By age 28, Dan has developed a rare improvisational gift and a complex yet deeply melodic approach to music. He has performed the world over in contexts ranging from solo piano to full orchestra, exploring a wide variety of idioms but always in the service of a personal aesthetic, a uni.ed artistic identity.

Dan has also had the extraordinary privilege of a sustained, ongoing duo partnership with alto saxophonist and jazz luminary Lee Konitz. The two documented their rapport on the acclaimed 2009 Sunnyside CD Duos With Lee (“a benchmark of human potential” – JazzInsideNY). They have appeared together live at the Village Vanguard and many other leading jazz venues. In addition, Dan has had the honor of performing with Steve Lacy, Bob Brookmeyer, Charles McPherson, Joe Lovano, Ralph Towner, Paul Motian, Mark Turner, Billy Hart and other innovators.

GOLDBERG VARIATIONS/VARIATIONS

Goldberg Variations / Variations

In Goldberg Variations/Variations, Dan performs each of Bach’s original variations as it was intended, and then gives his own improvisatory take on each. Dan Tepfer has created a kaleidoscopic experience with his solo album Goldberg Variations / Variations, the jazz pianist approaching J.S. Bach's masterpiece – one of the classical canon's most totemic works – as an inspiring font for creativity. Interspersed with his affectionate interpretation of the complete ""Goldbergs"" are his own improvised variations on Bach's variations. No Jacques Loussier-style swinging of the classics, Tepfer's variations are marked by a ruminative joy, spiced with contemporary dissonances and a deep feel for the source as timeless music beyond category.

Tepfer by Ryan Inzana

Although the Goldberg Variations are beloved now as an entrancing, virtually sacred work of art, Johann Sebastian Bach published the score – consisting of an ""aria"" and a set of 30 variations – in 1741 as a keyboard study, with the piece later nicknamed for the harpsichordist who might have been its first performer. From Glenn Gould to Pierre Hantaï, the modern world's greatest classical artists have performed and recorded the ""Goldbergs."" Investing himself totally in music he has known since childhood, Dan Tepfer recorded his Goldberg Variations / Variations completely solo, even engineering the late-night sessions himself for total immersion in the process. The result is both utterly individual and genuinely moving.

For those who deem Bach's music untouchable, they should remember Stravinsky's rejoinder to those who criticized his transformation of Baroque compositions in Pulcinella as disrespectful: ""You `respect,' but I love,"" he said. As for Tepfer, he says: ""What I'm doing is definitely loving. But instead of recording the Goldberg Variations and then writing lengthy liner notes about how I feel about them, I'm expressing how I feel about them in music, with my improvisations on Bach's variations. One challenge was switching gears – playing this classical music that's a real test for me and for so many pianists, then the next minute really improvising and being free.""

With Bach using the same chord progression throughout the Goldberg Variations, his musical process wasn't as different from jazz as it might seem. ""That is really what we do in jazz, particularly when playing standards,"" Tepfer explains. ""We take the chord progression of a tune, and it's often as simple as Bach's Aria, and we make variations on it.

Tepfer recorded the album alone – producing the sessions himself in the middle of the night – in the Yamaha Artist Services Salon in Manhattan, playing one of Yamaha's new CFX hand-built concert grand pianos.

Tepfer’s numerous awards include first prize and audience prize at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition, first prize at the 2006 East Coast Jazz Festival Competition, and first prize at the 2007 competition of the American Pianists Association.