Bill Heid-Trio

Keyboardist Bill Heid, bassist Patrick O’Leary, and drummer Mike Petrocino preview their Blues Tour to Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Keyboardist/vocalist Bill Heid, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, now living in Bethesda, Maryland, has performed throughout the Unites States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Singapore. He has led his own groups as well as played with such jazz artists as Jimmy Ponder, Bruce Foreman, Grant Green, Sonny Stitt, and David “Fathead” Newman, and with blues artists including Son Seals, Jimmy Witherspoon, John Lee Hooker, Fenton Robinson, Ko Ko Taylor, and Roy Buchanan. In Detroit in the late 1980s through the 1990s, Heid performed and recorded with blues legends Johnnie Basset, Joe Weaver, and Alberta Adams. Heid has appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and his blues and jazz piano and Hammond Organ keyboard work has been heard on European and American television programs including NBC’s Dateline. His recordings are on the Muse/Westside, Black Magic, Fedora, and Savant labels. Bassist and bass guitarist Patrick O’Leary, born in Buffalo, New York, and now living in Elmhurst, New York, studied piano and bass at Potsdam State University's Crane School of Music, where he received a bachelor’s degree. He has toured the U.S. with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, the Illinois Jacquet Orchestra, the Hal Galper Trio, and Teri Thornton. He also toured the world with Hampton, including a 1986 State Department tour of South America, and recorded such CDs as the Grammy-nominated Sentimental Journey with the vibraphonist. Other leading artists with whom O’Leary has played include saxophonists Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, and James Moody, pianist Marian McPartland, trombonist and conch shell artist Steve Turré, vocalists Joe Williams and Marlena Shaw, and vocalist/pianist Diana Krall. He is regularly heard at jazz festivals throughout the world. As a Kennedy Center/Department of State Jazz Ambassador, O’Leary toured several African countries with the Jubilee Jazz Trio (which included Scott Robinson and Larry Ham), May-July 2001. In October, after returning from his tour with the Bill Heid Trio, O’Leary will join the Bob Dorough Trio, for its Kennedy Center/Department of State Jazz Ambassadors tour of the Caribbean, Central and South America. Drummer Michael Petrosino, a native of Auburn, New York now living in Brooklyn, began his professional career at the age of eighteen, playing gigs in the Toledo, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan metropolitan areas. He moved on to perform on cruise ships plying the world’s oceans, backing such entertainers as The Fifth Dimension, Lou Rawls, Ben Vereen, The Temptations, and Gladys Knight. Returning to dry land, he landed in Cleveland, Ohio, where he played with local artists and touring artists such as Jeannie Bryson Rick Margitza, and Gerri Allen. Since moving to New York, Petrosino has become a fixture in the city’s jazz clubs, including Visiones, Birdland, The Blue Note and others. He has led his own groups at The 5 Spot, Kavehaus, The @ Café, SMF, and Auggie's, and the Mike Petrosino Trio appears every Tuesday at Dizzy’s in Brooklyn, featuring guest artists such as Bruce Barth, Xavier Davis, Joe Barbato, and Randy Johnson, to name a few.