Rich Syracuse

Rich Syracuse has anchored jazz rhythm sections in New York City and the Hudson Valley since the 1980s, and is best known for the more than twenty-five years he spent as pianist Lee Shaw's bassist, including fourteen years touring the United States and Europe in her trio with drummer Jeff "Siege" Siegel. He and Siegel kept that partnership going in Siegel's own bands and in the collective Hetko, Syracuse & Siegel, whose 2019 album "When You Were There" is an homage to Shaw. Syracuse earned a Bachelor of Music from the Manhattan School of Music and won the Congress of Strings Award while performing in New York, working with The Group for Contemporary Music and the Hartford Ballet before relocating to the Hudson Valley in the mid-1980s and joining the Nick Brignola Quartet. In 2015 he formed a duo with guitarist Michael Musillami that has recorded a series of composer-focused albums for Playscape, beginning with "Of the Night: The Music of Wayne Shorter" in 2016. His other credits include Mose Allison, Kurt Elling, Dave Liebman, John Medeski and the Brubeck Brothers, and he teaches bass at Skidmore College, Bard College and SUNY New Paltz.