John Medeski is a keyboardist in Brooklyn, NY. He founded Medeski Martin & Wood in 1991, a trio known for blending funk, free improvisation, and jazz across Hammond B3, Steinway, and vintage keyboards.
John Medeski has spent thirty years asking the same question he articulated at the New England Conservatory's Third Stream program: how do you absorb Coltrane, Ray Charles, and A Tribe Called Quest through the same ear and let it all come out? Behind the Hammond B3, Steinway, Clavinet, Mellotron, and any vintage keyboard within reach, the answer keeps shifting. He formed Medeski Martin & Wood in New York in 1991, and the trio's 'avant-groove' (funk and free improvisation fused into something that resisted every genre tag) made them fixtures on both the jazz and jam-band circuits. A different thread runs through his film work: for The Curse, the Fielder-Safdie Showtime series, he composed a score designed not to direct feeling but to sit beside the action like a separate observer: the sonic touchstone was Alice Coltrane's Turiya Sings. The work keeps returning to that gap between idea and emotion that only music can cross.
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