Michael Echaniz is one of the brightest musicians, composers, and artists emerging from the West Coast. A pianist since five, Michael has studied music at Santa Clara University, California Jazz Conservatory (B.M.), and CalArts (MFA.) Michael is an avid performer, playing and recording alongside internationally-renowned artists such as Jeff Denson, Romain Pilon, Wu Man, Gerald Cleaver, and Friction Quartet in venues such as Black Cat, the Art Boutiki, and Yoshi’s, as well as Umbria and Montreux jazz festivals. Michael has won numerous awards, mostly recently, the 2021 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award and a New Music Workshop at the 2022 International Jazz Composers’ Symposium (ISJAC). Supported by InterMusic SF’s 2020 Music Grant Program and New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund in 2022-23, Michael will soon release Seven Shades of Violet (Rebiralost), an ambitious, virtuosic, symmetrical concept album of original compositions and arrangements on Ridgeway Records. Michael’s forward-thinking original music embraces rhythmic complexity, haunting melodicism, fluidity between improvisation and through-composition, influence from disparate styles of classical, world, and pop music, and deep emotional connection.
