“Simplicity" is featured on the first disc of trailblazing Venezuelan-born pianist, composer and bandleader Edward Simon’s double album "25 Years” available October 9 via Ridgeway Records.

“Simplicity” – originally released on Simon's 2005 Criss Cross Jazz album “Simplicitas” – features the pianist with Avishai Cohen on bass and Adam Cruz on drums.

Brimming with arrestingly beautiful music drawn from 13 albums spanning 1995-2018, “25 Years” is less a career retrospective than a personally curated tour through some of Simon's highlights as a recording artist. The double album affirms Simon's status as a key figure in the wave of Latin American musicians who’ve transformed jazz, and features a brilliant cadre of Simon’s closest collaborators including tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, altoist David Binney, bassists Scott Colley, John Patitucci and Ben Street and drummers Brian Blade and Adam Cruz.

At this point Simon has spent far more of his life in the United States than his homeland, but Venezuela still provides the life-sustaining marrow of his music. Born July 27, 1969 in the oil port of Punta Cardón, he grew up in a household filled with music. His father hailed from Curaçao in the Dutch West Indies, and he instilled a love of music in his sons, percussionist Marlon Simon, trumpeter Michael Simon and Edward. The brothers performed music for dancing at local fiestas and events, tapping into an array of rhythms from Venezuela and beyond (they last reunited for a performance together in 2010 as Simon, Simon & Simon). “My older brother played timbales at the time, and we had our band playing parties and anniversaries,” Edward says. “In a way that strong connection with the dance floor and dancers left a great imprint on me. To this day, a groove is an important element in my music.”
Simon was serious enough about the piano that at the age of 15 he left Venezuela and moved by himself to Pennsylvania to enroll at the Philadelphia Performing Arts School, a now-defunct private academy. He continued his classical studies, but he also discovered jazz, and eventually connected with Philly masters like bassist Charles Fambrough and guitarist Kevin Eubanks, who encouraged him to move to New York. Landing in Manhattan in 1988 at the age of 19 he quickly established himself as an essential new voice. A five-year stint with the great altoist Bobby Watson followed a nine-year run with trumpeter Terence Blanchard firmly established Simon as one of his generation’s leading accompanists. All the while he was looking to combine his growing authority as a straight ahead jazz player with his love of Latin American idioms, ambitions that put him at the center of a brilliant wave of fellow South American artists who had also recently arrived in New York. That creative journey unfolds in exquisite detail on "25 Years," an anthology that documents the arc of a culture-bridging artist who’s still ascending. 

As Ted Panken writes in DownBeat: Simon is “one of the strongest pianists of his generation, with intuitive empathy and drum-like ingenuity, and solos compositionally with passionate elegance.”

Simplicity - Edward Simon

Braithwaite & Katz