b. 1970, USA. Attracting attention with her remarkable talent, Cion was the recipient of the 1988 Boston Jazz Society Award. Her musical education was completed at the New England Conservatory in 1990. The following year, she was one of four pianists to attend the Banff School for the Arts in Canada. Throughout the rest of the decade, Cion played at many venues including making tours of Germany, Israel, Japan and Portugal. In 1996 she collaborated with Monty Alexander in a jazz workshop in Switzerland. The following year, her song, ‘It’s Christmas Time, Once Again’, was a finalist in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Her album collaboration with the Herve Jeanne Trio, It Could Happen To You, was a Jazz Podium winner. She led her own trio as the opening act for the George Coleman Quartet at the Mellon Jazz Festival in Pittsburgh in 1998, and with her quartet she appeared at the JVC jazz festival in New York City later that same year. Her trio was again in action at a prestigious event when, in the early summer of 1999, she headlined Women In Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center. The decade culminated in an appearance in Jackson, Florida, where, in November 1999, she was the winner at the 17th Great American Jazz Piano competition. Cion began 2000 leading her own trio for a month-long engagement in Japan, following this with an appearance on Marian McPartland’s National Public Radio show, Piano Jazz. Cion has worked with many artists, including the singers Della Griffin, Allan Harris and Etta Jones. She has also collaborated with big bands including Lew Anderson’s and also the Spirit Of Life Ensemble, both in New York City. A superb technician, Cion swings hard yet finds a considerable measure of sensitive warmth on ballads. As the twenty-first century began, she was already established as a truly remarkable player in the tradition of Bill Evans and had achieved the difficult task of finding her own distinctive language.