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Snyder, Williams in homage to Bill Evans Wednesday at Gobin
The Greencastle Summer Music Festival continues on Wednesday, June 7 at 7:30 p.m. in Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church with a performance by DePauw University jazz faculty members Steve Snyder, piano, and Sandy Williams, guitar.
The multi-genre festival’s concerts are open to the public free of charge, thanks to the support of individuals and businesses, including the Inn at DePauw and the Putnam County Community Foundation.
“I’m very much looking forward to my collaboration with Dr. Steve Snyder,” Williams said. “We’ll be exploring many standards from the ‘Great American Songbook’ as well as the jazz tradition. The evening will be, in part, an homage to the Bill Evans/Jim Hall classic piano/guitar album, ‘Undercurrent.’”
“I’m delighted to have Steve and Sandy play this week,” festival founding artistic director Eric Edberg, also a DePauw music professor, said. “We started with an evening a light classical music, then had the extraordinary musicians of the Global Musician Workshop last week, and now we have a night of jazz by two amazing performers with Greencastle ties -- Sandy Williams, who grew up here, and Steve Snyder, who lives here with his wife and kids. This truly exemplifies our motto of ‘friends making music for friends.’”
Snyder is a pianist and organist who maintains an active playing schedule locally, nationally and internationally. Snyder was selected as one of 66 pianists from all over the world to compete in the Martial Solal International Jazz Piano Competition, in Paris in October 2002. He has performed in France, Portugal, Brazil, Sweden, Taiwan, throughout the U.S. and Canada.
The Austin Chronicle has called Snyder’s work “superb.” Gapplegatemusicreview.blogspot notes that his work “goes beyond the Jimmie Smith, et al, mode into a post-middle-period-Larry-Young sort of feel.” Organ impresario Pete Fallico says Snyder can “get around those keyboards nicely and solo magnificently at both at slow and quick tempos.”
Snyder has contributed articles to the Teaching Music Through Performance series, and JazzEd magazine, as well as presented clinics nationally and internationally.
Williams has been on the faculty of the DePauw School of Music since 1996. As a musician who has been a fixture on the Indiana music scene for several decades, his live performance credits span performing with Idina Menzel, John Waters, Liza Minnelli, Marvin Hamlisch, alt-country rocker Steve Earle, Michael Feinstein’s live PBS special, the Steve Allee Big Band, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. He has also performed in the pit orchestra for a number of touring Broadway shows, including, “The Lion King,” “Chicago” and “Legally Blonde.”
As a studio musician, Williams’ credits include The Rounder Records box set (with Carrie Newcomer), jazz arranger John Clayton, John Mellencamp’s movie soundtrack “Falling From Grace,” Hal Leonard publications’ Essential Elements series, hundreds of jingles and gospel singers Sandi Patti and Bill Gaither.
He is the author of “Live Sound For Guitar” and technical editor for many of the “Guitar for Dummies” series. In November 2014, Williams performed four concerts in China with jazz pianist Steve Allee.