For Your Grammy® Consideration
Best Jazz Instrumental Album - KEEP SWINGIN'
Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella - PINE NEEDLES - Garry Dial & Rich DeRosa
Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical - Dave Kowalski
Best Jazz Performance - NERO - Garry Dial
Best Album Notes - Garry Dial & Rich DeRosa
Best Recording Package - Kathy Nestor
Listen to the whole album on Spotify:
Praise for KEEP SWINGIN’
"Keep Swingin', a splendid new album from pianist Garry Dial and drummer Rich DeRosa, features "the music of Charlie Banacos." Charlie who? you may ask. And the answer is, there are jazz educators, and then there was Charlie Banacos, whose talent and ingenuity in the classroom influenced and inspired countless jazz musicians for more than fifty years. During that time, he designed more than a hundred courses of study and wrote half a dozen books on composition and improvisation…” - Jack Bowers, All About Jazz.
"It is truly a magnificent idea to pay tribute to Charlie Banacos, who sadly passed away but created over 100 programs for improvisation since the 1950s and whose compositional work remains prominent in 20th-century music. The collaborative project, led by the renowned pianist Garry Dial and the faithful arranger-drummer Rich DeRosa, honors the great jazz educator Charlie Banacos, whose pedagogy has influenced generations of jazz musicians over the past 50 years. The album, consisting of 10 tracks, presents Banacos’ music reimagined and rearranged by Dial and DeRosa, performed by some of Banacos’ most accomplished disciples and friends, including Mike Stern, Jeff Berlin, Jerry Bergonzi, Wayne Krantz, and many others…” - Thierry De Clemensat, Paris-Move.
"This album is a tribute to one of jazz’s greatest educators, the pianist and composer Charlie Banacos, known as ‘The Jedi Master of Jazz.’ From the 1950s, Banacos created courses for improvisation and composition (with titles such as ‘Tetratonics,’ ‘Bimodal Pendulums,’ and ‘Tonal Paralypsis’). He produced more than 100 courses, which were delivered as lectures, face-to-face sessions, clinics and courses (including online). His work can be found in countless jazz education resources and is used by numerous music institutions. Banacos continued working right up to his death in 2009, aged 63...Banacos was much loved by his students, who described him as ‘exacting, inspiring and encouraging.’ There was a long waiting list for his personal tuition sessions, and it was not unknown for people to fly across the USA or even from other continents to attend them. His ex-students would go on to play with artists such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Chick Corea, Joe Henderson, Dizzy Gillespie and Wayne Shorter…” - George Cole, Jazz Views.
