Trevor Percario is something of a prodigy. At 23, he is already an accomplished pianist and musician playing gigs in bands and as a solo act across the region. As prodigies typically do, Trevor started young. At five, he was playing music with his nine-year-old brother. On one occasion, his father was showing his older brother how to play a song on the keyboard. Trevor heard it and started playing it. It was at that point his parents thought music lessons might pay off. After a few years of lessons and their requisite recitals, Trevor’s father felt he was ready to perform live. Trevor was soon accompanying his father to live shows and attending open mic nights around Danville.

Of those open mics, Crema and Vine became an important venue. Trevor’s first gig was with a band his dad was involved in called Bob and the Regrets. Trevor was 14. Following that came Sofa Sessions, also at Crema and Vine, where artists played covers and music they’d written. The show was broadcast on the radio. Trevor was writing some of his own music by then, and this gave him an opportunity to debut his original work and to see how it landed.

While his first love was and still is piano and keyboard, Trevor also began learning to play the bass guitar during his freshman year in high school.

Drawing inspiration and influence from performers like Billy Joel, Trevor’s musical tastes were already gravitating toward jazz, but it wasn’t until he met Dan Wolf, a professional jazz trumpet player with whom he soon began to play, that he jazz really began to take hold of him. By playing the standards of Duke Ellington and the like, he began to get a real feel for the way jazz rhythms work. Dan’s band played a lot of funk, a syncopated version of jazz with a strong rhythm. “Playing piano was one thing,” Trevor told us, “but playing bass was really fun because it’s the bass that drives the rhythm.”

With his interest in jazz and the pursuit of it truly ignited, Trevor began searching for someone who could help him level up. He found Butch Taylor in Lynchburg, a former teacher of Dave Matthews, and began taking lessons from him. After high school, Trevor went to Lynchburg College and then Liberty, where he studied for a semester under Joseph Henson.

Things really took a turn for Trevor when he transferred to Augusta University’s music program, headed by Wycliffe Gordon. Gordon is a grammy winner and has been chosen multiple times as the world’s best jazz trombonist. “That was when I learned what it was about to be a jazz musician,” Trevor told us. It was here, as Gordon brought in some of the best musicians in the industry to work with his students, that Trevor began to feel that it wasn’t enough just to be a jazz musician. He wanted to be one of the best. But it was at precisely that point that Trevor realized how much work he needed to do. His desire to be the best became a curse. Self-doubt plagued him during this period in time, and he began to doubt he had it in him to really be great. In the months following his graduation from university, Trevor determined himself to move on from music, to get a regular job, and “just get on with life,” as he puts it.

Then, one day, while scrolling Instagram, he saw a poster of Wycliffe Gordon playing with a band at Birdland in New York City. “I’ve got to do that!” Trevor instantly thought, and the spark was reignited. Trevor shortly thereafter moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where he would have more gigging opportunities. “I’ve played with the most jazz musicians in the last five or six months than I have my entire life,” he said proudly.

Trevor’s goal is to make a living doing what he loves most. “I don’t know exactly where that’s going to take me,” he says as he ponders the possibility of an eventual move to New York or New Orleans. “There’s nowhere like New York for jazz!” Wherever the future may take him, Trevor feels that, right now, he is precisely where he needs to be.

Trevor plays every Sunday at Crema & Vine from 10:30 to 12:30 (come see him before this great talent leaves us). To learn more about Trevor and his work, visit Trevorpercario.com.