Kev Choice

"An artist that combined Hip-Hop with a type of musicality that has never been done."
— Kev Choice

Hip-HopJazzClassicalSoulLive Performance

Pianist. Emcee. Producer. Bandleader. Sideman. Music historian. Kev Choice wears many hats, and all of them fit. Blessed with prodigious talent, plus the skill and dedication to his craft to pull it off, the Oakland-based artist is redefining what it means to be a musician in this day and age. Not too many classically-trained pianists who hold Master's degrees in jazz can rock microphones with blazing-hot 16s.

Yet such versatility comes natural to Choice, whose diverse array of influences ranges from Prince to Rakim to A Tribe Called Quest to Stevie Wonder to McCoy Tyner to Chopin and Ravel. "I grew up in the Hip-Hop era," he explains. "I had love for Hip-Hop before I even knew what classical music really was." Hip-Hop, he says, "was always the music that helped me express myself the most," while "Classical music gave me a broader understanding and appreciation for music beyond Hip-Hop."

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Artist Bio

Choice remembers being "heavily into vinyl" as a young child, which helped him to develop his ear for music. He began playing piano at age 11, and was soon recognized as a prodigy. As a teenager, Choice played in classical and jazz ensembles as part of the UC Berkeley Young Musicians Program and Skyline High School in Oakland. He graduated with a BM in Music (Piano Performance) from Xavier University of Louisiana, then received a fellowship to study at Southern Illinois University, where he earned his MM in Music (Piano Performance).

Post-grad school, Choice became an in-demand sideman, recording and touring with the likes of Michael Franti and Spearhead, Lyrics Born, Too $hort, Ledisi, and Goapele. In 2007, Lauryn Hill asked him to be her musical director, a gig which took him to 12 countries. Hill, he says, "was very influential in my musical development as an artist" — exposing him to Ethiopian and world music, rock and reggae.

Working with L-Boogie "showed me that I was capable of anything and that I should always be pushing myself musically, never get comfortable in your abilities, and always speak and say what you feel in your music without compromise." He's since added to his international resume by touring Europe with The Coup, and has also worked with Dwele, Martin Luther, Amel Larrieux, Omar, Joi, and Souls of Mischief.

As a solo artist, he's opened for Robert Glasper, Mos Def, Digable Planets, DJ Quik, and J Davey. He leads a jazz-hip-hop-funk big band, the Kev Choice Ensemble, in addition to producing and performing his own material — original jazz and classical compositions as well as classical-, jazz-, and funk-inspired hip-hop.

Choice has composed hip-hop sonatas and recorded rhymes to classical melodies, recorded a new song per day for an online series called The Daily Dosage, and has released several solo projects including The Bailout and The Inauguration mixtapes. His artistic vision is to be "an artist that combined Hip-Hop with a type of musicality that has never been done" and to "make conscious Hip-Hop music that is also accepted on a mainstream level."