Throughout a busy musical career that got underway in the early '50s, Dick Hyman has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and, increasingly, as composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in well over 100 albums recorded under his own name and many more in support of other artists.

While developing a masterful facility for improvisation in his own piano style, Dick has also investigated ragtime and the earliest periods of jazz and has researched and recorded the piano music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake and Fats Waller which he often features in his frequent recitals. Other solo recordings include the music of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington.

Some of his recordings with combos are from The Age Of Swing, Swing Is Here, Cheek To Cheek, and If Bix Played Gershwin, plus several duet albums with the cornetist, Ruby Braff. In a different vein, his early explorations on the Moog synthesizer have now been reissued.

Mr. Hyman's concert compositions for orchestra include his Piano Concerto, Ragtime Fantasy, The Longest Blues in the World, and From Chama to Cumbres by Steam, a work for orchestra, jazz combo, and pre-recorded railroad sounds.

A cantata based on the autobiography of Mark Twain was premiered in 2004.Among his recent chamber music compositions are Quintet for Piano and Strings, performed first by Ruth Laredo and the Shanghai Quartet and more recently by Dick himself and Musicante; and Sextet for Piano and Strings which Mr. Hyman performed as a premiere in Sarasota with members of La Musica.

Dick has often been heard in duo-piano performances with Derek Smith, in Three-Piano Crossover with Marian McPartland and Ruth Laredo, and in various pops concerts under the direction of Doc Severinsen. In 2004, after serving as artistic director for the acclaimed Jazz in July series at New York's 92nd Street Y for twenty years, he stepped down but continues his Jazz Piano at the Y series as well as his post as jazz advisor to the Oregon Festival of American Music.

In 1995 Dick was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the New Jersey Jazz Society. Since then he has received honorary doctorates from Wilkes University, Five Towns College, Hamilton College and the University of South Florida (Tampa). Continues on his website....