About the Author

Michael Wolff is an award-winning, internationally acclaimed pianist, composer, bandleader, and now, author. In along-running musical career he has been the musical director for the great Grammy-winning jazz singer, Nancy Wilson, and the award-winning The Arsenio Hall Show. He has also been a member of Impure Thoughts, Wolff & Clark Expedition, and a co-star with his sons on the series The Naked Brothers Band. He is a recipient of the BMI Music Award, the winner of the Gold Disc Award in Japan, and the recipient of the Hamptons International Film Festival's award for best film score for the film, The Tic Code. Wolff continues to compose and perform with his trio and is a professor of music at NYU.

Reviews

"Michael Wolff may have been the first true jazz genius I met in my career. I got to know him on tour with the great Nancy Wilson. Michael helped teach this young, very green Cleveland comic the show business ropes! He was as bright andsavvy a man as he was a musician! I'm so very glad he wrote this book because I want the world to know this unique musician who stood by my side through every night of The Arsenio Hall Show. The story of his life has been a wild, amazing, and emotional ride!"-Arsenio Hall
"Michael Wolff is one of the greatest musicians and storytellers in the world and an inspiration for so many musicians, myself included. His journey has been unique and spans many worlds. Congratulations on your memoir, and thank you for taking us on a trip to experience that journey, which continues."-Christian McBride, Seven-time Grammy Award-winning jazz bassist
"Pianist Michael Wolff has had a remarkable career performing and recording with jazz legends such as Cannonball Adderley, Cal Tjader, and Sonny Rollins, as well as leading his own groups. In On That Note, his profane and profound memoir, Wolff writes colorfully about overcoming adversity and about the rewards of a life in music. It turns out that the pianist is also a writer."-Lee Mergner, JazzTimes
"I met Michael Wolff more than fifty years ago. We were rehearsing with the Berkeley High Stage Band, and I was having some issues blowing over rhythm changes. I asked Michael for advice, and he said: 'Just play the blues. . .' It all fellinto place. "They say that in jazz, there are no wrong notes. If you trip, you continue and make your misstep look like you intended it. Michael has a true improviser's approach to life and to everything that he does, and his book reflects that sensibility."This book reveals Michael's honest, no-holds-barred attitude. Fortunately for us, his is a history that is still in the process of unfolding." -Lenny Pickett, Saxophonist and bandleader, Saturday Night Live
"Michael Wolff is a great guy and one of the greatest musicians I ever played with. I hope this book sells because he owes me money."-Sonny Rollins, American saxophone legend
"Wrapped inside this moving recovery memoir from a dire and rare cancer is a revelatory and deeply American story of a precocious musical prodigy who comes of age in 1960's Berkeley as a white Jewish kid who enters the magical archipelago of African-American jazz and becomes an accepted and admired part of the slipstream of the greatest music made possible by a culturally porous world."
-Steve Wasserman, Former literary editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review (LARB)
"Jazz piano maestro Michael Wolff has written an insightful, honest, searing memoir that moves the heart as poignantly as his piano solos do. This is not only a personal memoir but a history of pop culture, an exploration of race relations, and jazz music's place within society. It is both educational and inspiring."-June Cross, Professor at Columbia and writer/producer of documentaries on race; winner of a 2021 Peabody Award
"In his rare, guileless, and amazingly symphonic memoir, Mr. Wolff cracks open his soul and deftly melds one kind of keyboard (QWERTY) with another (piano) . . . treating us to his singularly cool, masterfully improvisational style. The music/the voice is one of pure jazz-the message is one of hope, healing, and survival."-Tony Shalhoub