost immediately, I started playing this wonderful music called jazz. Undiagnosed ADD forced me to learn everything by ear; reading music was not an option. (Later I had three unproductive lessons with Benny )"

It was raw luck that early on Brad started playing with Steve Swallow, Sam Brown & Wayne Wright; did concerts with Chuck Wayne & Joe Puma; sat in at the Celebrity Club and played multiple gigs with Buddy Tate & Buck Clayton.

Later Brad sat in with Eddie Thompson and Major Holly and played for years with Eddie Thompson, even recording a CD with him.

Brad won the Hennessy Cognac Jazz search in NYC with John Basile and recorded a whistling track with Roger Kellaway and Red Mitchell.

Dizzy Gillespie visited for a week doing school programs and invited Brad to New York to play Cuban music with him at The Village Gate.

Brad enjoyed a 25 year partnership with Joachim Mencel in Poland including lots of concerts and school programs and recording 3 CDs. (23 trips to Poland)

While in Poland Brad recorded 2 CDs, 1 Gershwin and 1 Ellington, with Jarek Smietana.

Brad's album with guitar legend and Maine native Lenny Breau, “Livingroom Tapes”, received 4 stars from Leonard Feather.

Grammy Award winner Paul Sullivan has enjoyed a richly varied and distinguished career as a composer and a pianist.

As a soloist, with his trio, and as a member of the Paul Winter Consort, he has played concert tours in most of the United States and Europe, as well as Croatia, Israel, Costa Rica, and Japan. He has performed among the dunes of the Negev Desert, in Leonard Bernstein’s living room, and on the stages of many of the world’s finest concert halls. He has also performed with some legendary orchestras, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, the Boston Pops under both Arthur Fiedler and Keith Lockhardt, and several regional orchestras around the US.

As a jazz player he has worked in some of New York’s most prestigious clubs, including Sweet Basil, The Village Vanguard, and Bradley's. He has played with a wide variety of jazz masters from Benny Goodman to Tommy Flanagan, as well as Red Mitchell, Lou Donaldson, George Mraz, Gerry Hemingway, Marc Helias, Gene Bertoncini, Luciana Sousa, Cafe, Jane Ira Bloom, Pheeroan AkLaff, Eddie Daniels, Richard Stoltzman, Nana Vasconcelos, Glen Velez and many other luminaries. His 15 CDs have sold over 300 thousand copies and have won 3 Indie Awards. His music has been broadcast internationally, as well as on all the major American networks, including National Public Radio. He received a Grammy Award for his work on the Paul Winter Consort CD, Silver Solstice.

Most recently, he completed his first choral work. This was commissioned by the Bagaduce Chorale of Blue Hill Maine.

In the theater Sullivan has worked as a musical director, pianist, and conductor for many Off-Broadway and Broadway shows. He played keyboards and shared the conducting duties for the original production of the musical Nine, which won a Tony Award for Best Musical.

Sullivan has also worked extensively in the dance world, playing piano for Merce Cunningham’s classes, and writing music for the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. He has also enjoyed a long friendship with the Pilobolus Dance Theater, for whom he has written over 15 scores.

In his solo performances, he creates a relaxed and intimate feeling with his audience through his pleasant and quirky observations about music and life. His warm and inviting personality, coupled with his world-class musicianship, wins over new listeners immediately and usually makes them life-long fans.

Sullivan grew up in Boston and got his first professional training at the St. Paul Choir School in Cambridge with Theodore Marier and John Dunn. He went on to Phillips Exeter Academy and from there to Yale, where he received his BA in music in 1977. He also created and taught a course at Yale in Electronic Music.

He and his family live on the coast of Maine.

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