Jon Dreyer

Bio

I'm a cellist and bassist living in the Boston Massachusetts area. I play mostly classical music on the cello and mostly jazz on the bass, though I've dabbled in musical theater, bluegrass, folk, klezmer and other Jewish music.

I have had the good fortune to perform extensively over the past few years with the legendary jazz pianist Harvey Diamond. This collaboration has changed me musically. As Michael Brecker once said (about different musicians), I like who I become when we play together.

Eugene Uman, artistic director of the Vermont Jazz Center, had this to say about Harvey Diamond:

Diamond is a musician's musician with a penchant for honing gems from the Great American Songbook into personal statements that leave us yearning for more. Diamond will take a familiar melody, distill it into a basic sketch and then expand upon the song's form by elaborating its harmony, melody and stylistic presentation. He does all this with a complete absence of pretension so that his interpretations are egoless reflections of where he is in the moment, presented through a lens of years of study and experience. Diamond is a master of both melody and harmony much like his predecessors in the legacy of jazz piano, Bill Evans and Lennie Tristano.

As a bassist, I have also performed with Alan Rowe, James Merenda, Hankus Netsky, Stanley Sagov, Ted Knowlton, Burnett Thompson, Joe Reid, Oren Levine, Mihoko Abe, Steve Berke, Nick Grondin, Ken Navarro, Marcello B, Grace Kelly, Roy Nathanson, Ken Field, Tad Elmer, Becky Wexler, Jeff Stout, Don Anderson, Katya Dreyer-Oren, Beth Logan, Hannah Rose Diamond, Scott Goulding, Sergei Ionannisyan, Joe Musacchia, Tauras Biskis, and others. Mostly self-taught on bass, I have taken some lessons from Richard Davis and more recently from Marcus McLaurine at the Vermont Jazz Center, as well as coaching from Harvey Diamond, Satoshi Takeishi, Eugene Uman, Pete Yellin and Helmut Kagerer. I am a former member of the jazz quartet About Time and the Washington Jazz Battalion big band.

I have studied cello with Glenn Garlick, Ervin Klinkon and Ben Levinson, and as well as a master class with János Starker. I have been a member of the Boston Philharmonic and the Fairfax Symphony and have performed with the Masterworks Chorale, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra and the National Gallery Orchestra.

I also teach both cello and bass.

During the day I work as a math tutor and computer science tutor in Lexington MA. Before that I worked as a math teacher and software engineer.

Please like my fan page on facebook • Jon Dreyer • 781-696-2614 • 81 Baker Ave, Lexington MA 02421-6228 • email