About Me
City slick meets hillbilly soul and goes hippy hopping through pastures of multi-colored americana rock, on a knobby-tired green bike. Sometimes smooth, sometimes rocky, but always thinking and chasing the winds right down to the waterhole. Mascots Distance is a quarter composed of drums, bass, guitar and piano created and fronted by Jordon Rothstein.Jordon is a singer-songwriter and producer from New York City. He has worked with some of todays biggest recording acts including Ian Gillan (of Deep Purple),John Legend, Russell Simins (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion), Dan The Automator(The Gorillaz), Taye Diggs (from the musical Rent), Kim Sozzi and Pete Yorn, as well as some of New Yorks most promising up and coming artists such as Kristin Hoffmann, Bill Mcgarvey and Cassandra Reed. In 1997 Jordon won best film score for the film Union, in the NYU Film Festival and was music supervisor for an independent film called Falling Sky, starring Karen Allen and Britany Murphy. From 2000 to 2005 he was selected to participate in three ASCAP Songwriters workshops. Jordon has had success writing jingles for Carnation Instant Breakfast, Volvo and Folgers Coffee. He earned a BA in music from Syracuse University and a Masters Degree in music education from Columbia University.The trios drummer, Yutaka Uchida, is also a jazz composer in his own right. Yutaka is from Tokyo Japan and attended Bostons Berklee College of Music. In college, Yutaka won the annual Louie Bellson Award (sponsored by Avedis Zildjian Co.) in recognition of his outstanding performance. In 2005, he received the Performing Arts Award from The Council of the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island. In addition to his performances with Mascots Distance, Yutaka can be heard every Sunday evening at the jazz club Cleopatras Needle.Guitarist Laurent Medelgi was born and raised in Paris and moved to NYC in 1993. Since then he has studied with Mike Stern and Wayne Krantz and released his debut album in 2002, “Circles, Live@55 Bar†on the British label String Jazz, and released his second Album in 2006, “Diverses†on Evander Music. Laurent made his broadway debut with the hit show Rent where he acted as lead guitar. Since then he has worked in the pit on the shows The Wedding Singer, Hair Spray, Jersey Boyz, Altar Boys and many others. When not playing with Mascot’s Distance or performing on Broadway, Laurent acts as music director and lead guitarist for many Jazz, pop, gospel and rock groups around the city. Groups including Marcques, Andrew Suvalsky, Sandra Crede Valeire Ahneman, Ari Gold and Apria Recording Artist B. Hadala.The bands new bass player is named Danny Zanker, and is one of New York’s top jazz and avante-garde musicians. More info on Danny soon to come. Recently six of Mascots Distances songs were placed in the top ten for the northeast and New York region on the website Broadjam. Mascots Distance has played at Rockwood Music Hall, The Bitter End, Kennys Castaways, Pianos, The C Note, The Triad, The Knitting Factory, Crash Mansion, The Living Room, Matchless, Lemon, Snitch, etc...Full length album can be purchased at www.cdbaby.com/mascotsdist -4 song EP at www.cdbaby.com/mascotsdist2 -In addition both albums and downloads can be accessed on Itunes..
