BOB TOABE - solo piano
9:30- 11pm
$7 req. donation
meditative piano improvisation
“You should be playing concerts everywhere!”
McCoy Tyner
“Wow it really transported me…like floating in
space…I loved it!”
AI Foster
“Truly gifted…a rare talent…musical
genius…deserving the best concert grands,
world-wide.”
Hewitt Huntword, Acton Jazz Cafe
“Yeah man…really liked it!”
Eric Jackson, WGBH Boston
“Reminiscent of Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner,
Debussey…though a style, all his own.
Bill Ross, WUMI Miami
BIOGRAPHY
As a young Bob Toabe played along the rocky New
England seacoast it was as though the salt air
and ocean waves filled him with music, imbuing
his creativity with a natural song and rhythm.
Even as a child his prodigious musical
improvisation, rich in emotional content, brought
recognition and praise from music teachers and
concert audiences alike. As an early adolescent
he ventured from the piano to the study of wind,
voice, strings, and a wide assortment of
percussion instruments. It was in the theatre
however where, as the youngest member of the
Boston-based Performing Arts Repertory Co., he
developed a potently creative music, stage, and
performance style. By highschool the ever
industrious musician found himself forming a
variety of eclectic improvisation groups. His
sound was influence by abroad range of
contemporary jazz, classical, and international
music. He listened to Keith Jarrett, Chic Coria,
and Coltrane. But more than anything else it was
his early personal meetings with McCoy Tyner and
Pharaoh Sanders that moved and inspired the
direction of his music.
Today his original and fluid piano style captures
concert audiences with a sound that is rich,
sweet, and hypnotic. Bobs’ current release HOPE &
COMFORT was sponcered by a very impressed fan who
financed the entire project after hearing him
perform only two pieces. The CD is an alluring
mix; which alternates between on-the-spot
improvisations and original pieces.
“What I want most (in my music) is deep and
free-flowing emotional content. I want my
audience to move with me over the
keyboard…letting the music flow through us like
a soft sweet breeze, like an ocean wave…seeking
expression of our deepest needs, our essential
selves.”