Philadelphia, PA. 

Raised just a block from John Coltrane's home, and taken in as a mascot for the local Gospel choir, Mark Kramer continues to enjoy a productive and colorful career as an improvising pianist-arranger-composer, producer/engineer, auto-didatic multi-instrumentalist, and occasional educator. 

Jazz Style is METAMODERN (straddling modernism and postmodernism):  but often impossibly melodic + technically-adroit  - - - paying homage to Evans, Hancock, Corea, Glass, and Riley.  Used to sweat a lot. 

Early on - through marginalizing his own growing voice,  Mark did complete contracts with Telarc/Concord and other major labels, i.e.,  by reimagining 8  Broadway shows, an entire Mozart Symphony, a Harry Potter soundtrack, the Rolling Stones, esoteric works by Eric Satie - all in the elegant Jazz derivative of a gut-wrenching Bill Evans. 

It is now only after many decades that we can hear part of his unsung core (non-Evans) jazz engine at work in originals such as Sunday Afternoon, Kharis in Orange,  As Is (video above), Muse@3-4-5,  a Beginning, Mount Analog, Retro-Orter and lots of others. (e.g., most recently he has entered a new phase of development with the explicit collection of BEYOND  -  a must preview.)  

Prior to this:  Behind an intentional envelope which projected "all too much familiarity", Kramer’s inventiveness had nevertheless been carried upon an ‘anything goes’ free jazz approach, (paradoxically disciplined and repeatable) but one that shuns focus on any of its included free structures, dissonances, classical-like pianistic technique, or unusual time signatures. His envelope, by design, had been impossibly mostly melodic – except for recently, often only sparsely strays “outside.” Yet, improv floats fluently upon a complex system of harmony he crafted over many decades.   As illustrated in the one-pager, most commentator-reviewers have been enthusiastic, gracious, and perceptive when assessing his music.   But unfortunately, some highly placed gatekeepers would or could not bring to relief some of his metamodern innovations that appear spontaneously within familiar stylistic envelopes (e.g., a spontaneous transformation of It Could Happen to You.)  or his  stress-tests of narrow jazz-minds (through the outlandish choice of jazz-world scorned works as vehicles for improvisation (e.g., Andrew Lloyd Weber's - atypically very musically advanced - 'Waltz for Eva and Che').  

Bragging rights:

Twice nationally recognized as a top undiscovered jazz pianist, described as innovative, elegant, and emotionally riveting by the Great Jacksonville Jazz Piano Competition judges (including Teddy Wilson) Kramer went on to record ~ 40 CDs (including those globally distributed by major record companies (Telarc/Concord, Lightyear, Warner EA) with his own trio,  as well as many with a close collaborator – acclaimed Bill Evans’ bassist Eddie Gomez.   In the 90s Mark was recognized by the Philadelphia Jazz Musicians' Alliance as the "Best" Philadelphia jazz pianist and leader of the region's"Top" jazz piano trio. 

Mark's credits include concertizing and recording with a cornucopia of the most celebrated of jazz musicians like George Coleman, Lee Konitz, Al Cohn, Tal Farlow, Jimmy Cobb, Joe Chambers, Charles Fambrough, Junior Cook, Archie Shepp, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Stanley Clark, Bud Shank, Bobby Watson, Johnny Coles, and scores more.  

An auto-didact,  but lacking formal classical training on piano, music or jazz theory, Mark has nevertheless been invited to lecture and perform at the New School of Music (NYC), Berklee School of Music in Boston, and other high-profile educational venues in NYC and beyond.  

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OTHER

In the spirit of full disclosure  - and certainly not as some promotional gimmick -  even as his music career began to flourish,  Mark also worked as a high-profile MD PhD neuroscientist:  credited with conceiving, discovering, and initially developing the first new and highhly safe antidepressant mechanism in over a half-century. This he devised when serving as head of the clinical psychopharmacology unit (administering a large staff) at the Fortune 500 Merck and Co. He (as the first author) and his colleagues published this unique discovery in the prestigious journal Science, and then in light of its non-commercialization,  a bit caustically summarizing its multiple independent replications in over 1400 patients by 2017 in the Journal of Affective disorders.  Mark at the time was also an academic, first at Thomas Jefferson Medical (tenured track) , and then University of Pennsylvania (adjunct) and had lectured on neuropeptides worldwide including as an invited presenter at Nobel Hall (loving their Fazioli piano.)    As is typical, Mark, as an employee,  was paid ~ $1 for patents related to this noncommercialized seminal discovery.  Seamlessly working for over a decade with little sleep, he managed both of his careers as separate and productive; all the while embodying gratitude and the honor of serving.   

Although lacking a financial safety net, and with no inheritance coming (being from a family of extremely modest means), but having become thoroughly disillusioned with hybrid corporate-academic life,  Mark in his early 50s finally felt thoroughly prepared to follow his primary muse into music full-time.  While still venerating the precocious artistries of Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock (which at Mark's age 20 informed him he, though very good,  clearly was not yet ready to pursue a career as a jazz pianist back then), he finally (30 years later) deeply understood that his own creative voice had finally bloomed in about equal measure to those he so venerated.   His delay, followed by the bold advance, were retrospectively rightly timed choices; all the while accepting that “fame” or just being acknowledged beyond "notable' would be unlikely; could only be accidental.   Yet, while back then in full musical ‘stride’, four significant untoward life events occurred (a total house-studio fire in 2004, the crash of ~2008, the organized advent of streaming platforms and their unsavory deals with majors, and most importantly the advanced cancers of his beloved wife Meryl Lee (2012-2017: [b. 1946 - d. 2017.] The further temporized his music careers once again for over 5-6 years; and then the pandemic struck.  He now only selectively, but happily and without any regrets, restarted music performance and productions in late 2021.  In 2025 it's still a life well lived,  as those who know, with gratitude and grace.