John Medeski

Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1965 and raised in Florida, John Medeski began piano studies at an early age before attending the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he performed with musicians such as Dewey Redman, Billy Higgins, Bob Mintzer and Alan Dawson. After moving to New York, he became part of the avant-garde jazz scene of the 1990s while developing a distinctive language at the crossroads of jazz, funk, blues, gospel and improvisation. His career is closely associated with Medeski Martin & Wood, the trio he founded in 1991 with Billy Martin and Chris Wood, heard on albums like Notes from the Underground (1992), Combustication (1998) and The Dropper (2000), and appearing both in jazz clubs and on stages open to groove and jam-based music. At the same time Medeski pursued numerous side projects — from A Go Go with John Scofield in 1998 to ensembles led by John Zorn, and groups such as The Word and Hudson. Under his own name he released A Different Time (2013) and John Medeski’s Mad Skillet (2018), recorded in New Orleans, and in 2023 contributed part of the score for the series The Curse.