About Me
Whether with his electric bass or with his upright, Grant Clarkson has been blessed to perform all around the world with incredible musicians and performers.
As a composer, Grant Clarkson has an even more extensive reach and may be the most prolific composer in his beautiful California city. The cds released under his own name have sold around the world as have many others wherein he appears as an accompanist. Winter 2006-2007 will feature a new launch where once again the fourteen tracks released are selected from a cache of over one hundred composed and recorded since the previous release.
Performing over five hundred different titles in live professional settings and composing & recording over sixty original pieces is part of what constitutes a typical year in the career of Grant Clarkson. The songs performed in the 250 or so lives dates a year are comprised of Grant's original compositions, his colleague's compositions, jazz standards, latin standards, R&B classics, smooth jazz favorites, gospel standards, both contemporary and traditional, show tunes from the periodic pit job, as well as the definitive American blues repertoire.
When teaching privately and in clinics, Clarkson emphasizes listening first, knowing the styles and repertoire, having good technique, including time, intonation, tone, dynamics, and intensity. Central to all these things is theoretical knowledge rooted in reading and at least some piano competence. When performing in ensembles, he strives for perfection in the bass and believes this is a better route to getting positive attention than dominating the ensemble.
When free to compose however, Clarkson demands challenges of himself that go beyond all these things. In 2007, Grant completed his 125th album. Each one has its own theme, instrumentation, and aesthetic. It is from these albums that the tracks for his commercial releases are derived. Grant Clarkson's philosophy as a composer might be stated simply as, 'To thine own self be true'. Never a songwriter in the traditional sense of lyrics and verse/chorus structures, he feels compelled to follow this muse no matter far afield from the nightclub or the DJ his writing takes him, and finds inspiration in the most humble sense from giants like Prokofiev, Debussy, Schubert, Ellington, Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Carl Stalling, and Danny Elfman.
Grant Clarkson is proud to endorse Hartke speaker enclosures, Gallien Krueger amplification, and D'Addario strings. Future plans include more composition in television and film, and supporting more major artists on stage and in the studio with the assistance of his publisher, management, and family & friends.
“(Clarkson’s bass playing) exhibits the refined jocularity of Stanley Clarke.†SLAMM Magazine
“GB3 is one of those groups that comes out the blue and blows everyone’s minds.†Peninsula Beacon
“Many artists claim to be innovative, avant garde, or hard to categoriize. Meet Grant Clarkson. He’s one musician who stays true to these attributes.†Spin Records
"Grant Clarkson does it all... A great bass player, a great composer, a great album." Reviewer Magazine
