Neil Cavanagh

Neil Cavanagh was raised in Queens and Long Island, and his first radio airplay came with a local rock band at age 13. Later, he went to NYU to study classical music composition, then to Boston to learn film scoring at Berklee College of Music. While in college, he took bass lessons from session legend Jerry Jemmott (Aretha Franklin, B.B. King), studying the tabla with Pandit Ramsamooj, and sat in with bands on piano or drums. Following college, Neil returned to New York where his chops and diverse musical vocabulary led him into a variety of situations, including sessions at The Hit Factory with pop legend Michael Jackson. Neil quickly developed a reputation for wildly eclectic shows that blended beautiful acoustic songs with offbeat arrangements and hypnotic improvisations. He often appeared solo with a bass drum at his right foot and a guitar loop pedal with which he’d create devastating, virtuosic textures and punctuate the deep, funky rhythms of his live act. Neil Cavanagh’s new album Short Flight To A Distant Star is being released on September 11, 2007 through the Kindred Rhythm Music Group (KRMG), an eclectic Manhattan based label group that released vocalist Roberta Gambarini’s Grammy Nominated debut album, and jazz legend Jack DeJohnette’s first new age project (which was also Grammy Nominated). KRMG will distribute the project to all of the major digital retailers, and to traditional retail through its agreement with Koch Entertainment Distribution. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.