New South Jazz Jazz Band from Duluth, GA

New South Jazz is a long standing Atlanta jazz trio offering live jazz and popular music for weddings, corporate events, and other special occasions. The eclectic group combines piano, jazz violin, guitar, keyboard-bass, and drums to create tasteful blend of traditional and contemporary jazz with a unique flavor. Band members are Richard Mills, piano,violin, and keyboards, Lee Spivey, guitars, and Rob Albertson, drums and percussion. Collectively Richard, Lee, and Rob each have several years of professional playing and recording experience. The band was first formed in 1996 and honed its sound at a weekly four year stint at The Hometown Grill, a local restaurant/club. At that club the band developed its signature style of combining traditional jazz with contemporary pop-tinged tunes. The band members' versatility and depth of experience resulted in its unusual instrumentation of piano, jazz violin, guitar, keyboard bass, drums, and electronic sequences. The In Crowd, the band's debut album released by Rare Air Studios and was widely circulated in the Atlanta area. It has recently registered significant internet sales by CD Baby and I Tunes. The album's nine cuts, written from the 1930s to the 1990s were picked by the band from the tunes that got the best live reception at their steady Hometown Grill gig. All of the album's tunes are woven together with basic elements of U.S. Southern music: rhythms and sounds of blues, rock, gospel, and Latin. This die hard Jazz trio continues to play and record in the Atlanta area, including many area music festivals and showcases including The Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park series, The Peachtree Corners Festival, as well as other working gigs. Poison Ivy, the band's latest album includes six original tunes by band members, and is an intensified and updated version of the band's signature sound aided by more current recording technology and including contemporary sounds and styles. New South Jazz members individually have a lengthy list of academic, publishing, gigging, and teaching credentials: Lee Spivey is an Atlanta area native and player on the local music scene from the early 1970s... He worked with local and regional rock, country, and folk groups. He also studied music at the University of Tennessee and Georgia State University. He has been a well recognized and successful guitar teacher in the Atlanta for over 30 years. His article "Pedal Tones" was published in the January, 2010 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine. His collection of classical and folk guitar arrangements is available through this website by going to the store/guitar section. Richard Mills is an Ohio native, who played with several jazz, blues, rock and classical groups in Ohio and Indiana. He studied violin and organ performance at Oberlin Conservatory, and obtained and English Degree from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, as well as Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the prestigious Indiana University School of Music where he studied under David Baker. His combined poetry and orchestral ode "To the Olympic Flame" was performed by three separate local symphony orchestras as part of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics celebration. He was also a music reporter for Atlanta's main arts and entertainment publication Creative Loafing for several years, as well as a local piano and violin teacher. His arrangements and compositions are available through this website. He has been a college instructor at the Art Institute of Atlanta in the Audio Production department for the last five years Rob Albertson began playing jazz as a teen in his native Florida. He later played with jazz, funk and rock and Latin groups as a working drummer and percussionist while studying at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a degree in Jazz Performance, and at the University of Miami where he earned a Master's degree in Jazz Studio Writing. In the early 1990s he incorporated "Rare Air Studios" from which he has produced and engineered dozens of commercially released albums. He also has earned a doctorite in education through Argosy University and is currently the department chairmen of the Media Department at Art Institute of Atlanta. His audio textbook Moving Air, is in its second edition and is available through Sage Publications