A native of California, Liz Story began her musical training as a young child, mastering Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 11 by the age of 11. When her family moved to Germany during her teens, she added languages, philosophy, and poetry to her studies. On her return to the United States, Liz continued her formal piano studies at the Juilliard School of Music and also enrolled at Hunter College. After hearing the jazz pianist Bill Evans one night at the Bottom Line in New York City, she decided to learn jazz piano–and after moving back to Southern California and taking a job playing piano in a restaurant, she was suddenly thrust into improvisations when she discovered that the piano she was to perform on had no stand for her sheet music. Over several months, these improvisations developed into compositions. When Will Ackerman, founder of the influential Windham Hill label, heard a tape of those, he signed her to record her 1983 debut album “Solid Colors." Liz has since released a dozen albums that havehighlighted her classical piano background, fused with a wide range of styles embracing jazz, folk, pop, and impressionistic music. An evening with Liz Story is meditative, spiritual, even profound, and we're excited to welcome her back to The Ark for the first time in many years.