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Jimmy Weinstein

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About Me

Drummer/composer, Jimmy Weinstein was born in Chicago, IL. he moved with his wandering family from Chicago to Europe, back to California and later to Spain. As a child he studied piano and cello. At age 13 he taught himself drums and guitar, and played in school bands and musicals. After finishing high school in Spain he went to England to pursue a career as a yacht designer, which eventually landed him a job in New York City where he began to study jazz, working as a designer by day and studying at the Drummer’s Collective and Barry Harris’ Jazz Cultural Theater by night. He also studied and jammed with bop saxophonist Clarence"C" Sharpe during that time. In 1986 he moved to Boston and attended Berklee, where he studied jazz with Joe Hunt and drumset technique with world renowned maestro, Alan Dawson. Later he played in small and large ensembles directed by Max Roach. Over the course of time, didactic encounters with Jaco Pastorious, Paul Bley, David Liebman, Yusef Lateef, Bob Brookmeyer, Peter Erskine, Bob Moses, Karl Berger, and Nasyr Abdul Al-khabyyr have had a major influence on him.After completing a degree at Berklee, he was encouraged by Brookmeyer to "get a gig" by going out to play in the street. He took this advice very seriously and embarked on a 3 year experience of playing the streets of Cambridge, Boston and Brooklyn. This is how he developed his sound, and concept often spending 12 hours a day experimenting with diverse and unusual formations. Street bands frequently included Jeff Parker, Oscar Noriega, Andrew d’Angelo, Don Houge and guitarist Elie Massias with whom he formed his first band, Jimmy Weinstein Group with bassist Masa Kamaguchi and saxophonist Chris Cheek. In 1993 he moved back to New York, and recorded his group’s first album, Nostalgia. The album was critically acclaimed in Downbeat, Jazz Times and other publications. Critic John Andrews called him a "restless, inventive drummer" and praised the album highly. Modern Drummer wrote "Weinstein successfully explores the noir-ish balance of dangling space and interaction". A follow-up recording Sound Emotion was produced by Gunther Schuller. As a development of his group and sound, this album featured mostly the leader’s compositions. To date Weinstein has recorded over 20 albums as a leader or sideman, on labels which include, Fresh Sound, Clean Feed, CIMP, Accurate, Splasch, GM, and PhilologyWhile re-based in Brooklyn, Weinstein cultivated experimental groups that performed in New York and toured Europe and Japan. In 1998 he co-founded the quartet, NAM with Ahmed Abdullah, Alex Harding and Masa Kamaguchi. New CD’s have been released on Weinstein’s own Xaloc Music by Natural Conicidence a quintet featuring Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura; Baby Jackson, a studio produced duo with his wife vocalist Lilli Santon. A new trio CD with, Francesco Guaiana (guitar) and Luca Lo Bianco (bass), collectively known as Hitch_Hikers released in early 2007. Other projects and associations: Dahlia and the Llamas, Ahmed Abdullah’s Diaspora, Ben Monder, Matt Renzi, Alex Harding’s Free Flow, Frank Carlberg and Christine Correa. Jimmy also led the experimental trio RED that featured New York reedman Oscar Noriega and Chicago based omni-dimensional guitarist Jeff Parker. The most recent agregation is with guitar experimentalist Sten Hosfalt and poet/trombonist Raymond Todd in a series of "free associated ensembles". Since 2002 Weinstein has been developing Traveling School, with his wife vocalist, Liliana Santon. The initiative collaborates with artists to perform workshops focused on improvisation as a therapeutic vehicle.Weinstein has produced 5 albums for the Barcelona based Fresh Sound label including cd’s by pianist extraordinaire Roberta Piket and tenor saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart in addition to his own undertakings, most notably with Renzi/Weinstein/Kamaguchi (RWK). The later receiving a myriad of stellar reviews including album of the year in 2000 from the Spanish publication Cuadernos de Jazz for their CD Lines and Ballads (FSNT 065). Weinstein has also composed scores for the independent feature films, Under The Bridge (1997) and Riding the Rails (1997).

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 10/6/2006
Band Website: trvschool.com
Band Members: Jimmy Weinstein Group with: Chris Cheek sax Gib Wharton pedal steel guitar Elie Massias guitar Masa Kamaguchi bassJimmy Weinstein's Natural Coincidence with: Satoko Fujii-piano Natsuki Tamura-trumpet Lilli Santon-voice Masa Kamaguchi-bass Jimmy Weinstein-drums/percussionVerticale Quasi Orrizzontale:Mirco Marchelli-trumpet/arranger Antonio Marangolo-voice/saxes Luciano Bertolotti-saxes Jimmy Weinstein-piano Stefano Solani-bassRenzi/Weinstein DuoMatt Renzi-tenor sax Jimmy Weinstein-drums
Influences: Here is Stef's FreeJazz blog review on This Ocean.Jimmy Weinstein - This Ocean (Ad Hoc 002, 2006) **** Jimmy Weinstein is a drummer with a very turbulent live, moving between the US and Europe, moving from one city to the other, being taught by top musicians, changing instruments, performing for years as a street musician, ending up at the Spanish Fresh Sound New Talent label where he released some CDs, then releasing this album on his own label with this Japanese trio, consisting of Satoko Fujii on piano, Natsuki Tamura on trumpet and Masa Kamaguchi on bass. You can download the album on payplay.com, and I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in modern jazz. The music on this CD is wild, broad-minded, moving all over the place, from introvert intimistic sound explorations to very extravert super dynamic exuberant tonal explosions, very free and very open, yet still wonderfully contained and disciplined. The musicians play with great joy and utter concentration, and create music that thunders and clatters, swings and sings, surprises and enthralls, wheeps and wails and laughs, using boppish elements as much as the free-er more creative zones. I cannot sufficiently emphasize the quality of these Japanese musicians - as I've done before on this blog - Fujii and Tamura being among the best you can hear at the moment, and the fact that they are making this album with Weinstein says enough about their respect for his musical vision. And rightly so! Man, man, man, why are some CDs not more promoted? If one CD has been underexposed in the press, it's surely this one. Judge for yourself.
Sounds Like: Review by Eyal HareuveniPianist Satoko Fujii and her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, rarely lend their services as side players; in recent years they have contributed to recordings by Japanese free jazz pioneer Itaru Oki and the Rova saxophone quartet. But in the last two years Fujii and Tamura committed themselves to a new quartet led by American drummer and composer Jimmy Weinstein, called Natural Coincidence. This fourth member in this quartet is the Japanese bass player Masa Kamaguchi, who has collaborated with Weinstein since 1991. Weinstein, a native Chicagoan and a former student of drummers Alan Dawson and Max Roach, splits now his time between New York and Venice, Italy, where he teaches in his Traveling School. Natural Coincidence is a truly cosmopolitan initiative. Weinstein met Fujii and Tamura in Japan in 1997 and was inspired by their creativity and dynamics. Since then he has dreamed about a joint project, and their debut disc, This Ocean, was recorded in New York last year for Weinstein's label, Ad Hoc. This quartet has toured Europe regularly in the last two years.The music reflects Weinstein's deep understanding of the history of the great jazz drummers, but also his compositional skills and his inquisitive interplay with Fujii, Tamura and Kamaguchi. All the members of the quartet are constantly willing to take chances.The opening track, “Wind and Tide,” is a collective improvisation that presents the quartet in its most abstract mode, but the tone changes completely with the short, muscular “Squalls,” featuring a beautiful angular trumpet solo by Tamura, which emphasizes the tight interplay of the quartet. “East of Cadiz” sounds like the group is paying tribute to the classic Blue Note compositions of Andrew Hill, relying on the bop legacy but rewriting it at the same time. Alternating meters and harmonics, this piece again finds Tamura taking an imaginative solo, assisted with effects that enhance his vocabulary.”Sea Like Glass” is a solo piece by Fujii that begin almost like a Japanese folk song. Fujii plays on the strings of the piano, transforming it into a beautiful introspective piece that acts as an introduction to the captivating minimalism of “Great, As This Ocean.”“Rat,” with its powerhouse drumming and heavy piano clusters, sounds like it might fit the repertoire of Satoko Fujii Quartet, which features drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. ”Beaufort's Scale” and “Polar Affectations” are collective improvisations that move between breezy, disjointed textures into soaring and tight interplay. The energetic and playful “Go Getter,” which concludes this gem, again presents Weinstein as a sharp composer and an assured leader.Visit Jimmy Weinstein on the web. www.trvschool.comTrack listing: Wind And Tide; Squalls; East of Cadiz; Sea Like Glass; Great, As This Ocean; Rat; Beaufort's Scale; Polar Affectations; Go Getter.
Record Label: Xaloc, CIMP, Fresh Sound, GM
Type of Label: Indie