Eric Gunnison

Inducted: October 29, 2024

Pianist and composer Eric Gunnison…

…didn’t plan to move to Colorado during a key stage of his amazing life in music. But once he arrived, he became such an integral part of the jazz scene in Denver that imagining it without him is virtually impossible.

Of such things Colorado Music Hall of Fame inductees are made. But Gunnison instinctively deflects the praise he rightly deserves.

EG w Eddie Gomez bassist DU 2016

EG w Ken McLagan CBJazzFest 2018

“I’m blessed to have been associated with so many great musicians over the years in Denver,” Gunnison says. “It’s certainly a vital jazz town, and I’m happy to be a part of it.”

Originally from Buffalo, New York…

…Gunnison seemed predestined to become a performer: His mother was an opera singer, while his father was a jazz drummer. As such, he grew up in a house filled with sounds from the classical and jazz canons. He began drifting toward the latter after hearing a Coleman Hawkins album featuring the dazzling pianist Billy Taylor, but the deal was truly sealed upon attending an Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers concert and getting a chance to see the young Keith Jarrett work magic on the keyboard.

Gunnison subsequently enrolled at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where he secured a degree in composition. Upon graduation, he headed to Los Angeles and he landed a position in the backing band for The Lettermen, a popular pop-vocal combo. A tour with the outfit included a stop at Denver’s late, lamented Turn of the Century nightclub, and when he was offered a job to play music closer to his heart, he seized the chance to abandon L.A. in favor of the Mile High City.

EG w Peter Erskine, Chuck Berghofer Cambarini concert Scottsdale 2017

EG at Dazzle 2024

The year was 1980, and before long, Gunnison became a regular at Denver jazz clubs — most notably El Chapultepec, also enshrined in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame along with its jazz-worshipping owner, Jerry Krantz. There, he rubbed shoulders with more instrumentalists bound for The Hall, including Ellyn Rucker; he would eventually play on and produce Rucker’s cherished 1992 album Thoughts of You. He also sat in with Wynton Marsalis and other jazz stars who made a point of making unscheduled tour stops at The Pec.

The connections Gunnison made locally would boost him onto national and international stages. He served as musical director for seminal vocalist Carmen McRae and performed in Cuba with the big band led by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, a favorite of that country’s leader, Fidel Castro. Such gigs gilded his reputation and led to him becoming an in-demand pianist for studio sessions across the jazz spectrum over the span of decades. His dozens of credits include vibrant solo works such as 2004’s Voyageur plus recordings with the vocal group Rare Silk, smooth-jazz favorite Nelson Rangell and another Colorado Music Hall of Fame standout, the late trumpeter Ron Miles.

The Hall of Fame connections don’t end there. Gunnison is also part of Convergence, a veritable Colorado jazz supergroup owing to a membership made up of another fellow honoree, trumpeter Greg Gisbert, plus trombonist Mark Patterson, saxophonist John Gunther, bassist Mark Simon and Paul Romaine, a drummer and co-founder of the Colorado Conservatory for the Jazz Arts (CCJA), an institution created to assist gifted high school musicians. Gunnison’s experience conducting clinics on behalf of CCJA helped prepare him for an adjunct role with the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, where he taught for twenty years.

These educational forays confirmed to Gunnison that despite claims to the contrary, jazz will remain a powerful force in American music for generations to come – and his efforts in this arena only burnish his Hall of Fame-worthy legacy.

By Michael Roberts

1) Eric Gunnison MAIN INDUCTEE PAGE

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