Mark Brandt -- Jazz Pianist

Jazz pianist Mark Brandt was born in San Diego, California. At age 6, his parents relocated to
Northern Virginia, where he began to develop his musical talent and ability. By age 17, he was
playing jazz, fusion, and pop music professionally.

In 1979, Mark graduated from high school and attended Catholic University as a classical piano
performance major, working nights and weekends as a professional keyboardist with a local
jazz and pop group. After three years at CU, he entered the Berklee College of Music in
Boston, Massachusetts where he completed his formal education studying jazz composition
and arranging.

In 1984, after leaving Boston, Mark began working full time as a freelance keyboardist in a
variety of musical groups which took him from Vermont to Florida to Georgia and finally to
Washington, D.C. where he relocated in 1987. Within a short time Mark was playing solo piano
every night of the week, as well as playing with a trio on Friday and Saturday nights and
Sunday brunches. In between, he attended jam sessions all over the Northern Virginia/D.C.
area.

In 1992, at the urging of childhood friend and woodwind player, Geoff Thaler, Mark added
teaching at the music store which Thaler owned to his roster of musical endeavors. In 1994, he
released Warmup, a jazz trio recording, which featured bassist Glen Harris and drummer Stan
McMullen, and in 1995, Mark officially formed and began to work regularly with the first Mark
Brandt Trio.

Between 1995 and 2000, Mark worked within many different musical situations, regularly
returning to the jazz trio format. He released Veritas (1995), In Spirit (1996), and Suite for a
Fish Out of Water (1997). All three projects were successfully marketed and sold through
Christopher Productions (now known as Lionheart Music), the independent record label which
Mark co-founded with Geoff Thaler. Several of Mark's compositions were promoted and heard
on jazz radio stations all across America. In 1999, Mark released a solo piano CD entitled The
Butterfly, which featured pianist Meredith Magwire playing contemporary classical pieces that
he had composed specifically for her.

As the year 2000 began, Mark abruptly halted his recording and performing career in order to
spend more time with his family. During the years that followed, he continued to teach and
work as a clinician from his home studio, focusing his creative energy on the proliferation of his
students. His former students now span the United States in every area of the music business,
as well as on scholarship or advanced placement in some of the country's finest musical
institutions.

In May of 2007, Mark released Piano Improvisations 1, a compilation CD featuring his solo
piano improvisations which originally appeared on the Veritas, Suite for a Fish Out of Water,
and Butterfly CDs. In June of that same year, Mark released new solo piano pieces on a CD
appropriately titled Piano Improvisations 2 (originally released under different management as
the lion). The pieces on both discs feature Mark's love for spontaneity as they are unedited
first-take recordings.

In January 2008, this accomplished pianist teamed with friends, Nate Panning on drums and
Shaun Jurek on bass, to form a new jazz trio. A veteran musician to the D.C. scene himself,
Panning was the drummer in the trio prior to Mark's hiatus. Jurek, a former student of Mark's,
has been working and teaching throughout the D.C. area since he graduated from college in
2002. The trio practices and works regularly together as performers and as a clinician team.

In April of 2008, Mark released a CD featuring duets with jazz guitarist, Dan Leonard, and duets
with woodwind player, Geoff Thaler. The duets between Brandt and Leonard are more recent
compositions which blend well with the duets between Brandt and Thaler, which are also
reissues from Mark's earlier projects. The CD entitled Sunrise Sunset is a tribute to Thaler who
had died several years earlier.

In 2009, the Mark Brandt Jazz Trio was the primary creative outlet for Mark as the trio grew
steadily in popularity with performances throughout the Washington D.C., Virginia, and
Maryland area. The trio culminated their year of jazz dates with a half hour set of Christmas
music at the National Christmas Tree on December 8, 2009.

On December 11, 2009, Mark was back in the studio recording 7 new solo piano
improvisations. On February 2, 2010, they were released on a CD appropriately titled Piano
Improvisations 3. This project completes a trilogy of piano recordings which, in Mark's own
words, "has brought closure to an entire era of my life as both an artist and as a person, while
opening the door to a whole new world of creative possibilities."