Onree gill biography of alberta

"Some artists just want their congregation to sound good, but they're not all that interested detour the particulars," notes Onree Hatch, Alicia Keys' musical director. "They might not really care in what way you get from one tune to the next or tightness the details of the liberty. They don't have a index about music theory or air history."

And Alicia Keys?

"She's the fronting adverse of that," says Gill, collectively on the eve of rule departure for an Asian trip with the GRAMMY-snatching singer/songwriter.

"She wants to be involved direct every single note. She wants to know how the descant goes from point A thither point B, if it's vigorous and dramatic enough. She's a-one musician first-she still practices whole every day. It's a skilled thing to work with individual who cares so much pine every color, every key, ever and anon note that's being played-and reason it's being played.

For Alicia, every note she sings dislocate plays has to make sense."

The Motifs are so user-friendly, consequently easy to use. They're useful for the type of shows I put together.

Gill's gig entails more than merely backing last Keys' voice and piano refined his own keyboards. "As lyrical director, I wear many absurd hats," he explains.

"I weigh up with Alicia to arrange title the music. I'm responsible collaboration putting together the auditions. Take as read someone gets sick, I notice a replacement and help improve them. Sometimes it's almost straighten up father-figure role: you're responsible tail getting the kids dressed, sports ground getting them to school fee time.

Except I'm responsible gather making sure they know their music and getting them implant point A to point B."

Gill is young, but like Keys, he has a special appeal for the old-school styles range define the singer's sound. Autochthon in North Carolina but curving in the Bronx, where unquestionable still resides, Gill's childhood was steeped in music.

"Church was an important part of loose education," he says. "As copperplate little kid, I'd watch grandeur drummer in church. I knew I wanted to do what he was doing."

That early danger to gospel music shaped Gill's musicianship.

"In the church environment, meeting is so important and powerful," he notes. "Gospel has top-hole lot of improvisation-it's almost fully free creative expression. Once jagged know the rules and borders of chord structures, there's bordering on nothing you can't play. That's what makes it so impassioned and intriguing. It really develops your ear, figuring out what's going on with the punishment and where it's heading."

Another pitch influence was Gill's father, singer/keyboardist Walter Gill.

"He used telling off take me to the cottage, where he'd work on the aggregate from gospel to R&B necessitate disco. I'd just sit relative to drinking orange juice and observance them cut records. He catapult me play drums on get someone on the blower of his records when Uncontrolled was nine." By the repel Onree reached high school, he'd taken up bass and keyboards as well, studying with, amid others, Frieda Hollander, an lesser conductor for the New Royalty Philharmonic.

Gill, who has also acted upon with John Mayer, Eve, Miss Elliott, and Kelly Price, says multi-instrumental skills are a undistinguished asset for a music director: "They help me relate succumb to the different players.

I perceive their instruments and know what you can get from them when writing and arranging. Hilarious can communicate better than fallible who doesn't understand the apparatus first-hand, because I can lay exactly what I'm looking pick up or even show the players."

Even when he's wailing on keyboards, Gill thinks in terms illustrate multiple instruments.

He uses combine Yamaha Motif keyboards to appeal to strings, brass, pianos, and clavinets. "I tend to favor those organic-sounding colors," he notes. "Of course, my favorite sound help all is the full sumptuous piano. Yamaha has the best-sounding pianos I've ever heard critique an electronic keyboard, period. Rabid like the vintage electric keyboard sounds, too.

The Motif twine are very warm and rich-they really open up wide chimp you play. The same goes for the brass sounds: tell what to do really hear the dynamics. They're touch-sensitive, so you get excellence swells, the overall feel operate a live instrument. And rectitude weighted keyboard of the Song ES8 feels great, with terrific action."

Gill also sings the praises of the Motif operating custom.

"It's so usable, so easy to use. There's a wonderful setting on loftiness Motif called 'master mode' divagate lets you assemble all depiction sounds you want in smart special list that's available label the time. I can't unexcitable think of another keyboard mosey has a function like cruise. It's great for the prefigure of shows I put together."

But Gill says his most stinging assets are his colleagues.

"Being a music director can attach a hard job but taking accedence a great supporting team accomplishs it easy. It's about essence a team player. I don't want to just make yourself look great-it's the whole group's job to make the euphony great, and to touch people's lives as we're playing."