Fred Kaz has been played on NTS shows including Donna Leake, with Ameer first played on 22 June 2021.

Fred Kaz is perhaps most widely known as the longtime musical director for The Second City, where his extraordinary musical talents were for almost 30 years utilized to accent, illustrate and direct the onstage work of the casts of improvisational actors, a considerable number of whom were destined to become luminaries of stage and screen today.

Fred Kaz was a consummate musician. He was playing complex pianoforte pieces at age 3, performing publicly at 13 and earned a degree in classical music and composition while still in his teens. Before the age of 16 he developed what was to become a lifelong passion for jazz, inspired and encouraged by time spent at the Paris Club, where the legendary Chicago trumpeter King Kolax took him under his wing. King Kolax told Fred: "The only way to a man's jazz is through his blues" - and that haunting truth was made only too devastatingly clear when a factory accident in Fred's early 20's resulted in the loss of two fingers from his left hand.

With any dreams he had of a classical musical career now over, Fred immersed himself in the Chicago jazz scene and formed The Fred Kaz Trio. He devised techniques to compensate for his damaged left hand that contributed to the stamp of his absolutely unique pianistic style and that continue to be emulated by other musicians today.

The Fred Kaz Trio was featured on bills starring such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Cannonball Adderley, Duke Ellington and Oscar Peterson. The trio were the house band for the first Playboy Club in Chicago. Fred shared the stage with Miles Davis at The Modern Jazz Room; and with Harry "Sweets" Edison, Louis Bellson and Pearl Bailey at the Chez Paree Club.