Stan Killian

New York-based saxophonist and composer Stan Killian has recorded with top notch jazz artists Roy Hargrove, Jeremy Pelt, Antonio Sanchez, Eric Harland, Ben Monder, Mike Moreno, David Binney among others, and has performed in some of New York City’s top venues like The Blue Note, Dizzy’s Club, The Iridium, and Carnegie Hall as well as in hardcore jazz venues like The 55 Bar, Jazz Gallery and Smalls Jazz Club. He has toured the U.S., Europe, Japan, Korea, China and Mexico and has released four critically-acclaimed albums on Sunnyside Records. The French Jazz Magazine Les Chocs describes his latest, “Brooklyn Calling” as “an album of maturity. Stan Killian plays here with natural poise and confidence and in perfect symbiosis with his musicians, constantly creating to serve deep compositions, with catchy modern structures and harmonies.”

Born into a musical family, Killian hails from Texas and started performing professionally at age 15 with his father Joe, a jazz pianist and B3 organist who worked as a sideman with Sonny Stitt, Dexter Gordon, Don Wilkerson and Jimmy Ford. Stan earned a B.A. in Music Performance at Texas State University in 2001, where he studied with pianist James Polk, the Grammy-nominated arranger and organist for Ray Charles. At the age of 21, he released his first album “Straight Ahead”, a self produced record of standards featuring his father, James Polk and trumpeter Martin Banks. In 2003, he formed Com Você, a quintet with vocalist Margret Grebowicz and released “Candeias” on the now defunct French independent label, Nocturne. After a two-year stay in Baltimore and Washington DC, Killian moved to New York City and recorded the eponymous “Com Você” with Ben Monder, Scott Colley and Antonio Sanchez, thus beginning his relationship with Sunnyside Records.

In 2009, with a new drive to perform his original music, Killian teamed up with Benito Gonzalez, Corcoran Holt and McClenty Hunter, forming a powerful quartet which performed monthly at the legendary 55 Bar in New York. Adding the star power of Roy Hargrove, David Binney and Jeremy Pelt, who were impressed with Killian’s playing and compositions, they recorded “Unified” in 2011. A year later, the quartet expanded to a quintet with guitarist Mike Moreno. After a year of gigs at The 55 Bar, “Evoke” was recorded and released in 2013, launching tours of Asia, Mexico and the US. Both albums received stellar reviews in JazzTimes, Down Beat and All About Jazz among many other publications.

Killian hosts the weekly Monday Night Jam at The Queens Brewery in Bushwick/Ridgewood, NY and was recently nominated for a Grammy for his performance on the track “I Believe” by Shine and The Moonbeams from the compilation “All One Tribe”.