Gary Bartz
Gary Bartz ( born September 26, 1940 in Baltimore) is an American jazz musician ( alto and soprano saxophone, clarinet, flute) and composer.
Life and work
Gary Bartz got to the age of eleven and had alto saxophone in the jazz club of his parents, the North End Lounge in Baltimore, his first performances. At the age of seventeen Bartz came to New York to in 1957/58 to study at the Juilliard School of Music. In the city he was jamming with Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, and Pharoah Sanders. In 1958, he initially returned to his hometown to study at the Peabody Conservatory there. From 1962 to 1964 he took - back in New York - in workshops of Charles Mingus in part, worked with Eric Dolphy and then with Max Roach / Abbey Lincoln. As Gary's parents Art Blakey dedicated for an appearance in their club, Gary Bartz had the opportunity in 1965, a missing saxophonist in the band to be replaced. He then stayed with Blakey's Jazz Messengers and made his recording debut on Blakey's Soul Finger album.
In 1968 his work with McCoy Tyner, to the ideas of John Coltrane coined by the strong nearby. He then took off in 1968 with Tyner whose albums Expansions and extensions to; He also worked in 1968/69 with Max Roach, Charles Tolliver, Blue Mitchell, Rashied Ali, Jimmy Owens and Richard Davis. In 1970 he took up with Woody Shaw and came to the jazz-rock oriented Miles Davis band; he took part in his concert on the Isle of Wight with in August '70 and can be heard as a soloist and Others in " What I Say " on his live album Live Evil.
After he had worked since 1968 with its own ensemble he founded in 1972 his band NTU Troop, with whom he recorded for Milestone in the 1970s several albums such as Another Earth and Love Affair. Bartz borrowed the name de Bantu languages: " NTU means unity in all things, in time and space, life and death, in the visible and the invisible. " He was referring aware of the African tradition from which he drew musical elements, " to them in a mixture of bop, free, and rock look new permit. " With his group, who enjoyed an international reputation, he has performed at numerous major festivals, in 1973 at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Kongsberg and 1974 in Berkeley. He composed music for television next.
The mid-1970s, he worked in Los Angeles as a studio musician with Norman Connors and Phyllis Hyman; for the label Capitol he took from 1977 pieces in the genre of disco funk, which contained occasional improvisations, as JuJu Man or Music is My Sanctuary. In the 1980s, he returned to the roots of modern jazz of Charlie Parker and Coltrane and played in the hard bop mainstream idiom. In 1980, he was hailed in New York as a soloist of the stage show " Bebop "; then played in a quartet of Louis Hayes. After a hiatus of several years appeared from 1988 new jazz albums under his own name. In 1998 he worked with the band Sphere. In 2001 he was in Montreal with guitarist Peter Leitch an unusual duo concert.
Bartz, the Allmusic certifies " lyrical and intense power " belongs with its numerous projects since " the grandest, but underrated musicians of his generation." After he was back in 1972 Poll winner in Down Beat and Melody Maker, he received in 2005 with McCoy Tyner a Grammy for the album Illuminations. Bartz teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. In 1995 he made his debut album with Atlantic The Red and Orange Poems, which he himself described as a "musical mystery novel" reissued.
Disco Graphical Notes
- Libra / Another Earth ( Milestone Records in 1967 /68)
- Harlem Bush Music: Taifa and Uhuru ( Milestone, 1970-71 )
- West 42nd Street ( Candid, 1990) Claudio Roditi with
- There Goes The Neighborhood ( Candid, 1990) with Kenny Barron, Ray Drummond, Ben Riley
- Episode One Children Of Harlem ( Challenge, 1994) with Larry Willis, Buster Williams, Ben Riley
- The Montreal Concert ( DSM, 1999) with Peter Leitch
- Soprano Stories, 2005 ( OYO Recordings)
( OYO Recordings is his own label, OYO stands for " owe your own" )
Lexical entries
- Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, Brian Priestley: Rough Guide to Jazz. 2nd edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 978-3-476-01892-2
- Martin Kunzler: Jazz Encyclopedia. Volume 1 2nd edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-16512-0