Pete Malinverni Trio Featuring Juliet Kurtzman
“One listen and you’ll know why Pete Malinverni is one of New York’s great pianists.” - Michael Ryan, The Boston Herald
Julie Kurtzman - a first violist with The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra for eight years.
New York City jazz pianist Pete Malinverni and his trio featuring Juliet Kurtzman present an evening of Argentinian tangos, Brazilian choros and American jazz standards.
Pete Malinverni regularly resides in year-end Top Ten Jazz Lists. He has played with, and written for, many jazz greats, and attributes much of his love for the “feeling of jazz” to his work with master drummers Vernel Fournier, Mel Lewis, Leroy Williams, Jeff Hamilton and Eliot Zigmund. He performs regularly in NYC’s great jazz rooms, as well as clubs, concert halls, festivals worldwide.
As a composer, Pete Malinverni has written solo piano pieces, duets for voice/piano, trio/quartet/quintet music for themed albums, and big band and large choral formats. For this work, Pete has received funding from the NEA, Chamber Music America, the Meet the Composer Fund, the Westchester (NY) Council on the Arts, the James Weldon Johnson Literary Foundation, the Four Freshmen Preservation Society and others.
Malinverni is a tenured full professor in the Jazz Studies program at SUNY Purchase, where he has mentored alums Samara Joy, Bruce Harris, Cyrille Aimée and Wayne Tucker. He was Chair of the program from 2012 to 2022, and was asked to reprise that role for the 2024-25 school year.
For eighteen years, Pete was Minister of Music at the predominantly African-American Devoe Street Baptist Church in Brooklyn. Currently he is Pianist/Conductor at Scarsdale’s Westchester Reform Temple, and Music Director at the Pound Ridge Community Church, where he curates a Jazz Vespers Series.
Juliet Kurtzman grew up in Houston, Texas, where she started playing the violin at age 7. At 9, she began studying with renowned violinist Fredell Lack. At 11, she made her debut with the Houston Symphony. During her teenage years, she soloed with the Houston Symphony several times, and also with the Baton Rouge Symphony and the Dallas Symphony. At 17, she matriculated at the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Yumi Scott and Jascha Brodsky. After graduating from Curtis, Juliet moved to Europe to concertize and teach. There she continued her violin studies with Ronald Patterson in Monte Carlo. Shortly after, she was accepted into the Luzern Sinfonieorchestra (The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra) and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, where she played in the first violin sections for eight years.
Julie moved to NYC in 2005, and began teaching at the 92nd Street Y , the Special Music School, Hebrew Union College and Saint David's. She currently performs around the US, and coaches and teaches. Juliet recorded a CD with jazz pianist Pete Malinverni, "Candlelight, love in the time of cholera", which combines classical, jazz and Latin genres and performs this music regularly.
