HAROLD MABERN TRIO

Harold Mabern was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1936. He taught himself to play piano as a teenager and, after moving to Chicago in 1954, studied harmony with Ahmad Jamal. He joined Walter Perkins’s group MJT+3, played and recorded with Jimmy Forrest, and moved to New York in 1959.

During the sixties Mabern played with Lionel Hampton (1960), Art Farmer’s and Benny Golson’s Jazztet (1961-1962), Donald Byrd, Miles Davis, and J.J.Johnson (1963-1965). He also worked with Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard (1965), and Wes Montgomery (1965). He was also an accompanist for singers like Joe Williams (1966-1967), Sarah Vaughan, Dakota Staton, Irene Reid and Arthur Prysock.
In the seventies Mabern joined The Piano Choir with Stanley Cowell and others, and worked with Walter Bolden’s trio (1973-1974). Worked and recorded with Billy Harper in Japan, and toured Europe.

During the eighties and the nineties,, Mabern was closely associated with saxophonist George Coleman, but also led his own trios and worked with many other soloists and groups, like Joe Newman, 100 Golden Fingers, Cecil Payne, The Contemporary Keyboard Ensemble and Cybill Sheppard.