Sweet and Lowdown

Richard “Dick” Hyman is an American jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer, best known for his versatility with jazz piano styles. Over a... 50 year career, he has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and, increasingly, as composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in well over 100 albums recorded under his own name and many more in support of other artists. Dick Hyman was trained classically by his mother's brother, the concert pianist Anton Rovinsky, a fixture of the pre-war art scene in New York, noted for having premiered some of Charles Ives's works, such as The Celestial Railroad in 1928. Hyman said of Rovinsky, "He was my most important teacher. I learned touch from him and a certain amount of repertoire, especially Beethoven. On my own I pursued Chopin. I loved his ability to take a melody and embellish it in different arbitrary ways, which is exactly what we do in jazz. Chopin would have been a terrific jazz pianist. His waltzes are in my improvising to this day." Dick's older brother, Arthur, introduced him to the music of Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, and others.
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Nyack is a village in the towns of Orangetown and Clarkstown in Rockland County, New York, United States. It is a suburb of New York City, situated north of South Nyack, east of Central Nyack, south of Upper Nyack, and west of the Hudson River, approximately 19 miles north of the Manhattan... boundary. Nyack had a population of 6,765 as of the 2010 census. Nyack is one of five villages and hamlets that make up an area of southeastern Rockland County called The Nyacks. Named after the Native Americans who resided there before colonization, the village itself lies on the hilly terrain that meets the western shore of the Hudson River. The village takes up approximately 1.6 square miles , with over 50% of the area consisting of the water of the Hudson River. Nyack consists mostly of low-rise buildings that lie along the river's western shore. It is in the Nyack School District. South Nyack is the western terminus of the Tappan Zee Bridge, connected across the Hudson River to Tarrytown in Westchester County.
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