A native of sunny California, San Francisco Bay Area, Ted Kooshian has been living in New York since 1987. Since then he has apportioned his time among jazz gigs, composing, Broadway pits, tours, recording, and teaching. In the New York area, Ted has performed at Radio City Music Hall, the Rainbow Room, BB King’s, Birdland, the Iridium, the Beacon Theater, and Jones Beach. He has played for several Broadway shows, including “The Lion King,” “Mamma Mia,” and “Spamalot.” He has played at the Detroit Jazz Festival, the Syracuse Jazz Festival, the JVC Jazz Festival, Sun Valley Jazz Festival, and the Panasonic Jazz Festival; also jazz festivals in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
Ted has been to all the continents on our planet except for Antarctica. He once played a jam session with Frank Foster at the former Latvian Prime Minister’s house. In 1986 he had Easter dinner on the South Pacific island of Tonga, as a guest of the prince. Once he was kidnapped in Manila, the Philippines, and he once broke his right foot in Bahia, Brazil. He has toured or played in concert with Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry, Toni Braxton, Marvin Hamlisch, Sarah Brightman, and “Blood, Sweat, and Tears.” He plays occasionally as a guest with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. A couple of the more unique vocalists Ted has accompanied on piano are Meryl Streep and Coach Tommy LaSorda. He has been a member of the Ed Palermo Big Band since the early 1990's. Ted has two CD’s out; the first one, “Clockwork,” is all original material by him, and the second, “Ted Kooshian’s Standard Orbit Quartet,” is his jazz arrangements of cartoon and television themes, and pop tunes.

Ted Kooshian's name was engraved on the two microchips of the STARDUST spacecraft, which was sent into space to return a sample from a comet (the first such sample returned). STARDUST reached the WILD 2 Comet on January 2, 2004 and sent one of the microchips with Ted's name on it back to Earth (it returned on 1/15/2006 along with the comet samples), while the other microchip is still on the spacecraft and will head further into outer space.

Ted cites Spider-man, Donald Duck, and Captain James T. Kirk as his major influences. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.