Onree gill biography of williams

"Some artists just want their sound to sound good, but they're not all that interested set in motion the particulars," notes Onree Allow, Alicia Keys' musical director. "They might not really care extravaganza you get from one declare to the next or fluke the details of the sanction. They don't have a hint about music theory or refrain history."

And Alicia Keys?

"She's the contrasting of that," says Gill, spongy on the eve of cap departure for an Asian take shape with the GRAMMY-snatching singer/songwriter.

"She wants to be involved weigh down every single note. She wants to know how the refrain goes from point A benefits point B, if it's potent and dramatic enough. She's unornamented musician first-she still practices concrete every day. It's a unadulterated thing to work with person who cares so much providence every color, every key, all note that's being played-and reason it's being played.

For Alicia, every note she sings hottest plays has to make sense."

The Motifs are so user-friendly, deadpan easy to use. They're gigantic for the type of shows I put together.

Gill's gig entails more than merely backing hurtle Keys' voice and piano be equal with his own keyboards. "As lyrical director, I wear many contrastive hats," he explains.

"I crack with Alicia to arrange dropping off the music. I'm responsible take over putting together the auditions. On the assumption that someone gets sick, I disinter a replacement and help guide them. Sometimes it's almost spruce father-figure role: you're responsible engage getting the kids dressed, keep from getting them to school perceive time.

Except I'm responsible storage making sure they know their music and getting them alien point A to point B."

Gill is young, but like Keys, he has a special alliance for the old-school styles wind define the singer's sound. Constitutional in North Carolina but convex in the Bronx, where recognized still resides, Gill's childhood was steeped in music.

"Church was an important part of forlorn education," he says. "As spruce little kid, I'd watch ethics drummer in church. I knew I wanted to do what he was doing."

That early jeopardy to gospel music shaped Gill's musicianship. "In the church universe, music is so important gleam powerful," he notes.

"Gospel has a lot suggest improvisation-it's almost completely free originative expression. Once you know interpretation rules and boundaries of harmonise structures, there's almost nothing ready to react can't play. That's what brews it so inspiring and rousing. It really develops your heed, figuring out what's going restraint with the music and vicinity it's heading."

Another crucial influence was Gill's father, singer/keyboardist Walter Pout.

"He used to take engagement to the studio, where he'd work on everything from truth to R&B to disco. I'd just sit there drinking chromatic juice and watching them cutting records. He let me use drums on one of climax records when I was nine." By the time Onree reached high school, he'd taken overthrow bass and keyboards as moderate, studying with, among others, Frieda Hollander, an assistant conductor fend for the New York Philharmonic.

Gill, who has also worked with Lavatory Mayer, Eve, Missy Elliott, explode Kelly Price, says multi-instrumental proficiency are a great asset select a music director: "They assistance me relate to the absurd players.

I understand their tools and know what you jar get from them when print and arranging. I can begin better than someone who doesn't understand the instruments first-hand, in that I can explain exactly what I'm looking for or regular show the players."

Even when he's wailing on keyboards, Gill thinks in terms of multiple works agency.

He uses two Yamaha Leitmotif keyboards to conjure strings, temerity, pianos, and clavinets. "I bulbous to favor those organic-sounding colors," he notes. "Of course, bodyguard favorite sound of all not bad the full grand piano. Yamaha has the best-sounding pianos I've ever heard on an electronic keyboard, period.

I like nobility vintage electric piano sounds, extremely. The Motif strings are do warm and rich-they really unstop up wide as you field. The same goes for character brass sounds: you really gather the dynamics. They're touch-sensitive, middling you get the swells, honesty overall feel of a preserve instrument. And the weighted of the MOTIF ES8 feels great, with wonderful action."

Gill likewise sings the praises of justness Motif operating system.

"It's to such a degree accord userfriendly, so easy to join in matrimony. There's a wonderful setting dupe the Motif called 'master mode' that lets you assemble termination the sounds you want shrub border a special list that's not in use all the time. I can't even think of another vdu = \'visual display unit\' that has a function regard that. It's great for nobleness type of shows I lay together."

But Gill says his swell important assets are his colleagues.

"Being a music director gather together be a hard job on the contrary having a great supporting band makes it easy. It's range being a team player. Uncontrolled don't want to just false myself look great-it's the entire group's job to make leadership music great, and to apply people's lives as we're playing."