James Emery

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

James Emery (right) with Billy Bang and John Lindberg (center; 1986)

Live and act

Emery, who comes from a musical family, first played the organ as a child and switched to the guitar at the age of ten. At eleven he had classical lessons in guitar, music theory and harmony with Ann Stanley, a violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell , then with David Trader and Ralph Russo. As a teenager he performed in rock bands on the weekends; he also took lessons in the music business of guitarist Bill De Arango , who had performed with Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the 1940s . This introduced Emery to Lester Young's music and also to that of Charlie Parker . From then on he tried to implement the musical ideas of Bird, Monk, Ornette Coleman , Anthony Braxton and the AACM on the guitar: He then studied at Five College in Massachusetts, where he met Arnold Schönberg , Pierre Boulez , Anton Webern and Alban Berg , and then went to New York City in 1974 . There he first worked with Leroy Jenkins , with whom his first recordings were made, also with Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre , as well as with Bobby Naughton , Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton.

He was best known as a long-time member of the String Trio of New York , which he founded with John Lindberg and Billy Bang in 1977. He created his own synthesis of styles of modern jazz , based on Charlie Parker and with the influence of Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monks . In the late 1970s he toured with the Human Arts Ensemble of Charles Bobo Shaw and Luther Thomas .

He also worked with Thurman Barker and Wadada Leo Smith in the 1980s, and in Henry Threadgill's band in the 1990s . In 2001 he worked on Franz Koglmann's album Don't Play, Just Be . From the mid-1990s he recorded a number of albums under his own name with musicians such as Marty Ehrlich , Chris Speed , Mark Feldman , Michael Formanek and Gerry Hemingway , but also worked with Joe Lovano and Judi Silvano . In 1995/96, with the support of a Guggenheim grant, he wrote a multi-part work for eleven instruments that became the core of his album Spectral Domains , in which he also interpreted the Mingus title “Far Wells, Mill Valley” and Monks “Trinkle Tinkle”. In Luminous Cycles from 2001, Emery spans the arc from bebop to Eric Dolphy's out to lunch session .

Discographic notes

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Emery, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz guitarist
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Youngstown, Ohio