About Dave Zoller:

A native of Tiffin, Ohio, Dave Zoller began piano studies at age six, but didn’t become really interested in music “until I was 13; when I heard a Dave Brubeck record, that was it ! I became a big music nut and went back to the piano, trying to teach myself to play some of the things I had been listening to. By the time I was 17, I was into Miles, Coltrane, Monk, Mingus, Ray Charles, Horace Silver & Bill Evans; I knew music was where I wanted to spend my life.”

After graduating from high school, he attended SMU in Dallas briefly; while there he played his first professional gigs on piano and began composing and arranging music. A three-year Army hitch followed, afterward he returned to Dallas, playing at two well-known nightspots: The Fink Mink and Gringo’s. He also sold his first arrangements. In early 1965 Dave re-located to Kansas City to attend the UMKC Conservatory Of Music.

While in Kansas City Dave Zoller bacame active on the local scene both as a player and writer. He worked with such top K.C. instrumentalists as Arch Martin, Gary Sivels & Tommy Ruskin, played and wrote for the orchestras of Warren Durrett and Jimmy Tucker, and also wrote for singers Marilyn Maye and Marian Love and the K.C. Kix Band. He appeared several times on the annual Kansas City Jazz Festival and toured the Midwest and Southwest with his own quartet. At the urging of friends in Dallas, however, he returned to that city in the Spring of 1969 and has been based there ever since.

In Dallas, Dave led his own groups and worked as a sideman with numerous other bands, including Jerry Gray and Don Jacoby. He has backed such top acts as Kay Starr, Gloria Loring, the Mills Brothers, George Kirby and the Smothers Brothers. He bacame active as a player, writer & contractor in Dallas’ thriving jingle business and wrote music tracks for such Dallas jingle houses as PAMS, Pepper & Tanner, TM Productions, JAM, Toby Arnold & Associates and others. He was a full-time music director for Ralph Stachon & Associates in the mid 70’s and his reputation as a writer and arranger brought him work from producers outside the Dallas area, including ASA Productions (Indianapolis) and Kevin Gavin Productions in NYC (Gavin once employed Barry Manilow!). To date Dave Zoller has written over 1600 music tracks for radio & TV and his charts for Wal-Mart, Wet Ones, Jordache Jeans, Texaco, Crest Toothpaste, Mayflower, Century 21, GMC Trucks, Kodak Papers and others have aired nationally.

In 1985 he became tour pianist and music director for Al Hirt, the Grammy Award-winning jazz & pop trumpet star. He appeared with Hirt at such fabled venues as the Hollywood Bowl, Wolf Trap, Westbury (L.I.) Music Fair, the Stratford Festival Theatre
(Ontario, Canada), the Paul Masson Jazz Festival (Saratoga, CA.) and the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. He also taped several PBS shows with Hirt and cut two CDs with him for ProJazz. “Working with Jumbo did a lot for my confidence as a player and ultimately led me back to acoustic jazz, my first love.”

Currently Dave Zoller is busy in Dallas, co-leading a quartet with his wife, vocalist Genie Grant, free-lancing as a pianist and arranger-composer and producing CDs for dpz JAZZ, a label he founded in 1993 with Dr. Ambrose G. Hampton, Jr. To date, the label has released six CDs; four by Dave Zoller and two by Genie Grant. He also publishes original jazz orchestra and combo music through his firm, DPZ Music Production, Inc. His music has been heard and played worldwide.

About Genie Grant:

Transplanted St. Louis native Genie Grant is a popular and well-known vocalist in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area with a huge repertoire of classic jazz & standard songs, both familiar and obscure. She and her trio have been featured regularly in recent years at legendary Dallas jazz venues such as Maxine Kent’s, 6051 Club, Strictlly Tabu, Terilli’s and The Ocean Grill. Genie and her husband, pianist-arranger-composer Dave Zoller and their group have performed at Sambuca Jazz Cafes for nearly five years. They appear regularly on Sunday nights at Sambuca Deep Ellum and have also appeared at Sambuca Addison.

Ms. Grant has played the last 22 seasons with Sazarac Jazz at the State Fair Of Texas and performs with her own group and with the Dave Zoller Sextet at Ft. Worth’s Main Street Festival and the Denton Arts Fest. She is a regularly featured artist on the Jazz Concert Series at the Sammons Center For The Performing Arts and at the Dallas Museum Of Art’s Summer Concerts Under The Stars and Summer Jazz Series. She has recently toured other U.S. cities as well, with appearances at the Sambuca Jazz Cafes in Atlanta and Houston and the Lavecchia’s in Columbia, SC and Charlotte, NC.

Grant and Zoller have toured together with the late, legendary Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Al Hirt , performing at the Jacksonville Jazz Festival in Florida along with George Benson and Dizzy Gillespie. Grant was featured vocalist in shows with Hirt and clarinetist-bandleader Pete Fountain and in concert with various symphonies in the U.S. She’s also done recording , jingle work, live TV and movie soundtracks, including the made-for-TV movie “Lucy & Desi - Before the Laughter”. She’s opened for many headline acts, among them Bob Hope, Diahann Carroll, Robert Guilliaume, Lynda Carter & Marilyn McCoo. She was also featured vocalist special performances for President Jimmy Carter and the 75th Birthday Celebration for Lady Bird Johnson.

Genie Grant has recently completed a second CD for dpz JAZZ, “Trav’lin’ Light”. Her first CD, “Blame It On My Youth” was named among the Top Five CDs of the year by The Met and also received favorable reviews in Cadence, JAM, and other publications, i.e. “sultry Ella-ish inflections”, “reminiscent of horn-like Helen Merrill”, “a touch of Peggy Lee and Anita O’Day” and “the unadorned innocence of Grant’s voice combined with sublime arrangements by pianist Dave Zoller create a sound that is both direct and unpredictable”. Of her performance at the DMA Summer Jazz Series with the Dave Zoller Sextet, Jonathan Eig wrote in the Dallas Morning News: “Ms. Grant just might be the best jazz balladeer in town.”