Biography
Jim grew up in a musical family in Columbus, Georgia, where his first piano lessons were from his mother, a piano teacher.
By high school, he was working as a pianist at a small church in Flat Rock, GA. He graduated from Mercer University (English), and did graduate work at Emory. He has a MA in English from Georgia State and taught at Riverwood High School for two years. He then worked in public relations for the Georgia Department of Education.
While at Mercer, he began playing with small dance and jazz combos. Though his college work was in English, he has always worked, either part-time or full-time, as a musician. Jim has written four books on the music industry (published by Workbooks Press and Writer’s Digest Press, including British and Australian editions), co-authored a book/video set with his wife (Dr. Sandra Gibson) on study skills for college students, and has several children’s books available on the Kindle. He has taught industry related courses at Georgia State University’s School of Music as both a part-time and a full-time faculty member.
Jim has worked as a commercial pianist in Atlanta since the early 1970s, playing solo piano jobs, and with small combos for thousands of corporate and social events. (For example, in January 2003 he took a jazz quartet to Phoenix, St. Louis, and Philadelphia to play for Nova Nordsk, a pharmaceutical company.) He also has worked extensively in Europe, mostly in Florence, Italy, but also at Le Chat qui Pech on the Left Bank in Paris. In 1996, he recorded his first solo piano CD for Hickory Cove Music, using his extensive pianistic experience to create melodic improvisations of well known songs. Songs of the South, the first CD, has been very popular and sold tens of thousands of copies around the world. Jim’s sixteen CDs on the Hickory Cove label are available in selected gift stores and museum shops around the country.
Jim is married and has two adult children. One is a business consultant in Atlanta, and the other is an oncologist in Boston.
Quote: $450 – 850
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