Faculty

Profile

Herbie Hancock calls CARMEN STAAF “a consummate jazz pianist with equal talent in composition, orchestration and arranging. A bright future awaits her.” Currently the pianist and Musical Director for NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater, Carmen has performed everywhere from the Village Vanguard with John Zorn, to Lincoln Center as a guest soloist with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, to recording as an accordionist and vocalist on the Grammy-winning album “Pecados y Milagros” by Mexican singer Lila Downs. She was a fellow at the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA, where she studied with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. Previously, she was trained in the Russian school of classical piano by Alisa Moshinsky, and then studied with Sophia Rosoff for several years in New York. She also studied intensively with Danilo Perez and Bob Brookmeyer. As a teacher, she draws on this diverse background to approach each student individually, focusing on developing freedom and precision at the piano while expanding the student’s improvisational skills from a jazz piano perspective. A Yamaha Artist, Carmen has played throughout the United States and abroad at venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Playboy Jazz Festival (where she performed in a two-piano setting with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter), International Jazz Days both in Paris and at the White House, and many others in Europe, Latin America and India. She was the winner of the 2009 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Pianist Competition and was listed as a DownBeat Rising Star Pianist. Her 2018 co-led album “Science Fair” (with drummer Allison Miller) made both the NY Times and LA Times “Best of 2018” lists, and received 4.5 stars in DownBeat. Carmen is a regular visiting artist at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, and a faculty member at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and the Litchfield Jazz Camp. She taught in the Piano Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston from 2005-2009. Her most recent album with her trio is “Woodland” (Newvelle, 2020); she and Allison Miller will release their duo album “Nearness” on Sunnyside Records in July 2022.