Joe Lovano
PROJECTS:
Hailed by The New York Times as “one of the greatest musicians in jazz history,” Grammy Award winning saxophone titan Joe Lovano has distinguished himself as a prescient and pathfinding force in the arena of creative music.
JOE LOVANO, JULIAN LAGE, SANTI DEBRIANO, WILL CALHOUN: PARAMOUNT QUARTET
Grammy Award winning titan of jazz saxophone Joe Lovano and virtuoso guitarist Julian Lage have enjoyed a long journey of mutual artistic admiration. They first met in 1999 at Yoshi’s in Oakland, where Joe was performing with McCoy Tyner. Then a child prodigy, Julian’s father brought him to the show and it was there he connected with Joe. They kept in touch through the years – even performing together at a private event – then reuniting at Berklee College of Music. “I’ve always found him a natural, beautiful, expressive musician with maturity beyond his years,” Joe says of Julian, “He is someone I always knew I would collaborate with at some point and I’m so happy to have his contributions within the Paramount Quartet.”
Longtime Lovano collaborator Santi Debriano, who first performed with Joe in the Archie Shepp Quartet in the 1980s, joins on bass. Drummer Will Calhoun (of Living Colour fame) called Joe to perform with him and Santi in a fundraiser last year for the Puerto Rican Relief Fund after the devastating hurricane. That explosive, creative set was the springboard leading to the idea of adding Julian and forming this new band, set to debut at the legendary Village Vanguard in February 2024.
North American booking in collaboration with Arrival Artists.
TRIO TAPESTRY
Grammy Award winning composer, saxophonist, and producer Joe Lovano made his ECM debut in 2019 with Trio Tapestry, featuring pianist Marilyn Crispell and Carmen Castaldi on drums. “The intensity comes not from ferocity but from depth of feeling,” wrote the BBC Music Magazine.
Lovano reunited with two of the finest improvisers in the field on 2021’s Garden of Expression. Crispell and Castaldi lent their sensitivity and attuned instincts to this set of eight Lovano originals, soaring over expansive, out-of-tempo soundscapes akin to those of the previous album. It’s a language of lyrical melody and open space, with rich, unfolding harmony from the piano and sparse texture and flow from the drums and cymbals—not to mention the gongs that Lovano introduces.
The third album from Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry finds the group continuing to extend its spacious and lyrical approach, with deep listening and intense focus. “Our Daily Bread is fueled by the rhythm spirit of expression that projects the mysterious world of music that lies ahead,” says master saxophonist Lovano in his liner note and these elegantly fluid pieces and free-floating ballads indeed feel like songs of the soul. Marilyn Crispell is the optimal pianist for this music, orchestrating it as it unfolds with a sensibility attuned to both contemporary chamber music and post-Coltrane improvising. Drummer Carmen Castaldi, a Lovano associate since teenage years, embellishes the music with his own poetic touch on cymbals and, like Joe himself, draws blossoming resonances from gongs.
Longtime collaborators in various projects over the years, each member of the trio is a pillar in their respective industries: Lovano is a titan of jazz saxophone, The Guardian calls Marilyn Crispell “one of the most highly regarded pianists at the sharp end of contemporary jazz,” and Castaldi is a superb percussionist in the continuing legacy of Paul Motion. With innovative new compositions Lovano calls, “some of the most intimate, personal music” he’s recorded thus far. On stage, the trio unfurls a tapestry of modal expressions interwoven with shimmering saxophone, passionate spirituality in the piano, and a range of exceptional percussive accents.
SOUND PRINTS
Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer Joe Lovano and two-time Grammy nominated trumpeter Dave Douglas are current masters on their respective instruments within the pantheon of modern jazz. They have shown that their distinct and robust voices can lead, blend and push the idiom forward both in composition and improvisation, while embracing the front-line masters of previous generations. Once co-leaders of the renowned SFJAZZ Collective, the group paid tribute to living icon Wayne Shorter by showcasing arrangements of Shorter originals alongside newly composed pieces influenced by Shorter’s compositional voice. The experience was a catalyst that lead the two instrumentalists to conceive the Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas Quintet, Sound Prints; an all-star ensemble. Lovano says, “Sound Prints is a free-flowing, joyous expression of music in the social environment we live in today. We dare to improvise and create music within the music – in a democratic way each piece comes to life on its own.”
Sound Prints released their third full length album, Other Worlds with ten new compositions via Greenleaf Music on May 7, 2021.
SYMPHONY
Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer Joe Lovano stands alone at the vanguard of large and small group jazz. From his Grammy-nominated work with the WDR Big Band & Rundfunk Orchestra, Symphonica, to his role as Gary Burton Chair of Jazz Performance at Berklee College of Music, the Cleveland native fearlessly challenges and pushes the conceptual and thematic choices he makes in a quest for new modes of artistic expression and new takes on what defines the jazz idiom. In 2014 Lovano won awards for Multi-reeds Player and Tenor Saxophonist of the Year from the Jazz Journalists Association and Tenor Saxophonist of the Year from Down Beat Magazine. He has released 23 celebrated albums on the Blue Note label; with the last three focusing on his quintet Us Five.
PRESS QUOTES:
One of the jazz world’s most celebrated musicians
NPR
The titan among us
DownBeat
Organic and basic, intense and casual…Mr. Lovano’s performance is a knockout
The New York Times
Jazz royalty
The Boston Globe
After 30 albums as a leader and at least 25 years in the spotlight, it’s clear Joe Lovano is more than a dominant figure in jazz. He’s jazz’s answer to George Clooney or Jeff Bridges, a vibrant player who delivers an award-worthy performance every time out.
Wall Street Journal
Leave it to restless tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano to take the idea of a tribute record and turn it on its head with this collection dedicated to Charlie Parker…Lovano digs for new twists in Parker’s compositions like the flesh-and-blood creatures they are rather than replicating what’s already been heard…Though a showcase for history, Lovano and his band expertly show the many ways these classics can still throw sparks.
Los Angeles Times
