James Emery (musician)

James Emery ( born December 21, 1951 in Youngstown ( Ohio)) is an American guitarist and composer of the Creative Jazz.

Emery first played as a child, organ and switched to guitar at age 10. At eleven he classical lessons in guitar, music theory and harmony with Ann Stanley, a violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell had. As a teenager, he performed in rock bands on the weekends; Later he taught in the music business of guitarist Bill De Arango, who had appeared in the 1940s still with Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. This made ​​Emery with Lester Young's music known and also with that of Charlie Parker. From then on, he tried to put the musical ideas of Bird, Monk, Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton and the AACM on the guitar: He then studied at the Five College in Massachusetts, where he, Webern and Berg worked with Arnold Schoenberg, Pierre Boulez, and then went in 1973 to New York City. There he first worked with Leroy Jenkins, bringing into being his first recordings, further comprising Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, and Bobby Naughton, Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton.

He was known primarily as a long-standing member of the String Trio of New York, which he founded in 1977 with John Lindberg and Billy Bang. He created his own synthesis of styles of modern jazz, from Charlie Parker and using influences Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk. In the late 1970s he was also a member of the Human Art Ensemble of Joseph Bowie, Charles Bobo Shaw, John Lindberg and Luther Thomas.

In the 1980s he also worked with Thurman Baker and Wadada Leo Smith, in the 1990s in the band of Henry Threadgill. In 2001, he worked on Franz Koglmann album "Do not Play, Just Be ". From the mid- 1990s, with accompanying musicians such as Marty Ehrlich, Chris Speed ​​, Mark Feldman, Michael Formanek and Gerry Hemingway, he recorded a number of albums under his own name, but also worked with Joe Lovano and Judi Silvano. 1995/96 he wrote, with the support of a Guggenheim grant a multi-part work for eleven instruments, the core of his album Spectral domains was, in which he also interprets the Mingus - title "Far Wells, Mill Valley " and Monk's " Trinkle Tinkle ". In Luminous Cycles 2001 Emery spans the bebop for Out to Lunch session of Eric Dolphy.

Disco Graphical Notes

• Standing on a Whale Fishing for Minnows ( Enja, 1996) with M. Ehrlich, M. Formanek, G. Hemingway
• Spectral Domains ( Enja, 1997) with Honestly, Chris Speed ​​, Kevin Norton, M. Feldman, Formanek, Hemingway
• Luminous Cycles ( Between the Lines, 2000)
• Transformations - Music for 3 Inprovisators and Orchestra ( Between the Lines, 2002)

Literature / source

• Richard Cook & Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Edition, London, Penguin, 2002 ISBN 0-14-017949-6.
• Ted Panken: Liner notes ( Spectral Domains, 1997)