Debbie Poryes

A veteran from the SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA Bay Region jazz picture, Debbie Poryes is a bop-oriented acoustic pianist whose melodic and introspective performing continues to be influenced by Costs Evans (the pianist, not the saxophonist), Marian McPartland, Ahmad Jamal, and pre-fusion Herbie Hancock. Poryes continues to be playing the acoustic piano because the age group of five, but jazz wasn’t often her focus; developing up in North California, her flavor in music ranged from Western european traditional to Simon & Garfunkel. Actually, Simon & Garfunkel had been among the folk-rock/gentle rock artists from the ’60s and ’70s who motivated Poryes to place the piano on the trunk burner and focus on playing your guitar and performing when she was an adolescent. Among the people Poryes researched tone of voice with during her adolescent years was Judy Davis, whose well-known learners had included Sophistication Slick (of Jefferson Aircraft popularity) and Barbra Streisand. After getting awarded a complete scholarship towards the University or college of California at Berkeley, Poryes remaining house at 17 — and it had been during her years at Berkeley that Poryes became set on jazz. Hearing main pianists like Evans, Jamal, and Thelonious Monk influenced Poryes to emphasize the acoustic piano once again and pursue a profession like a jazz instrumentalist. At 20, Poryes got a jazz-oriented gig at a Berkeley cafe known as Martino’s, where she performed five nights weekly; Poryes continued to try out gigs in a number of other Bay Region locations in the ’70s. But Poryes finished up spending a lot of the ’80s in holland, where she documented her first recording, Debbie Poryes Trio, for Problem Records (among Holland’s best-known impartial jazz brands) in 1982. It had been through the ’80s that Poryes became fluent in Dutch, made up soundtracks for Codia Audiovisual (a Dutch documentary film organization), and toured European countries with her personal organizations and with an 11-piece music group led by American bassist/arranger John Clayton (of Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra popularity). In 1990, Poryes came back to North California, resuming her activity for the Bay Region jazz picture. Poryes became a faculty person in UC Berkeley’s Jazzschool in 2000, and she documented her trio record, A Tune in Jazz, for Jazzschool Information in 2006 and 2007.