The daughter of a European composer and a Great American Songbook singer, native New Yorker Roberta Piket is a pianist who loves to swing while exploring the more adventurous harmonic possibilities of jazz and improvised music.

 

Over the years, Roberta has appeared professionally as a sidewoman with David Liebman, Rufus Reid, Michael Formanek, Lionel Hampton, Mickey Roker, Eliot Zigmund, Benny Golson, Ted Curson, Valery Ponomarev, Juini Booth, Ted Curson, Virginia Mayhew, and the BMI/NY Jazz Orchestra. She has also toured and performed with some of the most interesting musicians in European and American improvised music, including drummers Klaus Kugel and Billy Mintz, and saxophonists Petras Vysniauskas and Louie Belogenis.

 

A gifted composer as well, Roberta was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk BMI Composers’ Competition. She was also the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2018 Roberta won the Downbeat Critics Poll in the “Rising Star – Organ” category, and placed in the top 20 in the “Rising Star – Piano” category.

 

In addition to Japan, Roberta’s trios have toured Spain and the U.S. She has performed at the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), at the Earshot Festival (Seattle), at the Rochester (NY) Jazz Festival, and in New York at Small’s, Mezzrow’s, the Blue Note, Birdland, and Dizzy’s at Jazz at Lincoln Center. On her 2011 CD release, Sides, Colors, in addition to featuring her trio, she orchestrated several pieces for winds and strings, sang, and played organ as well.