Ahmad Jamal Tickets

Ahmad Jamal is a famous American jazz pianist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who has been active in American jazz music since the late forties. Today, he is a living legend in the world of jazz music, a pianist without equal and a musician who has inspired many great artists. His music has been released by record labels such as Epic Records, Atlantic Records, Impulse Records, Argo, Panot, Okeh, Dreyfus and Telarc. He is also a composer and continues to play live music, with many buying Ahmad Jamal tickets for his concerts each year.

Ahmad Jamal is ranked by many as one of the most important musicians in jazz, second only to Charlie Parker in developing jazz music into the art form it is today. He is also one of the most successful jazz music artists in the world today, renowned also as an educator, having taught some of the most marvelous artists in the world. He grew up in Pittsburgh and began playing the piano at the age of three, and then formally while seven years old under Mary Cardwell Dawson, who taught him how to play the piano. He was influenced early on by the music of Errol Garner, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams and Billy Strayhorn.

By the age of fourteen, Ahmad Jamal was playing the piano professionally and had studied under James Miller. He was recognized early on by Art Tatum as a coming great pianist. In 1948, after he graduated from high school, he began playing music with the orchestra led by George Hudson. He then joined The Four Strings, a group of musicians and moved in 1950 to Chicago, playing with the likes of jazz saxophonists Claude McLin and Von Freeman and drummer Ike Day. He also performed solo, at venues such as the famous Palm Tavern.

He recorded music for Okeh with a band known as The Three Strings, made up of bassist Eddie Calhoun and guitarist Ray Crawford. The band began performing at famous venues such as Blue Note in Chicago and New York City's Embers. He would go on to record music for record labels such as Epic Records and Parrot Records. Some of their albums stayed in the top ten of the charts, with one staying for more than one hundred weeks. The group also toured venues in North Africa and released a number of live albums and studio albums.

He went on to open upon The Alhambra, a famous club and restaurant in Chicago city. During the sixties, he was joined by bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a number of albums, as well as playing drummer Frank Grant and performing live at concerts all over the world. He continued playing through the seventies and eighties, with bands made up of a drummer, a bassist and him as the pianist. One of his longest shows was at Washington DC's Blues Alley from 1979 to the nineties, often performing on New Year's Eve.

By then, he had become a world famous jazz icon, a musician who was praised by the likes of The New York Times, Time, Rolling Stone and even on NPR. Despite being over eighty years old, he has continued recording music and performing it live on many a tour with his latest album, Blue Moon, released in 2012.

One of the greatest musicians in jazz, right along the like so Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, best known for his blend of cool jazz. He has been compared to Thelonious Monk and has been regarded as one of the great geniuses in music, having inspired the likes of Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans. He has also inspired Miles Davis, who has praised is music. He has received the Order of the Arts and Letters from the French government, the American Jazz Masters award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Smithsonian Institute Distinguished Service Award, the Arts & Culture Recognition Award, the American Jazz Hall of Fame and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' Living Jazz Legend. He is a jazz legend to see live with Ahmad Jamal tickets in hand.