Attila Fias
About
Attila Fias is a Hungarian-born, Toronto-raised platinum selling pianist, composer, producer and teacher with a passion for blending jazz with world music. His music has many elements - jazz, classical, electronica, Hungarian, Brazilian and Indian sounds all combine into one eclectic mixture that is distinctly his own.
An honors graduate from the University of Toronto’s jazz performance program, Attila has been teaching piano, improvisation, composition and theory privately for over 25 years. He has given improvisation & jazz workshops and taught songwriting courses and masterclasses for Queen’s University, Mohawk College, Trinity College School, Upper Canada College and other Canadian and international schools.
He has performed at Madison Square Garden with tabla master Zakir Hussain, with his quartet at the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards Governor's Ball in Los Angeles, and toured with jazz harmonica virtuoso Hendrik Meurkens, Indian superstar composer A.R. Rahman and many others. Recent performances include the Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria Jazz Festivals and Soulpepper theater company, including a several week tour to New York City, where they received rave reviews in the New York Times and other publications.
Attila has produced, arranged and played on over 100 albums, several with his own groups and including several gold and platinum certified recordings. They encompass many genres such as jazz, Latin, Brazilian, big band, gospel, blues, rock, pop, world, Indian fusion, new age, children's, classical and more. Attila divides his time between Toronto and Victoria BC.
Every student has very specific needs and goals, and so I take great care to establish where that particular student's level is currently and where they would like to be headed.
I do teach beginners with a serious interest in learning the fundamentals of music and piano in any genre. But most often, I teach pupils with some experience who come from maybe a classical or a pop background and have an interest in improvisation and jazz. We can explore ways to improvise and compose, how to write down and expand compositional ideas you might have. We can explore jazz standards - how to read a lead sheet, how to interpret chord symbols, how to create chord voicings, how to construct a music arrangement and so on.
We can also explore things such as Brazilian and Latin rhythms and flavours, and how to incorporate world music into your playing, and how to play other related genres of music, such as blues, pop, R&B and rock. Some of my students already play jazz, but would like to take things to the next level, get ideas about advanced jazz harmony and rhythm, or how to play effectively with others, what to listen for, how to comp, how to improve their improvising. I have also coached vocalists who need a deeper understanding of the instrumental side of music, how to find their keys, how to understand and create vocal arrangements, exploring different grooves and rhythms, music theory and how to accompany themselves on the piano.
This is all according to the interests of the student, and I usually create a streamlined series of lessons that takes us there. The materials I use are varied, and they include lead sheets of jazz songs, recordings to listen to, self-created materials with chords, scales, ideas, rhythms and so on. There are useful books to study as well, listed below.
The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine
The New Real Book Vol. 1-3
Jamey Aebersold Play-A-Long series
Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner
The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization by George Russell