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Born in Louisiana, the cradle of jazz, Beasley started writing compositions in junior high school. At age 14, he wrote a jazz piece for the University of North Texas Jazz Band. Jimmy Lyons, founder of the Monterey Jazz Festival, heard Beasley's piece and recommended him for a scholarship at the Stan Kenton summer jazz camp. The Stan Kenton Orchestra performed Beasley's composition at the camp and then added it to its repertoire that year.

Beasley is a third generation musician. His father is a bassoonist, pianist and composer. His mother is a brass instrumentalist and band conductor and orchestrator. His grandfather was a trombonist. Growing up around musicians, John learned how to play trumpet, oboe, drums, saxophone and flute, mostly because of his mother's need for wind instrumentalists for her bands. Declining an oboe scholarship from the Julliard, Beasley went on to play and record with Miles Davis, Steely Dan, Carly Simon, Barbara Streisand, Baaba Maal, James Brown, Queen Latifah, Christian McBride, Chaka Khan and John Pattituci to name just a few. Recognizing Beasley's talent for composing and arranging, major recording artists have added Beasley's original sound and music to their projects.

At the young age of 24, Beasley started writing music for Paramount, Disney and MGM's television shows including "Cheers," "Family Ties," "Star Trek," and "Fame." He also wrote the Touchstone TV logo, which is still used today. His first brush with Hollywood films was as a pianist playing on film scores for film luminaries such as Thomas Newman, Dave Grusin, Alan Silvestri and Carmine Coppola in box office hits such as "Finding Nemo," "Erin Brockovich," "Godfather III," "A Bug's Life," and "Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me." He composes pro bono for films and podcasts for Nobel Peace Prize winning Doctors Without Borders. Along the way, Beasley has written award winning commercials for ad agencies in the US and Germany for over 20 years. While touring with Miles Davis, Beasley was inspired to release his first of seven original recordings.

Today, Beasley continues to work in TV, film and commercial projects, while releasing new music and touring with his band (a combination of Jeff 'Tain' Watts, Terri-Lynn Carrington, Nicolas Payton, Bennie Maupin, Brian Lynch, Victor Bailey), producing artists as well as balancing his work with shows such as American Idol, America's Got Talent, Singing Bee and Pussycat Dolls Presents: The Search for the Next Doll, Season 1.

Last year, Beasley released "LETTER TO HERBIE," a tribute album to Herbie Hancock, featuring: Christian McBride, Roy Hargrove, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Steve Tavaglione, Michael O’Neill, Louis Conte to critical acclaim.

NEW RELEASE NEW RELEASE NEW RELEASE - September 8, Beasley will release his eighth CD, Positootly! featuring Jeff 'Tain' Watts, James Genus, Bennie Maupin, Munyungo Jackson, and Grammy winning Brian Lynch. Biography - John Beasley Positootly By Bill Milkolwski Veteran L.A. pianist-composer-arranger John Beasley gained invaluable bandstand experience on the road with such revered jazz elders as Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis while also recording with the likes of Chick Corea, Hubert Laws and Dianne Reeves and serving as musical director for Queen Latifah and Steely Dan. In recent years, Beasley has made impressive strides as a bandleader in his own right. On Positootly, his eagerly anticipated follow up to 2008’s acclaimed Letter to Herbie (Beasley’s impressionistic take on the music of Herbie Hancock), the Louisiana native showcases his own engaging compositions along with a few choice covers (Jobim’s “Dindi,” Astor Piazzolla’s “Tanguedia III,” Bobby Timmons’ “So Tired”). Joining Beasley on his second outing for Resonance Records are drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts (back from his key role on Letter to Herbie), bassist James Genus, percussionist Munyungo Jackson, Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch (a former member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and longtime member of Eddie Palmieri’s salsa band) and saxophonist Benny Maupin (a charter member of Hancock’s M’wandishi Sextet and Head Hunters). A prolific film/tv composer (for Cheers, Family Ties, Star Trek and Fame as well as such Hollywood box office hits as WALL-E, Finding Nemo, Erin Brockovich, Godfather III, A Bug's Life and Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me), Beasley was also associate musical director for season four of American Idol (the year that produced country music sensation Carrie Underwood). He returns to his first love on the jazzy and eminently swinging Positootly. Each tune on this eclectic offering stands like an individual chapter of a book. And the story travels through a myriad of twists and turns along the way with Beasley alternating between modern electric funk and more straight ahead acoustic jazz while putting an exclamation point on the proceedings with an introspective solo piano piece. And all of his compositions come from a very personal place, reflecting back on his Louisiana roots while looking forward to some new expressions. The collection opens with the burning, hard boppish “Caddo Bayou,” an uptempo quintet number named for the marshy body of water where Beasley played as a child. An urgent, uptempo number with allusions to Horace Silver’s “Filthy McNasty,” it is fueled by Genus’s irrepressible pulse and Watts’ powerfully polyrhythmic approach on the kit and further buoyed by some crisp harmony lines between the horns. And while it may bristle with the aggressive energy of New York City, “Caddo Bayou” also carries some of the spirit that was deeply ingrained in Beasley while he was growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana. “I recently went on a trip back there with my mom for her 50th high school reunion and saw those old digs again. I haven’t lived there since I was 13, but my feelings for that place are still there. You keep that in you.” The title track is an energetic trio number underscored by Tain’s brisk, highly interactive drumming and imbued with a distinctly uplifting vibe. “Because of the modulations, it keeps stepping up and up, so it sounds like such a positive tune,” Beasley explains. “And even though it doesn’t sound like Louisiana, I wanted to have some of that spirit in there. That’s why I named the song Positootly,’ to give it a little bit more grease.” A breezy 5/4 trio rendition of Jobim’s “Dindi” is marked by clever modulations and lush reharmonization and propelled by Watts’ masterful polyrhythms. “Black Thunder,” Beasley’s tempo-shifting ode to the late, great Elvin Jones, is once again underscored by Tain’s mighty drum prowess. Maupin turns in a crackling tenor solo on the double-time section while Lynch responds with some heat of his own on trumpet. And Tain is Tain, rolling over the barline with unparalleled facility and fire. “He’s such an intense listener,” says Beasley of Watts. “When you see him live you can almost see him listening. He’s just so great and so interactive. There’s always a conversation going with him and the feel that he puts up is always the right thing. He totally serves the music but at the same time he just lets it fly. He‘s a very inspiring dude, and a very fun-loving dude.” The Louisiana spirit comes out in full force on the infectiously funky “Shatitta-boom-boom (Club Desire),” named for a social club in New Orleans’ Ninth ward that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. “The tune just kind of came out on its own, and it just has this very Louisiana-ish feel to it,” says Beasley. Watts underscores the funky proceedings with his own Tainish take on a N’awlins street beat while Genus bubbles underneath on upright bass and Beasley tickles the keys with earthy aplomb. Maupin switches to soprano sax here and joins with Beasley on some effervescent unison lines that lend some spice to this funky gumbo. Their version of “Tanguedia III” by the Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla represents a dynamic highwater mark on the album. Says Beasley, “Piazzolla was a revolutionary. He was actually a very polarizing figure because he stirred things up so much, but that’s what it takes. Bird did a lot of crazy things with the music too.” Beasley’s version of this Piazzolla classic from Tango: Zero Hour incorporates acoustic piano, some wah-inflected electric piano and strains of organ and is further marked by some radical rhythmic modulations. “The jazz police won’t let you speed up or slow down,” he says, “but I think it’s cool to do that. And this seemed like a great vehicle to experiment with that. I ended up transcribing the whole piece, then gave it to the guys and said, ‘Let’s do something with it.’ Watts’ whirlwind approach to the kit once fuels the proceedings. The soothing “Elle (She),” written for Beasley’s wife, is a a kind of gospel-blues number featuring Maupin on soprano sax. Their cover of Bobby Timmons’ soul-jazz anthem “So Tired (from the Riverside record Soul Time) is handled with requisite funk and swinging aplomb. “That was one of my first desert island discs when I developing,” says Beasley. “And that song in particular hooked me on jazz when I was a kid. It’s such a great record. They just hit that day and the rest is history. You can put that record on today and it still sounds fresh.” Genus’ ominous, near-subharmonic groove on electric bass anchors the track while Beasley explores the full range of his Fender Rhodes. Maupin adds some appropriately urgent tenor work to further elevate this hard-hitting track. “The Eight Winds” is Beasley’s compositional tour-de-force. A challenging, suite-like piece, it traverses different tempos and moods, from a beboppish opening theme to an odd-time Afro-Cuban motif to a burning, Max Roach-ish double time feel. Lynch is featured on muted trumpet throughout this intricate number, whose title refers to a precept of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism:“Worthy persons deserve to be called so because they are not carried away by the eight winds: prosperity, decline, disgrace, honor, praise, censure, suffering, and pleasure. They are neither elated by prosperity nor grieved by decline. The heavenly gods will surely protect one who is unbending before the eight winds. But if you nurse an unreasonable grudge against your lord, they will not protect you, not for all your prayers.” The collection closes on an introspective note with the solo piano piece “Hope…Arkansas,” Beasley’s personal reflection on the election of President Barack Obama. As he explains, “Last October, I went back with my mother to visit the town she was raised in, Hope, Arkansas. It was during the election and I decided I was going to wear all my Obama paraphernalia down to Arkansas just to see what would happen. We drove from Shreveport to Hope on this little two-lane country backwater road with cotton fields along the way…rural beauty, salt of the earth kind of stuff. And as we’re driving we keep seeing signs of support for Obama. Then we stopped at a Wal-Mart in Hope and it felt like a racially-unified place…maybe just for that second I was there. But it gave me hope. So this piece is about what we’ve been through as a nation and also the hope of what we can all still share.” That rich expression, which taps into Beasley’s own past while projecting an optimistic future, culminates what is easily his most potent and personal recording to date. p> For more information and to purchase Beasley’s music, please visit: BeasleyMusic.com or email: manager@beasleymusic.com