SHORT BIOGRAPHY
sHELLY BERG
Shelly Berg is a Steinway piano artist and five-time Grammy-nominated arranger, orchestrator, and producer. His newest album Alegría will be recorded with bassist Carlitos Del Puerto and Dafnis Prieto and released June 2024 on ArtistShare.
Prior albums Gershwin Reimagined: An American in London (Decca Gold), The Deep (Chesky), The Nearness of You (Arbors), Blackbird (Concord) and The Will (CARS) are critically acclaimed. Berg earned three Grammy nominations in the Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s) category with jazz singer-lyricist Lorraine Feather and international superstar Gloria Estefan, and a fourth Grammy nomination as co-producer of Gloria Estefan: The Standards (Sony). He earned his fifth Grammy nomination as co-arranger of “I Loves You Porgy / There’s a Boat That’s Leavin’ Soon for New York” from the album Rendezvous (2018) featuring jazz singers Clint Holmes and Dee Dee Bridgewater with The Count Basie Orchestra.
Other recent projects include arranging, orchestrating and co-producing the Estefan Family Christmas album, and recording and/or performing with Tony Bennett, Steve Miller, Seal, Lizz Wright, Andra Day, Monica Mancini, Kari Kirkland, Carmen Bradford, Chris Botti, Renée Fleming, and Arturo Sandoval. He is also artistic director of The Jazz Cruise, and artistic advisor for the Jazz Roots series at the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center of Miami-Dade County.
An award-winning educator with over 40 years of leadership in higher education, Shelly Berg is Dean and Patricia L. Frost Professor of Music at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. He was previously the McCoy/Sample Professor of Jazz Studies at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and a past president of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE). In 2003 he was honored as Educator of the Year by the Los Angeles Jazz Society and in 2002 received the IAJE Lawrence Berk Leadership Award. In 2000 the Los Angeles Times named him one of three “Educators for the Millennium.”
His textbooks include Essentials of Jazz Theory, the Chop-Monster beginning improvisation series, Rhythm Section Workshop for Jazz Directors (Alfred Music) and Jazz Improvisation: The Goal-Note Method (Kendor). He has appeared as a performer and lecturer throughout the United States as well as in Canada, China, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Japan, Romania and Venezuela.
Musician: Shelly Berg
Photographer: Patrick Farrell
Location: L. Austin Weeks Center for Recording and Performance, Frost School of Music, University of Miami