Gary Bartz

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Gary Bartz (North Sea Jazz Festival, 2007)

Gary Bartz (born September 26, 1940 in Baltimore ) is an American jazz musician ( alto and soprano saxophone , clarinet , flute ) and composer .

Live and act

Gary Bartz learned alto saxophone at the age of eleven and made his first appearances in his parents' jazz club, the North End Lounge in Baltimore. At the age of seventeen, Bartz came to New York to study at the Juilliard School of Music in 1957/58 . In town he jammed with Freddie Hubbard , Lee Morgan, and Pharoah Sanders . In 1958 he first returned to his hometown to study at the local Peabody Conservatory. From 1962 to 1964 - again in New York - he took part in workshops by Charles Mingus , worked with Eric Dolphy and then with Max Roach / Abbey Lincoln . When Gary's parents hired Art Blakey to perform in their club, Gary Bartz had the opportunity in 1965 to replace a missing saxophonist in the band. He then stayed with Blakey's Jazz Messengers and made his recording debut on Blakey's album Soulfinger (Limelight).

In 1968 he began working with McCoy Tyner , whose closeness to the ideas of John Coltrane strongly influenced him. He then took from 1968 with Tyner's albums Expansions and Extensions ; he also worked with Max Roach, Charles Tolliver , Blue Mitchell , Rashied Ali , Jimmy Owens and Richard Davis in 1968/69 . In 1970 he recorded with Woody Shaw and joined the jazz-rock- oriented Miles Davis Band; he took part in his concert on the Isle of Wight in August '70 and is a soloist a. a. to be heard in "What I Say" on his live album Live-Evil .

After working with his own ensemble since 1968, he founded his band NTU Troop in 1972 , with whom he recorded several albums for Milestone in the 1970s , such as Another Earth and Love Affair . Bartz borrowed the name from the Bantu languages : "Ntu means unity in all things, in time and space, life and death, in the visible and the invisible." He consciously referred to the African tradition, from which he drew musical elements, "to bring them into to let a mixture of bop, free and rock have a new effect ”. With his group, which enjoyed international renown, he made guest appearances at numerous major festivals, such as the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1973 , Kongsberg and 1974 in Berkeley . He also composed music for television.

In the mid-1970s he worked in Los Angeles as a studio musician with Norman Connors and Phyllis Hyman ; For the Capitol label , he recorded pieces in the disco-funk genre from 1977 that contained occasional improvisations, such as JuJu Man or Music is My Sanctuary . The soul album Bartz (1980) for Arista was created with the producer duo Reggie Lucas and James Mtume . In the 1980s, Bartz returned to the roots of modern jazz by Charlie Parker and Coltrane, playing in the hardbop mainstream idiom. In 1980 he was celebrated in New York as a soloist on the stage show "Bebop"; then played in the quartet of Louis Hayes .

After a break of several years, new jazz albums were released under his own name from 1988. In 1998 he worked with the formation Sphere . In 2001 he gave an unusual duo concert with guitarist Peter Leitch in Montréal. In 1995 he released his debut album on Atlantic The Red and Orange Poems , which he himself described as a "musical mystery novel" . In the following years he worked with musicians such as Ingrid Jensen , Roy Hargrove , Bobby Watson , Jarosław Śmietana ( African Lake , 1999), Jeanne Lee , Jay Clayton , George Cables , Cyrus Chestnut , Malachi Thompson , Joe Chambers , Russell Malone , Grachan Moncur III , Chick Corea , Jay Hoggard , Wallace Roney , Gerald Cannon and Allen Lowe . Most recently he worked with the London group Maisha . In the field of jazz, he was involved in 223 recording sessions between 1965 and 2019, according to Tom Lord .

Bartz, who Allmusic certifies as having “lyrical and intense power”, has since been “one of the greatest, but underrated musicians of his generation” with his numerous projects. After he was poll winner in 1972 on Down Beat and the Melody Maker , he received a Grammy for the album Illuminations in 2005 with McCoy Tyner . Bartz teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music .

Discographic notes

  • Libra / Another Earth ( Milestone Records , 1967/68)
  • Harlem Bush Music: Taifa and Uhuru (Milestone, 1970-71)
  • Love Song (Vee Jay International 1977 / Bandcamp 2020, with George Cables, Carl McDaniels, Curtis Robertson, Howard King, Rita Greene)
  • West 42nd Street (Candid, 1990 with Claudio Roditi )
  • There Goes The Neighborhood (Candid, 1990) with Kenny Barron , Ray Drummond , Ben Riley
  • Shadows (Timeless, 1992) with Willie Williams , Benny Green , Christian McBride , Victor Lewis
  • Episode One: Children of Harlem (Challenge, 1994 with Larry Willis , Buster Williams , Ben Riley)
  • The Montreal Concert (DSM, 1999, with Peter Leitch )
  • Live @ The Jazz Standard, Volume 1 - Soulstice (OYO, 1999, with Barney McAll , Kenny Davis , Greg Bandy )
  • Live at the Jazz Standard Vol. 2 (OYO, 1999, with Barney McAll, Paul Bollenback , James King , Greg Bandy, Danny Robbins)
  • Kankawa Meets Gary Bartz (2003, with Toshihiko Kankawa , Greg Bandy)
  • Soprano Stories , (OYO 2005, with George Cables, John Hicks , James King, Greg Bandy)
  • Coltrane Rules: Tao of a Music Warrior (OYO, rec. 2000, ed. 2012, with Barney McAll, James King, Greg Bandy)
  • Gary Bartz & Maisha Night Dreamer (Night Dreamer 2020, with Axel Kaner-Lidstrom, Al MacSween, Shirley Tetteh, Twm Dylan, Jake Long, Tim Doyle)

Lexical entries

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the original: NTU means unity in all things, time and space, living and dead, seen and unseen. Quoted from the Gary Bartz biography in All About Jazz .
  2. ↑ Martin Kunzler: Jazz Lexicon. Volume 1 . Reinbek 2002
  3. ↑ https://www.discogs.com/Gary-Bartz-Bartz/release/3325188
  4. ↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed July 31, 2020)
  5. ↑ OYO Recordings is his own label, OYO stands for "owe your own"
  6. ^ Gary Bartz and Maisha: An Intergenerational Conversation. In: Down Beat . April 29, 2020, accessed July 31, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Bartz, Gary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz musician and composer
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore , Maryland, USA