John Davis is an American classical pianist, concert performer, recording artist, and historian. Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Chapel Hill is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, United States and the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care...

 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island

Providence, Rhode Island

Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...

, Davis now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has specialized in reviving the forgotten music of several 19th Century African-American pianists, including Blind Tom Wiggins

Blind Tom Wiggins

Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins was an African American autistic savant and musical prodigy on the piano. He had numerous original compositions published and had a lengthy and largely successful performing career throughout the United States...

 and Blind Boone. He has recorded albums of works by both composers for the Newport Classic label.

Davis has performed solo piano recitals across the United States, toured Asia and Eastern Europe by invitation of the US State Department, and created several theatrically driven programs entitled The John Davis Caravan: Standing at the Crossroads, Will the Real Thomas Wiggins Please Stand Up!, and Halley's Comet: Around the Piano with Mark Twain & John Davis.

Time Out New York wrote that "Davis has made a mission of uncovering music by 19th-century black pianists, including slaves, whose work had a direct impact on the blues, jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, rock, and R&B artists that came in their wake." His research and performances have been featured on NPR

NPR

NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

 and television broadcasts and in newspapers and magazines, including The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

and Scientific American

Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

. He has written articles on Blind Tom for several Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

 books, including African American Lives (2004), Stress and Coping in Autism (2006), and African American National Biography (2008).

Several recordings by Davis of Blind Tom compositions were used in the soundtrack

Soundtrack

A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...

 of Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex...

's 2003 film Corridor.

In 2010, in commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the birth (and 100th anniversary of the death) of Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

, Davis released Halley's Comet: Around the Piano with Mark Twain and John Davis, an album of repertoire based around Twain's fondness for the piano. Composers featured on the album include Louis Moreau Gottschalk

Louis Moreau Gottschalk

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...

, Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

, Blind Boone, Blind Tom, and Ossip Gabrilowitsch

Ossip Gabrilowitsch

Ossip Gabrilowitsch was a Russian-born American pianist, conductor and composer.- Biography :...

.

Davis studied at Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

 and received his Masters degree from Juilliard School

Juilliard School

The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...

. His teachers included Seth Carlin, Gabriel Chodos

Gabriel Chodos

Gabriel Chodos is an American pianist who has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Israel.-Education:Chodos's principal teacher was Aube Tzerko, a student of Schnabel. He also studied piano with Leonard Shure at the Aspen Music Festival, Josef Dichler in Vienna, and Carlo...

, Herbert Stessin, Aube Tzerko, and Beveridge Webster

Beveridge Webster

Beveridge Webster was an American pianist and educator.Beveridge Webster studied with his father, initially, and in 1921, at age 14, he began five years of study in Europe, first at the American Academy at Fontainebleau, then at the Paris Conservatory with Isidor Philipp and Nadia Boulanger...

.
Discography

• John Davis Plays Blind Tom: The Eighth Wonder (Newport Classic, 2000)
• Marshfield Tornado: John Davis Plays Blind Boone (Newport Classic, 2008)
• Halley's Comet: Around the Piano with Mark Twain & John Davis (Newport Classic, 2010)

External links

• Official website
• Music Miner, a short documentary film about John Davis researching Blind Tom and Blind Boone
• History of Blind Tom's The Battle of Manassas, recorded by John Davis
• "Blind Tom: The Legacy of a Prodigy Lost in Mystery," by Thomas L. Riis, The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  , 5 March 2000
• "Blind Tom's Tombstone," by Elizabeth Kolbert
  Elizabeth Kolbert
  Elizabeth Kolbert is an American journalist and author. She is best known for her 2006 book Field Notes from a Catastrophe, and as an observer and commentator on environmentalism for The New Yorker magazine.-Youth and education:...
  
  , The New Yorker
  The New Yorker
  The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
  
  , 15 July 2002
• "Blind Boone Festival Kicks Off," The Missourian, 1 June 2008
• "Providence Native is Bringing Mark Twain’s Favorite Music to Life," Providence Journal, 21 April 2010
• "Celebrating Mark Twain With a Piano," by Allan Kozinn
  Allan Kozinn
  -Biography:He received bachelor's degrees in music and journalism from Syracuse University in 1976. He began freelancing as a critic and music feature writer for the New York Times in 1977, and joined the paper's staff in 1991...
  
  , The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  , 29 November 2010