Guest Artists
ALL TERRAIN STRING FESTIVAL: BOLCOM 4 X 4
John Patitucci
johnpatitucci.com
John Patitucci was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1959 and began playing the electric bass at age ten, performing and composing by 12., adding acoustic bass and piano to his repertoire by 16 and playing soul, rock, blues, jazz, and classical music. He studied classical bass at San Francisco State University and Long Beach State University.
As a studio musician, Patitucci has played with artists such as B. B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker, George Benson, Dizzy Gillespie, Was Not Was, Dave Grusin, Natalie Cole, Bon Jovi, Sting, Queen Latifah, and Carly Simon. In 1986, he was voted by his peers in the studios as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences MVP on Acoustic Bass.
As a performer, John has performed around the world with his own band and with jazz luminaries Corea, Hancock, and Shorter as well as Stan Getz, Pat Metheny, Wynton Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Michael Brecker, McCoy Tyner, Nancy Wilson, Randy Brecker, Freddie Hubbard, Tony Williams, Hubert Laws, Hank Jones, Mulgrew Miller, James Williams, Kenny Werner, and many others. Some of the many pop and Brazilian artists he has performed with include Ms. Cole, Sting, Aaron Neville, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Milton Nascimiento, Astrud and Joao Gilberto, Airto and Flora Purim, Ivan Lins, Joao Bosco, and Dori Caymmi. John has also worked with film composers Jerry Goldsmith, Ry Cooder, James Newton Howard, Dave Grusin, Henry Mancini, John Williams, Mark Isham, Michel Colombier, Carter Burwell, and Howard Shore.
Since 1985, working with Chick Corea has brought him worldwide acclaim and put him at the forefront of the jazz world. His many recordings with Chick Corea’s Elektric Band and Akoustic Band, his six solo recordings for GRP Records and his subsequent recordings have earned him two Grammy Awards (one for playing and one for composing) and over fifteen Grammy nominations. In addition, his first solo recording, John Patitucci, went to number one on the Billboard Jazz charts. John arranged and produced each of his records as well as other artists.
In 1996, he signed with Concord Jazz and released seven records on their label: One More Angel; Now; Imprint; Communion; Songs, Stories and Spirituals; Line by Line; and Remembrance. Two of those records were nominated for Grammy Awards in the composition category. After exploring many different writing styles on both his own records and those of Chick Corea’s, John continued to compose for many mediums. He continues to be commissioned as a composer and is a featured performer on many recordings.
In 2000, he began touring with the legendary Wayne Shorter, and the Wayne Shorter Quartet, featuring Danilo Perez on piano and Brian Blade on drums, receiving worldwide acclaim. Their live recording Footprints Live was nominated for a Grammy in 2001. The studio recording, Alegria, won a Grammy in 2003. Another album, Beyond the Sound Barrier, won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Album in 2005. In 2006, the Quartet won the 2006 Jazz Journalists Award for Best Small Ensemble. When Patitucci is not touring with his band or the Wayne Shorter Quartet, he performs in other ensembles, such as the an all‑star quintet Directions in Music, whose album Live at Massey Hall won a Grammy Award.
In 2009, Patitucci released Remembrance, featuring saxophone genius Joe Lovano and drum virtuoso Brian Blade, to rousing reviews and a 2009 Grammy Award nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. The trio enjoyed highly acclaimed and well‑received performances at Dizzy’s Club Coca‑Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Monterey Jazz Festival. In 2015, Patitucci released his fourteenth solo recording, Brooklyn, on his own label, Three Faces Records. The recording features his latest band, The John Patitucci Electric Guitar Quartet, with Adam Rogers and Steve Cardenas on electric guitars, Brian Blade on bass and Patitucci playing electric basses exclusively. Last year, Patitucci, Danilo Perez and Brian Blade released their first recording, Children of the Light, which is also the name of their new trio.
Patitucci mentors and teaches young musicians to help further and sustain the art of jazz and bass playing around the world. For ten years, he was professor of jazz studies at City College of New York. He has also been involved with the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program in Washington, DC and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Patitucci is a frequent clinician and guest lecturer at schools around the world and a regular featured performer at the International Society of Bassists conventions. In 2010, Patitucci began his involvement with the Berklee College of Music’s Global Jazz Institute, spearheaded by pianist Danilo Perez. Patitucci resides in New York with his wife Sachi, a cellist, and their two daughters.
Eliot Fisk
eliotfisk.com
Guitarist Eliot Fisk is known worldwide as a charismatic performer famed for his adventurous and virtuosic repertoire. He is also celebrated for taking music into unusual venues (schools, senior centers, logging camps, and prisons). His mentor Andres Segovia once wrote that Fisk is “at the top line of our artistic world.”
In the 2016–17 season Fisk continues to break new ground for the guitar with marathon performances of his transcriptions of all six Bach solo cello suites at the National Gallery in Washington DC. In 2016, he released the long awaited recording of Robert Beaser’s monumental Guitar Concerto with Jose Serebrier leading the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on LINN Records.
Fisk has performed as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Houston and Rochester Symphonies, Orchestra of St. Luke’s; Stuttgart Chamber, Pro Arte, and American Composers Orchestras; Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), and many other prominent orchestras around the world. He returns regularly to major concert series such as Stanford Live, Spivey Hall (Atlanta), Duke Performances, Newman Center for the Performing Arts (Denver), Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 92nd Street Y, the Da Camera Societies of Houston and Los Angeles, San Francisco Chamber Music Segovia Series at Pick Staiger Hall at Northwestern Unviersity, Jordan Hall (Boston), Orange County Performing Arts Center; Brahms, Mozart and Schubert Saal (Vienna), Mozarteum Grosser Saal (Salzburg); Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), and guitar festivals in Spain, Serbia, and Germany.
Chamber music colleagues Fisk has performed with include flutist Paula Robison, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, cellist Yehuda Hanani, the late violinist Ruggiero Ricci, and the Shanghai, Juilliard, Miro, Borromeo, and Miro String Quartets. He has invented numerous cross over projects with among others Paco Pena (flamenco guitar); Joe Pass and Bill Frisell (jazz guitar) chanteuse Ute Lemper and Turkish music specialist Burhan Oecal.
The repertoire of the classical guitar has been transformed through Fisk’s transcriptions, including works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Paganini, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Granados, Albeniz, and many others, and many new works have been dedicated to him by composers as varied as Luciano Berio, Leonardo Balada, Robert Beaser, Nicholas Maw, George Rochberg, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Kurt Schwertsik.
A prolific recording artist, Fisk’s recent releases include Ralf Gawlick’s Kollwitz Konnex for soprano and guitar, Anthony Paul de Ritis’s Pop Concerto with Gil Rose leading the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, a pair of CDs of new music dedicated to and transcribed by Fisk, including works by Beaser, Corigliano, Schwertsik, and Rochberg; and duo discs with flamenco legend Paco Pena and cellist Yehuda Hanani.
Eliot Fisk was the last direct pupil of Andres Segovia, and he studied interpretation with the legendary harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale University. Directly following his own graduation, he founded the guitar department at the Yale School of Music. Currently he is professor at the Universitaet Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and at the New England Conservatory in Boston.
In June 2006, King Juan Carlos of Spain awarded Fisk the Cruz de Isabel la Catolica for his service to the cause of Spanish music. Fisk is founder and artistic director of Boston GuitarFest, an annual cross-disciplinary event co- sponsored by the New England Conservatory and Northeastern University. In summer of 2014 he toured China performing with his wife, classical guitarist Zaira Meneses, and the couple’s young daughter, pianist Raquel Fisk.
