Biography
- Joe Parillo started his teaching career in higher education at the Community College of Rhode Island in 1980 and then joined the University of Rhode Island faculty in 1985. Since then, he has been teaching piano, composition, jazz theory, and jazz history. He has served as Director of Jazz Studies and was chair of the Music Department from 2010 to 2016.
- He developed and taught the honors course A Self-Study in the Creative Process and was a coordinator of the Songs of Social Justice: The Rhetoric of Music Honors Colloquium. He brought the B.M in Jazz Performance and the B.A. degree and minor in Jazz Studies to URI.
- He has served as the coordinator of the Rhode Island Music Educators’ high school jazz festival since 1997.
- He is also co-founder of the Jazz Camp at Newport summer camp and for the seven years his URI Big Band has performed at the Newport Jazz Festival. He earned a Master of Arts in Composition from the New England Conservatory.
- A jazz pianist and Steinway Artist, he has performed in Brazil, Italy, Germany, South Wales, Taiwan and New Zealand. He has performed with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and vibraphonist Jay Hoggard and as featured artist for the Steinway Artists Celebration performing at Boston Symphony Hall in honor of the 150th Anniversary of Steinway and Sons.
- He was selected to be on the Grammy Nomination List for Best Instrumental Composition, "One Day In January" from his 2001 Neoga Records recording, Sandbox.
- Parillo was a member of the BMI Lehman-Engel Musical Theater Workshops in the early 1990’s and has been commissioned to write three jazz ballets and has arranged and recorded over twenty-five full-length children’s productions. Some of his works have aired on WSBE-TV and the SciFi channel’s “First Wave.”
- Parillo wrote and produced a master class CD, Using Altered Scales to Create Improvised Lines, for the July 1998 issue of Jazz Player magazine and wrote a jazz column for the quarterly Rhode Island Music Educators Review.
- After many years as a jazz DJ on WRIU, Joe has been the host of WCRI’s Jazz After Dinner radio show since 2011.
- He has also written and produced the recordings Songbook, Clouds, and the compact discs Almost Carefree and Block Island Summer for his ensemble as well as the gospel CD Meditations of the Heart. He has recorded two CDs with the Worcester-based Sonic Explorers, Birth of the Kakalla and Beatnik Oblivion, saxophonist Art Manchester’s Little Lights and Blue Vacation, and Angels Gather, a collaboration with David Key. Along with those recordings, Morning In The Garden, Sand Box, Segments, Nightfall, and his most recent release, Turn Around Back, are available through his own Neoga Records label.
- Headshot Photo Credit: Jesse Dufault
Steinway Artist
Featured artist for the Steinway Artists Celebration performing at Boston Symphony Hall in honor of the 150th Anniversary of Steinway and Sons.
Pianist & Composer
There's magic in the air when Joe Parillo sits down at the piano. The award-winning musician, a former winner of the Best Jazz Artist title in The Phoenix arts weekly, is an evocative instrumentalist and visionary straddling genres and creating an intoxicating hybrid of melodic styles.
joe Parillo and the new ensemble: Concert Photography BY TODD GIANgUZZI
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Discography
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