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Jay Leonhart |
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Everyone in Jay Leonhart’s family played the piano, and there were six children. By age seven, he and his brother Bill played banjos, guitars, mandolins, and basses. The two of them performed on Baltimore TV and toured the country. At 14, Jay discovered the bass in Baltimore’s Pier Five Dixieland Jazz Band, going on to study at The Peabody Institute, the Berklee School of Music and The Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto. He moved to New York at 21, playing road gigs with big bands, small bands and singers and soon visited little jazz joints around the world. He began playing with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Tony Bennett, Marian McPartland and Jim Hall and became a studio musician. He married singer Donna Zier, and their two children now perform with Steely Dan among others. Jay was named The Most Valuable Bassist in the recording industry three times by the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences. He has recorded 15 solo albums and performs one-man shows of songs about his life in music, among them “The Bass Lesson” and “Nukular Tulips.” Named "The Most Witty" in his 1959 Loyola High School yearbook, Jay Leonhart’s funny one-man shows are warmly received by audiences and critics alike. |