Berg burns hard, his fingers flying over the keyboard while his body nearly levitates off the bench. Exhilarating . . . filled with breakneck parallel runs, sudden rhythmic shifts and harmonic modulations that leave the crowd breathless! -L.A. Times Sunday Magazine
The LA Times calls Shelly Berg “a powerhouse jazz pianist who always swings hard”. Shelly’s recent CD, The Will (CARS Records) spent eight weeks in the Top Ten of the US Jazz Radio Charts (Gavin). A finalist in the 1988 Great American Jazz Piano Competition (PBS Television), he is the pianist and arranger for trombonist, Bill Watrous, and musical director for vocalist, Carmen Bradford. Dave Brubeck raves, “Shelly Berg is a great jazz pianist who has a total command of his instrument”.
Shelly’s composing for television includes ABC’s Fudge, CBS’s A League of Their Own, and HBO’s Dennis Miller Live. He has orchestrated for Kiss, Chicago, and Richard Marx. Film orchestration work includes Warner Bros. Almost Heroes and Three To Tango, Fox’s Men of Honor (Robert DeNiro, Cuba Gooding, Jr.), and the NBC Mini-series The 60’s. He has written for the Royal Philharmonic, the American Symphony, and orchestras worldwide. Shelly composed the theme song to the 1986 U.S. Olympic Festival, and his orchestrations are called “magnificent. . . incredible” by Johnny Mandel.
Shelly is the Chair of Jazz Studies in the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, and a past President of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE). He has appeared as a performer, lecturer, or all-state clinician throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan, and Israel. Shelly has numerous compositions for jazz ensemble in publication, and is the author of The Chop Monster improvisation series (Alfred Publishing), and Jazz Improvisation: The Goal-Note Method (Kendor Music).
