Paul Smoker
Paul Alva Smoker ( born May 8, 1941 in Muncie ( Indiana) ) is an American trumpeter and flugelhorn player and composer and band leader of the Free and Creative jazz, free improvisation and contemporary music.
Work
Paul Smoker comes from the Midwestern United States and grew up in Davenport, Iowa; he first took piano lessons and turned ten years old - influenced by the game of Harry James - trumpet to. After his trumpet studies at the University of Iowa, which led to the doctorate, he taught jazz at the Universities of Iowa and Wisconsin and played in the Iowa Brass Quintet. In the 1980s, he took with bassist Ron Rohovit and drummer Phil Haynes on three albums for the label sound aspects, which at that time had a major impact. Richard Cook and Brian Morton referred to in the second edition of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Smokers Alone first album (1986 ) as "one ( s ) of the most interesting albums of the 1980s, and a lesson in group improvisation ". In 1990, he moved to New York in order to devote himself to music and took only few students at. In the early 1990s he founded with saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, the joint venture formation, which recorded two albums for the Munich label Enja. 1996/97 did the collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia (Halloween '96). Recorded in the album Standard Deviation, 1998 with guitarist Steve Salerno, cellist Thomas Ulrich and drummer Jay Rosen, processed Smoker jazz standards like " Stormy Weather ", " Beyond the Blue Horizon" and " Speak Low ".
During this time seemed Smoker with at several recording sessions of CIMP labels, as in Andrew Hill project by Anthony Braxton ( Nine Compositions ( Hill ) 2000), as well as albums by Fred Hess ( Exposed, 2001) and drummer Lou Grassi ( PoZest, 1999). With Grassi, bassist Ken Filiano and saxophonist Bob Magnusson he took in 2000 to the albums Large Music 1 & 2.
Smoker directs the jazz studies at Nazareth College.