Norman Amadio

Albert Norman Benedict "Norm" Amadio (April 14, 1928 – January 21, 2020) was a Canadian jazz pianist, piano teacher, music coach, composer, arranger, session player, band leader and accompanist. For a span of fifty years he worked for the CBC as an orchestra leader and musical director for many TV series. In 1956, he became the first and only Canadian to play at the original Birdland in New York City and while playing opposite Duke Ellington.

Biography Amadio was born in Timmins, Ontario. In 1943, he performed at a Victory Bond concert with Gracie Fields, and was asked to travel on a Canadian tour; his parents denied him permission because of his age. At the age of 15, Norm really loved Art Tatum's playing. Soon after he found inspiration from Be-boppers such as Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Horace Silver. Norman eventually left Timmins for Toronto when he was 17 to study music with Boris Berlin at the Royal Conservatory for six months. He played jazz after hours, influenced by the be-bop pianists. Amadio was influential in starting the be-bop jazz music scene in Toronto,

"Norman Amadio, for instance (one of Canada's top jazz pianists), has been the quintessential musician, ever since he began to play in Toronto nightclubs in 1949. He played everywhere in small groups for a variety of leaders, on the CBC radio and in television, in recording studios, in theatres and concert halls, and as the leader of his own groups at jazz festivals." Murray Ginsberg

Journalist Peter Goddard: "Amadio was an aggressive bebop player along the lines of Bud Powell when he first arrived on the Toronto scene in the 1940s. A precocious teen musical whiz from Timmins, he soon enough learned to keep his cool when others were losing theirs in the city’s turbulent club scene.

Reliability got him work. Unrivaled musicality gave him stature and clout. Jazz stars arriving in town — Carmen McRae, Miles Davis, Joe Williams or Jimmy Rushing — wanted him. Or even needed him, as the veteran American singer Maxine Sullivan once told me." ."

Norman's musical career went on to include a great deal of studio work and close to a hundred recordings for various Canadian artists such as Moe Koffman, Ray Back with the Ed Sullivan Orchestra, The Tommy Ambrose Orchestra, Don (D.T.) Thompson and most recently with Guido Basso, Marc Jordan, and many more.

Amadio's many recordings went largely undocumented. Some of the recordings throughout his career include: Moe Koffman's "Tales Of Koffman" 1962, Phyllis Marshall's "That Girl" (Capitol) and he is on CDs with Rosemary Galloway's "Sisters of Swing".

Amadio worked on CBC Television for five seasons and became a well-known figure from coast-to-coast as musical director for the weekly Music Hop show penned by producer Andrew A. Melzer.

Amadio died in January 2020, aged 91.