Michael Echaniz is one of the brightest musicians, composers, and artists emerging from the West Coast. A pianist since five, Michael has studied music at Santa Clara University, California Jazz Conservatory (B.M.), and CalArts (MFA.) Michael is an avid performer, playing and recording alongside internationally-renowned artists such as Jeff Denson, Romain Pilon, Wu Man, Gerald Cleaver, and Friction Quartet in venues such as Black Cat, the Art Boutiki, and Yoshi’s, as well as Umbria and Montreux jazz festivals.

Michael has won numerous awards, mostly recently, the 2021 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award and a New Music Workshop at the 2022 International Jazz Composers’ Symposium (ISJAC).

Supported by InterMusic SF’s 2020 Music Grant Program and New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund in 2022-23, Michael has just released Seven Shades of Violet (Rebiralost) (September 8th, 2023), an ambitious, virtuosic, symmetrical concept album of original compositions and arrangements on Ridgeway Records.

Michael’s forward-thinking original music embraces rhythmic complexity, haunting melodicism, fluidity between improvisation and through-composition, influence from disparate styles of classical, world, and pop music, and deep emotional connection.

On September 8th, 2023, Ridgeway Records releases Seven Shades of Violet (Rebiralost), the stunning debut jazz album from San Francisco based pianist, keyboardist, and composer, Michael Echaniz, in the wake of a successful fight against stage four lymphoma cancer.

Well over an hour in length, this epic conceptual work features the core contributions of producer, bassist, and vocalist Jeff Denson, drummer and percussionist Dillon Vado, and primary vocalists Danielle Wertz and Molly Pease with an array of special guests, including features from saxophonist Dann Zinn, percussionist Silvestre Martinez, and the strings of Friction Quartet.

1. Prologue
2. Seven Shades of Violet
3. Proxima Centauri
4. Clockwork
5. Interlude
6. Prince of Darkness
7. Edulretni
8. Everything is Embarrassing (feat. Dann Zinn)
9. Gernika (Bask Balms) (feat. Silverstre Martinez)
10. Fantaisie (feat. Friction Quartet)
11. Epilogue

His long-delayed, eighty-minute, symmetrically constructed debut album opens on the short, but vivacious Prologue which leads us into the spirited Seven Shades of Violet, the ornately, yet melodically flowing Proxima Centauri, the dutiful, and nearly 15 minute opus Clockwork, and then we get a flirtatious Interlude, and then Wayne Shorter’s Prince of Darkness presents the sole reference to the jazz canon; along with featuring an extended drum solo by Vado.

With the project representing five years of artistic development, and thus being his very first opportunity to present a completed, professional vision to the public, it continues seamlessly onward with the strident Edulretni and the joyful Everything is Embarrassing (feat. Dann Zinn), and they are in turn backed by the scintillating Gernika (Bask Balms) (feat. Silverstre Martinez), the recording rounding out on the aching yearn found within Fantaisie (feat. Friction Quartet), coming to a close on the atmospherically harmonized Epilogue.

The nine original compositions and two arrangements feature a wide variety of synesthetic moods and acoustic-electric textures, drawing inspiration from mathematics, history, Basque heritage, and existential crisis.

Personnel:
Michael Echaniz – Piano, Keyboards
Jeff Denson – Electric and Acoustic Basses
Dillon Vado – Drum Set

Official Website

Michael Echaniz @ Facebook