GENE DINOVI
Genres: Bop, Cool Jazz, Swing • United States

Gene (Eugene Salvatore Patrick) Dinovi. Pianist, composer, singer, b Brooklyn, 26 May 1928. He began his career as a teenaged bebop pianist in jazz clubs along New York's fabled 52nd Street and played for several bandleaders (Henry Jerome, Joe Marsala, Boyd Raeburn, Stan Hasselgard, and others) in the late 1940s. He recorded as a sideman to Benny Goodman (for Capitol), Brew Moore (Savoy), Aaron Sachs (Manor), Artie Shaw (Columbia), and Lester Young (Alladin) in this period. A popular accompanist with singers, DiNovi played in the early 1950s for Peggy Lee and Tony Bennett, and 1955-63 for Lena Horne, latterly on an intermittent basis. While in Los Angeles at mid-decade with Lee, and again while working as a pianist and arranger for TV there during the 1960s, he studied composition and orchestration with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also studied piano with Jacob Gimpel and conducting and composition with Maria di Bonaventura in Los read more...