Title: Pianist
Company: PLSM Productions LLC
Location: Denver, Colorado, United States
Purnell Steen, Pianist at PLSM Productions LLC, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Executives for dedication, achievements, and leadership in jazz musicianship.
Currently, Mr. Steen excels as a pianist with the Five Points Ambassadors, a band dedicated to playing and preserving the music of the legendary Five Points neighborhood in Denver. Between the 1920s and 1950s, Five Points was the heart of the scene and at its peak, the neighborhood boasted over fifty bars and clubs, was known as the “Harlem of the West,” and played host to the greatest names in jazz in the mid-20th century: pianist and bandleader Duke Ellington, singers Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, saxophonist Charlie Parker, and trumpeter Miles Davis. Local players gradually gave Five points a style of its own, a mix of jazz and swing.
Mr. Steen and the Five Points Ambassadors have performed for many dignitaries and during the 2008 Democratic National Convention played for the Clintons and other notables. Mr. Steen is a cousin of jazz greats Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, George Duke, 5-time Grammy Award winner Dianne Reeves and the legendary Charles Burrell. He has studied at the Mozarteum Salzburg in Austria, Musik Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany and music theory at the University of Colorado. Mr. Steen founded PSLM Productions LLC and served as its chief executive officer from 2005 to 2015.
As a career highlight, Mr. Steen cites the Five Points Ambassadors’ recent performance with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at the Martin Luther King Humanitarian Awards Presentation. He has attended the symphony since 1945 and had always desired to play with the orchestra at some point. Mr. Steen also takes pride in his involvement in the civil rights movement. He attended the March on Washington and attended the First Student Leadership Conference on religion and race from November 17 through 20 in 1963.
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