Jazz legend Lew Soloff said of Ariel Pocock “She is one of the three or four most talented people I have ever worked with. For high school kids, she is absolutely number one. Amazing.”
At 18, Ariel Pocock has already earned national recognition for her jazz piano and vocals. Recognized by Downbeat Magazine, Ariel won the jazz piano division in 2008 and jazz voice in 2011. During the 2009 Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival at Lincoln Center, Ariel received the Outstanding Piano Solo award and the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation award. Other achievements include winning first place in the 2010 Kobe-Seattle Sister City Jazz Vocalist Competition, earning Outstanding Piano Soloist at the 2008 Lionel Hampton International Festival, and opening for Sheryl Crow at the Seattle Opera House. This summer, Ariel was a headline act at the Elkhart Jazz Festival.
While in Seattle, Ariel studies piano with Michael Stegner. This fall, she will attend the University of Miami with a full scholarship to work with legendary pianist and teacher Shelly Berg. In addition to piano and voice, she hopes to study composition, arranging, and diverse musical styles.
Praise
The great trombone player Wycliffe Gordon said “She is going to be a great musician. She already is.”
Of Ariel, Shelly Berg says “The sky’s the limit.”
After a concert in South Dakota the Rapid City Journal wrote “In Rapid City we usually see/hear musical phenoms at the end of their career. This was a chance for us to see someone great at the beginning of a career.”
A Seattle Times headline enthused Newport’s “Ariel Pocock could be next Ellington-tapped star.”