Welcome to the first Episode! This week's guests are guitarist Michael O'Neil, keyboardist Gregg Karukas, and saxophonist Michael Paulo!

In this episode we talk about the musicians' practice/creative time, stories about people they've worked for, advice for the road, and more.

Michael O'Neill - Guitarist/Composer - Has toured with George Benson and Barbara Streisand for years. He's worked with Al Jarreau, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Natalie Cole amongst many other greats! He is also a TV/Film composer. The first tune he performs is Funky Fiesta from his album Once in Brazil. He also performs a solo guitar piece.

Gregg Karukas is a Grammy Award winning musician. He was a founding member of The Rippingtons, and has played with Dori Caymmi and Larry Carlton and others. He tells us a story about his first recording session which was with the naturalist Ewell Gibbons!

Gregg talks about his upcoming solo piano album "Serenata." Check out the preview Here!

The first song Gregg performs is The Girl in the Red Dress which is one of his biggest hits. He also does a solo piano improvisation which turns into a well known Milton Nascimento tune called Ponte de Areia

Michael Paulo - sax player and composer has played with Bobby Caldwell, Jeffrey Osborne, and Miles Davis among others. He tells a great story about recording a few tracks for Miles! We play a few clips from a recent Pay-Per-View live-stream broadcast he performed late last year.

The Song Michael talkes about in his Miles story is Give It Up from the album Rubber Band. Here it is on Apple Music

Gregg Karukas – Keyboards

Performed with: The Dave Hill Group 10/15/20, Socially Distant Jazz Round Table #3 1/21/21, Jazz Round Table #01 3/2/21
Bio – Grammy winning producer/keyboardist/composer Gregg Karukas (www.karukas.com) has many #1 hits from his 12 solo CDs that show his signature piano touch. A prolific, genre-crossing veteran of Smooth Jazz, Brazilian, and R&B/Pop, Gregg was a founding member of The Rippingtons in 1986 and has toured with Boney James, Dave Koz, Larry Carlton, Dori Caymmi, Ricardo Silveira, Sergio Mendes, Peter White, Rick Braun, Shelby Flint, Melissa Manchester, Alphonse Mouzon, Brenda Russell, Jeffrey Osborne and various Allstar groups in recent years.
– Gregg won the Grammy in 2013 for producing, composing, playing all keyboards, arranging….and engineering the Best New Age Album (Echoes of Love).
– helped launch Dave Koz Music Cruises in 2011 as Musical Director
– Gregg’s group was the house band for It’s Garry Shandling’s Show on Showtime.
– Gregg arranged and played the theme songs to Disney’s Ducktales and Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers; played keys on Rockwell’s Gold Album “Somebody’s Watching Me”
Trivia: Gregg’s very first LP session at age 18 was for naturalist/author Euell Gibbons, improvising background Moog Synthesizer textures along with Tim Eyermann’s echoing woodwinds for G...