Loston Harris

Loston Harris made his first appearance fronting a band on the 1998 album Comes Love, issued by N2K. The recording established him as a traditionalist whose modern swing piano drew on the approaches of Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal and Red Garland while also featuring several buoyant vocal performances, among them “Close Your Eyes” and the title track. A restrained improviser heard in trio and quartet settings, Harris reworked earlier material in ways that felt inventive inside the established idiom. His serious engagement with the piano had begun relatively late. Although he took lessons at age five, he soon abandoned the instrument and instead concentrated on drums from the age of ten through his early twenties, focusing mainly on rock and r&b. A scholarship brought him to Virginia Commonwealth University as a percussion major, yet visiting professor Ellis Marsalis, after hearing him at the piano, encouraged a switch on the grounds that Harris possessed a natural affinity for the instrument. Harris responded by practicing eight to ten hours daily; when Marsalis returned to New Orleans, Harris transferred to Howard University, where he studied with Geri Allen and Billy Taylor and began performing locally. Following graduation he secured a steady three-night-a-week engagement in Reston, Virginia that lasted through the 1990s. Additional work included a 1995 tour with Wynton Marsalis, the role of second pianist for Marcus Roberts on the 1996 “Portraits In Blue” tour, and appearances alongside Kenny Garrett, Roy Hargrove and Joshua Redman. Harris took up singing in the mid-1990s after hearing Nat King Cole recordings and has demonstrated considerable promise going forward.