Gentry Bronson is a classically trained pianist, award winning singer/songwriter and performer, alterna-rock front man, music theatre composer, and spoken word poet. Gentry began studying piano with Marilyn Kiffmeyer when he was seven years old, and from 1978 to 1988, he won seven Minnesota Music Teachers' Association awards for piano performance. In 1991, he moved to Seattle, where he composed dance and film scores, including the music for the 1993 Withered Wall Film Festival. In 1994, he relocated to San Francisco, where he became the pianist for the jazz quintet The Partial Orchestra and continued music studies with jazz bassist, Herbie Lewis, and classical pianist, Dr. Fillipa Francia. In 2000, Gentry won three Northern California Songwriters' Association awards for best song and best performance. He formed the new vaudeville quartet, the Night Watchmen, in 2001. He has written and independently produced two CDs as the leader, songwriter, singer, and pianist for the Night Watchmen, and he is working on a third CD planned for release in 2004. Gentry says about "Tranquillo", "When I was five or six years old, before I studied music, I used to create adventures with the keys on my grandparent's very out-of-tune, upright piano. The black keys were the dark side, the bad guys, the bullies, Comic Book Super Villains, Darth Vader. And the white keys were the light, the good guys, Robin Hood, Spiderman, Luke Skywalker. I pressed the keys with my fingers and created stories." "I guess it never has changed. Music, to me, is always a story, and every song has its introduction where we meet all the characters. There is romance, comedy, conflict, and the resolution, be it good or bad. Traumatic haunting hammers to wire, sad drifting phrases, bold heroic chords. And because words and singing and storytelling are as important to me as instrumental music, the songs on "Tranquillo", although they are all instrumental, are all also very lyrical." "I don't make music from a heady space - that is - I don't make music that I want to be over people's heads. I want it to be accessible. And I also want people to hear piano as more than a classical instrument. Piano is as masculine as a guitar, as sadly human as the strings, as expressive as a horn, as primitive and yet complex as the drums. Piano is dramatic and it rocks and it soothes and it is sad and it can change on a dime like a schizophrenic personality. And in the end, it quiets."