Donal Fox
Bach on the left hand. Art Tatum on the right. Donal Fox in the middle.
He takes the actual scores of the masters apart — and rebuilds them, live, as improvisation.
Bach, Scarlatti, Monk, Piazzolla, Schoenberg — disassembled at the keyboard and put back together in real time. One of the very few artists alive who lives in the classical and jazz worlds at the highest level, and refuses to admit the border was ever there.
Hear him.
He is a living master — not an archive. Press play below: 30-second previews stream right here, full tracks open in Spotify.
Five ways to put him on your stage.
One man, the whole canon — Bach to Monk, scored and improvised, in a single sitting.
Piano, bass and drums — counterpoint that swings, written and unwritten at once.
With vibraphonist Warren Wolf — two harmonic minds, no net.
The full band — the widest canvas for his baroque-to-bebop architecture.
His signature evening — Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas, taken apart and re-improvised.
A Black American master who broke a color barrier at a major symphony — and proved the canon and the blues were one music.
A Steinway Artist and Guggenheim Fellow, Donal Fox was the first African-American composer-in-residence with the St. Louis Symphony, and an MLK Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT. He has premiered at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Blue Note.
NPR put it plainly: “Donal Fox is simply without peer.” His most recent world premiere, “Never Again Is Now!”, came in 2024. He is still creating.
In the room.
”Donal Fox is simply without peer.
NPR
“Art Tatum on the right hand; Johann Sebastian Bach on the left; Donal Fox in the middle.”
WQXR — New York
“Baroque meets bebop.” The line between the concert hall and the club simply dissolves in his hands.
Critics — on the Scarlatti Jazz Suite
Program him.
Solo piano · Inventions Trio · Fox/Wolf Duo · Innovations Quartet · the Scarlatti Jazz Suite Project.