By his teen years, he had hooked up with several local R&B bands, but his tastes trended more toward jazz when he studied at Berklee College of Music.Īfter college, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he formed the Jeff Lorber Fusion.

Born in Philadelphia in 1952, Lorber began playing piano when he was just four years old. Stretching the envelope has been Lorber's strategy from the very beginning. David Mann provides horn arrangements and Lenny Castro percussion. Also lending a hand are drummers Ash Soan, Gary Novak and Vinnie Colaiuta saxophonist Gary Meek and guitarists Michael Thompson and Paul Jackson Jr. The longtime colleagues also co-produced the recording.Īssisting the pair is a team of world-class musicians, including two former bandmates of Haslip's in the award-winning fusion band Yellowjackets: saxophonist Bob Mintzer and guitarist Robben Ford. The fourth consecutive collaboration between the GRAMMY®-nominated keyboardist and GRAMMY®-winning bassist/composer/producer Jimmy Haslip since the two virtuosos reactivated the Jeff Lorber Fusion five years ago, Step It Up features 11 new Lorber compositions, several co-written with Haslip. Nearly four decades after his earliest recordings, Lorber returns with Step It Up on Heads Up, a division of Concord Music Group. Still, he continued to explore the innovative, improvisational potential of grafting other musical forms to the jazz idiom. In subsequent years, Lorber dropped the term 'fusion' from his billing as the movement evolved into what is currently known as contemporary jazz.

Lorber and his band, the Jeff Lorber Fusion, first honed their craft in the Portland, Oregon, club scene and rapidly expanded their reach to a national and international audience via a combination of complex harmonies, compelling rhythms and unconventional time signatures. By the late 1970s, trailblazing keyboardist/composer/producer Jeff Lorber had become a prominent figure in the new movement known as jazz fusion - a marriage of traditional jazz with elements of rock, R&B, funk and other electrified sounds.

Jeff lorber fusion youtube