Andy Ostwald…
began improvising over rock songs at the age of 12. A couple of years later, he attended a clinic by jazz pianist, Dan Hearle, who introduced him to recordings by three towering figures of jazz piano: Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal, and Oscar Peterson. Ostwald notes that, “the music these musicians created both moved and mystified me, and in the end, contributed to steering me in the direction of jazz.”
After receiving a BA in music from San Jose State he spent a year in New York studying with renowned jazz pianist, Harold Mabern.
Upon returning to his native San Francisco Bay Area roots he quickly became an in demand accompanist and performer, including stints with Diane Witherspoon and Jeff Sanford’s many jazz groups.
"Andy Ostwald plays splendidly... a most impressive pianist"
- Phil Elwood SF Examiner/Chronicle
It’s immensely heartwarming that, in our times of often pointless experiments, there are musicians eager to emotionally fathom the trad format of a jazz trio….. comfort and warmth fill these numbers – ten covers and a sole Ostwald original, the album’s serene centerpiece “Meadow’s Edge” which points to the group’s further progress outlined here by their imaginative approach to such classics as “Sweet Emma” from Cannonball Adderley’s repertoire, where delicate trumpet lines have been replaced with a dry, if rapturous, piano romp – the mood set in motion with the immediately gratifying ivories’ filigree and four-string rumble applied to “Sonor” from Kenny Clarke’s cache of tunes. But then there are Wayne Shorter’s “Virgo” which is slightly troubled once quietly combustive beats ripple across the keyboard-encrusted elegy, while Keith Jarrett’s “Memories Of Tomorrow” and Larry Willis’ “To Wisdom, The Prize” – both written for the instrument Andy’s an expert of – demand more of the trio who carefully drive these gems away from the obvious to propel towards the great unknown of highly inventive improv.
— review from dmme.net