Ralph Bowen

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Ralph Bowen (* around 1965 ) is an American jazz musician ( tenor saxophone , composition ) of modern jazz .

Live and act

Bowen grew up on a cattle ranch; his father worked as a real estate agent in Acton, a town west of Toronto, Canada. Bowen, the youngest of five children, began taking piano lessons when he was five. He started playing the clarinet at the age of ten and switched to the saxophone shortly afterwards, inspired by the example of his eldest brother. His parents took him and his siblings to see the big bands of Count Basie , Duke Ellington, and Buddy Rich . At the age of 13 he started playing in dancehalls near Acton and Toronto and worked with a ten-piece band. After graduating from high school, he attended the summer school for saxophone at the Banff School of Fine Arts, where he met Pat LaBarbera , an influential saxophone teacher. In Banff he also met the pianist Renee Rosnes .

He first played in the Toronto club scene before studying at the University of Indiana College . He stayed there for two years until he heard that a new group Out of the Blue was being formed in New York. Michael Philip Mossman was the band leader of that group and suggested Bowen come to Rutgers University to finish his college education. There he finally obtained his bachelor's and diploma degrees; then he began teaching there in 1990.

Bowen worked in the New York jazz scene from the 1980s; first recordings were made in 1985 with the formation Out of the Blue (with Mossman, Kenny Garrett , Harry Pickens , Robert Hurst , Ralph Peterson ). In the following years he played a. a. with Orrin Evans , Michel Camilo , Horace Silver , Renee Rosnes , Steve Wilson , Kenny Davis , Anthony Branker and Jared Gold . He has released six albums under his own name so far, his first Movin 'On was made at the end of 1992 with a quintet line-up with Jim Beard , Jon Herington , Anthony Jackson and Ben Perowsky , followed by A Morning View (with Jim Beard, Charles Fambrough and Bill Stewart ). In the field of jazz he was involved in 79 recording sessions between 1984 and 2016. Currently (2019) he leads a quartet with Jim Ridl (piano), Luques Curtis (bass) and Donald Edwards (drums), now with Kenny Davis (bass) and Cliff Almond (drums). Bowen lives in New Jersey and teaches at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, where he teaches jazz theory and saxophone and directs the Rutgers Jazz Ensemble.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ralph Bowen. Smalls, April 1, 2019, accessed April 6, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed April 1, 2019)
personal data
SURNAME Bowen, Ralph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH around 1970