Trudy Silver (born April 24, 1953) is an American

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

pianist and composer.

Life

Born and raised in

New Britain, Connecticut New Britain is a city in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It is located approximately southwest of Hartford. According to 2020 Census, the population of the city is 74,135. Among the southernmost of the communities encompassed wit ...

, she started playing piano at age 7, often practicing on her aunt's seven-foot

Mason & Hamlin Mason & Hamlin is a piano manufacturer based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1854, they also manufactured a large number of pump organs during the 19th century. History 19th century Mason & Hamlin was founded in Boston, Massachusett ...

concert

grand piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

. Silver studied composition and music appreciation with Armin Loos before moving to

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

in January 1971. It was while in California that she first heard Sun Ra,

Ravi Shankar Ravi Shankar (; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known export of North Ind ...

, and Alice Coltrane in a concert at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

and she taught herself chords and harmony. She returned to Connecticut in June 1971 and started playing in local bands. In 1979 she moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. A member of the Montreal Musicians' Union, she worked extensively in Montreal and around

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. In 1981 Silver moved to New York City. Her work includes the political multimedia composition ''Where's the Outrage'', a combination of music,

Butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders ...

mime by Sanae Buck and film which was included in the 2016 Dissident Arts Festival, as well as other events. She is an activist, and is also involved in political actions, and made the Village Voice "Honor Roll" of "the 1,793 people arrested during the week of the

2004 Republican National Convention The 2004 Republican National Convention took place from August 30 to September 2, 2004 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York. The convention is one of a series of historic quadrennial meetings at which the Republican candidates fo ...

." She co-founded the 5C Cultural Center & Café in the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

of Manhattan with her husband, Bruce Morris. Together they have produced over 400 events since 1995.

Discography

* ''Heroes/Heroines'' (1987) * ''Silver Plays featuring Will Connell'' (1992) * ''Damn the Rules!'' (2002)

Bibliography

* "Guantánamo NY Blues 2004", ''And Then'', Volume 13, 2007 (ISSN 1520-4111)

References

External links

*
''The Courant''. May 29, 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Silver, Trudy 1953 births Living people Avant-garde jazz pianists Free jazz pianists Women jazz pianists American women composers 20th-century American composers People from New Britain, Connecticut Musicians from Connecticut 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American women pianists 21st-century American women pianists 21st-century American pianists 20th-century women composers