JOHN RICCI, Winner, Jazz Song, "Mode Time"

Hometown= Jacksonville, FL

BEHIND THE MUSIC:

---Ricci's mother performed opera at Argentina's Teatro Colon as a teenager. His father and brothers were equally musical.

---Ricci began playing the piano when he was 7 years old and by 11 was improvising everything from Jobim to the Beatles on the saxophone.

---Continuing on to study music, he attended the exclusive jazz studies program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. There, he was mentored directly by world renown jazz pedagogue and saxophonist Jerry Coker. He also had the opportunity study closely with internationally recognized pianist-composer and former Jazz Messenger Donald Brown. With a new vision and quest to become a strong a communicator of the idiom as well as a performer, he was awarded a teaching assistantship at the Florida State University School of Music jazz studies and contemporary media program. In that time he performed with Blue Note recording artist trumpeter Marcus Printup, performed at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, received outstanding soloist awards at the 1994 and 1995 Mobile National Jazz Festival, won an outstanding performance in the Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival, and won the combo division of the 1995 Down Beat Collegiate Music Awards.