Heather Cornell presented her show “Finding Synesthesia”, collaboration with pianist Andy Milne and featuring vocalist Malika Zarra and cellist Rufus Cappadocia at the Salzburg Jazz Festival in Nov. 2008 and at the London Jazz Festival at UK’s prestigious Southbank Center in November 2007. She performed “Short Stories”, a collaboration with Vienna based artists Sabine Hasicka and Alexander Lachner at "Tap Ahead" in Düsseldorf in May 2008. In 2007 she toured “Two Ladies of Jazz” with the Jeanne Federicci Trio in the south of France. In 2004 she toured Manhattan Tap on a 26-city tour of France performing her “Tribute to Ray”. Called “the Oscar Peterson of hoofing” (Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada), she began her career as an apprentice to six of the first generation of American tap masters, and had the honor of performing frequently with Buster Brown, Eddie Brown, Harriet Browne, Cookie Cook, Steve Condos and Chuck Green. She is artistic director and principal choreographer for Manhattan Tap, an international ensemble of tap dancers and live musicians known for its innovative collaborations on original music for tap. She is a pioneer in concert tap, traveling worldwide with her company and as a soloist, and has created full-length works with the late jazz icon Ray Brown, film composer Bob Telson (Gospel at Colonus), Argentinean accordionist Chango Spasiuk, the world music blend of Keith Terry and Crosspulse and with her long time collaborator and music director of Manhattan Tap, pianist Keith Saunders. She choreographed the British comedy, “The Play What I Wrote” for Broadway and was choreographic consultant and tap coach on “Three Penny Opera”, a production by Atalaya theatre company in Seville, Spain. She has set tap works on dozens of dance, music and theater professional companies, youth ensembles and performing arts high schools and university departments. TV credits include a national KQED special with JTE and Honi Coles; Gregory Hines’ Tap Dance in America for Great Performances on PBS; and a 30-minute special for the Canadian Television jazz series Sounds Impressive. She is responsible for training much of today's generation of tap artists as well as cast members of Manhattan Tap, Stomp, Bring In da Noise, Bring In da Funk, Tap Dogs, Imagine Tap, and Riverdance. For 19 years she has held the “Manhattan Tap NYC Intensive Workshop”, a 58-hour intensive that she co-teaches with world and jazz musicians. She is artistic director of a new collaborative Canadian company, “Rhythms 2010”, an initiative to bring together a number of Canadian tap artists and musicians, that has performed annually at the Vancouver Tap Festival since 2007. In 2008 she was awarded the “Living Legends” award by the West Coast Tap Alliance in Vancovuer, Canada. Ms. Cornell’s greatest collaborators in life are her daughter Soné and son Eoghan.
