Tony Miceli


Tony Miceli is an American jazz vibraphonist and educator. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey.
He is on the faculty of the University of the Arts, Temple University and University of Southern Mississippi. He also performs in jazz clubs, concert halls and festivals around the world. He has played jazz standards, jazz interpretations of classical music Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and other rock musicians from the 1960s.
Miceli has worked with David Friedman, Joe Magnarelli, Dave Liebman, Elio Villafranca, Steve Slagle, Dave Stryker, Peter Bernstein, Gerald Veasley, and Joanna Pascale.
After graduating with a Bachelors in Performance from the University of the Arts in 1982, he began a career that included composing, recording, teaching, and performing. Some of the venues and festivals he has played include Degu Jazz Festival, The Reading Jazz Festival, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, The Jazz Standard, The Zinc Bar, 55 Bar, The Wexford Art Center, and The Mallet Institute. He is the creator and moderator of the Vibraphone Community Website.

Early life and career

Miceli was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1960 and grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey. He began to play classical guitar in his youth before later turning to piano, trumpet and drums. It was in college that he and the vibraphone cemented an unbreakable bond of mutual give and take. Philadelphia now claims him as its own as he settled there in 1978 while attending the University of the Arts, where he is now an adjunct associate professor. He also teaches at Temple's Boyer College of Music and was a guest lecturer at the Curtis Institute of Music. Miceli connects with a growing group of musicians living in the Germantown neighborhood who are revitalizing its jazz scene with local performances, jams and a new recording studio.

80s and early 90s

In the 1980s and early 90s, Miceli toured extensively through Germany with the percussion group “Mallet Madness”. Featuring Miceli on vibraphone with Ron Von Strattun, Bernd Zinzius and Christoph Eidens, Mallet Madness played jazz versions of rock songs, in a trio reminiscent of the guitar trios of the 60's, with vibraphone replacing guitar as the feature instrument. The group played clubs and festivals throughout Continental Europe including: Schlag. Wekstatt, Jazz Fruhling, Deutsches Percussion – Symposium, Stadtgarten Restaurant, Rundfunk, K14, Blue Stage, Mulheimer Jazz Club, and the Essen Jazz Festival.
In 1995, and back in Philadelphia, Miceli started "The Rock Band" with bassist Kevin MacConnell and Drummer Harry "Butch" Reed. A result of Miceli's early Rock Music influences, the group covered several British Invasion bands including The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Kinks, and Jimi Hendrix. This group ultimately became "The Jōst Project" when vocalist Paul Jost was added to the lineup in the 2000s.

Monkadelphia

In the late 1990s Miceli created the Philadelphia-based group Monkadelphia, a group "dedicated to performing the music of Thelonious Monk in an innovative, contemporary way." Playing Monk's work, along, with Chris Farr on saxophone, Tom Lawton on piano, Micah Jones on bass, and Jim Miller on drums, was a "difficult challenge which they embrace with vitality, panache, and sophistication." The group recorded a selection of 11 tracks called simply "Monkadelphia" in 2000.

Career

2018 saw Miceli issue his latest CD, Invitation, an album of solos that expresses warmth and clarity. Standards like Jimmy Van Heusen's “But Beautiful” sound so effortless they float. Gloria Krolak, host of Good Vibes, the only radio program dedicated to the vibraphone, noted recently “Miceli’s compass points to tunes with no end of nuance and subtlety. He gives the phrase ‘soft touch’ a whole new meaning.”
As the originator of The Jōst Project, with vocalist Paul Jōst, Miceli racked up two more wins with albums that plug into new generations for jazz by playing the classic rock they grew up with. The first, Peace and Love, was released in 2017, then Can’t Find My Way Home in 2013. Miceli also appears on Jōst’s 2014 Breaking Through. A champion of rock-inspired repertory, Miceli moves easily from one genre to another. Also in 2014, violinist Diane Monroe and Miceli collaborated on a duo album, Alone Together. Wrote Victor Schermer on the All About Jazz website, “Monroe and Miceli are adept and resilient musicians of the highest caliber, so they are able to weave their combined sounds into many expressive variations that create ‘tone poems’ and tell stories.”
In 2009 Miceli's group Monkadelphia released Crepuscle, a follow-up to Monkadelphia, both devoted to the revolutionary jazz pianist himself, performing his music in an innovative, contemporary way.
Miceli has performed at jazz festivals and clubs too numerous to list. A partial roll call starts at Hilton Head Island's Jazz Vibes Showcase in 2019 with Team Omega, then to the Daegu Festival in Daegu, Korea; the International Percussion Festival in Lima, Peru; the Limerick Jazz Festival in Ireland; and the Montreal Jazz Festival. Closer to home he has played at the Jazz Bridge Concert Series, Peace Day Kickoff, the Rhythm Festival, Please Touch Museum Jazz Festival, all in Philadelphia, as well as those in Media, Reading and Dauphin County, PA, and the Longwood Gardens Festivals. The Exit Zero Jazz Festival in Cape May, NJ and the Somers Point Jazz Festival in Somers Point, NJ; the Rehoboth Beach Festival in Delaware, and the Vail Colorado Jazz Festival have all hosted Miceli.
Miceli plays with the highest caliber musicians. As a group leader, sideman, and recording artist, he has performed with numerous top musicians including David Liebman, Jimmy Bruno, Ken Peplowski, John Blake, Diane Monroe, John Swana, Joe Magnarelli, Steve Slagle, Larry McKenna, Gerald Veasley and many others. Chris's Jazz Café, Philadelphia's premier jazz club, is a frequent gig for Miceli and friends, and he performs annually at the Percussive Arts Society convention in Indianapolis.
Internationally known on the web, Miceli provides online instruction, information, and video interactive classes. He is proprietor of Miceli Music, LLC., incorporating the website:  www.studymusiconline.com, which currently offers www.vibesworkshop.com. He enjoys endorsements with:  Malletech; Applied Microphone Technologies and Beiner Bags.

Vibesworkshop.com

In 2008 Tony Miceli created the website Vibes Workshop for vibraphone players, students, teachers, and aficionados. Known as something of an "outright evangelist for the instrument", Miceli started the site with a view to creating an online community of vibe players to help spread the word about the instrument, and create opportunities for those who play and teach it.
With over 3,000 members it is the de facto online headquarters for the vibraphone industry and includes regular lessons by world class players such as Gary Burton, Joe Locke, Ed Saindon and David Friedman. One of the features of the website is hosting regular online "vibe hangs" from various master classes being taught by Miceli around the world, where local masters and students share via web stream with others who are passionate about the vibraphone.

Discography

As leader

As member