Anaïs Reno is a 19-year-old LaGuardia High School graduate who is currently attending SUNY Purchase as a jazz major. Winning the Forté International Competition, Great American Songbook Competition, The Mabel Mercer Competition, the Julie Wilson Award, a winner and Finalist in YoungArts, and the jazz prize winner at The American Traditions Competition, Anaïs has performed in New York at important venues such as Birdland, Carnegie Hall, Rose Hall, David Geffen Hall, Dizzy’s, Chris' Jazz Café in Philadelphia, and many others. Her album, “Lovesome Thing: Anaïs Reno Sings Ellington & Strayhorn”, which was recorded with Emmet Cohen when Anaïs was 16, received critical acclaim and rose to number 6 on the jazz chart. She was featured in the “New York State of Mind” video with Idina Manzel and Stephen Colbert and was on national television singing "America the beautiful" for the Mets/Yankees 9/11 game last year. She received a critically acclaimed review from Downbeat Magazine on an album with Gary Smulyan, Pete Malinverni, David Wong and Matt Wilson, of Tad Dameron tunes ,"Tad's All Folks", which Anais recorded at age 17, She has performed in Houston, Cleveland, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and London this past season, and opened the baseball season on April 15th at Citi Field for the Mets. Additionally, Anaïs will be coming out with a new album soon, featuring Peter Bernstein, David Wong, and Joe Farnsworth.
Since coming to New York City in 1981, Pete Malinverni has performed at Carnegie Recital Hall, Symphony Space, the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, Birdland, Bradley’s, Smalls, Smoke, the Village Gate, Le Poisson Rouge, Mezzrow, etc. He’s also traveled the world, performing in Japan, Europe, South America and Canada. His is an art that gives proof to the statement that passionate music is indeed the universal language.
He is listed in Leonard Feather’s Encyclopedia of Jazz and appeared as a guest twice on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, once alongside Elvis Costello.
His seventeen critically acclaimed recordings as a leader, in piano solo, trio, quartet, quintet, big band and choir formats, have received heavy airplay and stand as a testament to his attempt to always be pushing forward the art of Jazz, leaning on the traditions, while looking to the future. His latest, “On the Town – Pete Malinverni Plays Leonard Bernstein”, was for several weeks in the top ten of international airplay on the JazzWeek charts, and “Candlelight – Love in the Time of Cholera”, a collaboration with Classical violinist Juliet Kurtzman, comprised of music of the Americas, including by tango master Astor Piazzolla, Bix Beiderbecke, Scott Joplin and others, was heralded as an important and inspiring bridging of traditions.
Pete shares his commitment to music as metaphor for a life lived freely with his students, in clinics and lectures worldwide and at SUNY Purchase, where he served for ten years as Head of Jazz Studies and teaches Jazz Theory, Harmony, Improv, Combos and the choir he founded, the Soul Voices. At Purchase, he was honored with the Student Engagement Award and the Community Service Award. Previously, he taught at William Paterson University under Rufus Reid and at New York University, where he was the recipient of the Marc Crawford Award for Excellence in Jazz Education.
