JAWANZA KOBIE

Jawanza Kobie would simply like to be known as a composer in the truest sense of the word. Ever since he was a young boy, he idolized the music of Beethoven, George Gershwin and Aaron Copeland and he began learning to notate his compositions at nine years of age. Born and raised in West Philadelphia, he started taking piano lessons in his neighborhood at age six after his mother discovered that he could replicate on his own what his older brother had been taught in his piano lessons right after his brother had finished practicing. As a teenager, he continued his education in music at the famed Settlement Music School in Philadelphia where he was first introduced to structure and the rules of composition. At this time the musical influences that he heard on the radio and records of the day were impossible to ignore. Jazz music had always been a read more...