John Knific

Piano | Arrangement | Composition

a pianist, entrepreneur, and currently CEO of CitizenGroove, a video recruitment software-as-a-service provider. John has played piano his whole life. His interest in jazz developed during middle school, when he formed Nexus, a creative trio that won a pre-collegiate Down Beat Student Music Award and performed regularly in the Kalamazoo area. John studied music performance at Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Institute of Music and has international experience though the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, where he studied composition. John was featured during this time at The Swiss Jazz Foundation in Zurich and at The Schlern International Festival in Italy. He has studied with and performed along side John Clayton, Fred Hersch, Paul Ferguson, Jack Schantz, Jamey Haddad, among others. As CEO of CitizenGroove, John has been named in the top 25 young entrepreneurs in the country by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, awarded Cleveland’s 2010 Arts Entrepreneur Award, and raised over half a million dollars in venture capital.

Equipment: Roland RD-700SX, Nord Electro 2 61-key, Fender Rhodes Stage 73 with tube preamp, M-Audio Axiom 61 with Logic Studio 9
Skills I Offer in the Studio: advanced harmony and arranging, classically trained piano technique, improvisation around complex chord changes, organ with left-hand bass, experience tracking vintage keyboards (Fender Rhodes, Hammond Organ, Wurlitzer, Clavinet), offer a multitude of musical viewpoints having performed with jazz, funk, rock, and world ensembles