Helio Alves was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1966 and started piano lessons at age 6. Following his early immersion in playing the pop standards and classical music favored by his parents, he gravitated to jazz in his teens. Alves moved to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music and received his BA in 1990. In Boston he met trumpeter Claudio Roditi, who advised the 24-year old pianist to move to New York City, and urged him to get in touch when he arrived. Alves eventually moved to New York City in 1993.
Since then pianist and composer Helio Alves has received high praise as an in-demand sideman with Joe Henderson, Yo-Yo Ma, Paquito D'Rivera, Gato Barbieri, Dave Samuels, Airto Moreira & Flora Purim and Oscar Castro-Neves, to name but a few. Alves has recorded two Reservoir releases with Roditi, Samba Manhattan Style (1995) and Double Standards (1997). He is also featured on Roditi's 2009 release "Brazilliance X4 (Resonance).
From 1995 to 1997, Alves toured extensively with Joe Henderson's Double Rainbow Quartet celebrating the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, and was featured in the Grammy-winning release, Joe Henderson's Big Band (Verve, 1996). Alves was the pianist on Grammy-winning releases by Yo-Yo Ma (Obrigado Brazil, 2003) and Paquito D’Rivera (Brazilian Dreams, 2002), and on the Grammy-nominated Samba Jazz Fantasia (Malandro Records, 2002), by Duduka Da Fonseca.
His growing discography includes releases by Rosa Passos (Amorosa, SONY/Classical, 2004), Joyce (Samba Jazz e Outras Bossas, Far Out Recordings, 2007), Louis Hayes ( The Time Keeper, 2009), Slide Hampton (Slide Plays Jobim, 2002), Gino Sitson (Bamisphere, 2005, and Way To Go, 2009) and Brazilian Trio (Zoho, 2008).
He's also been featured on recordings and performances with The Caribbean Jazz Project, Phil Woods, Herbie Mann, Gal Costa, Sadao Watanabe, Randy Brecker, Don Braden, Santi Debriano, Hendrik Meurkens, Paul Winter, David Sanchez, Harry Allen, The New York Voices, Andy Narell, Mike Stern among many others.
Helio has also released three albums under his own name "Trios" (Reservoir Music, 1998), featuring John Patitucci, Al Foster, Nilson Matta and Duduka Da Fonseca, "Portrait in Black & White" (Reservoir Music, 2004) featuring Matt Wilson and Santi Debriano and "It's Clear" (Reservoir Music, 2009) featuring Romero Lubambo, Scott Colley and Ernesto Simpson.
