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| Alex Heitlinger & Art Lande in Denver Creative Music Works and The Coalition For Creative Music present a unique evening of improvisational dialog with Alex Heitlinger and Art Lande in Denver, February, 17. Alex Heitlinger was born in Minneapolis in 1980 and started playing the trombone at age 11 at the encouragement of his mother, a music teacher. He received a full scholarship to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder and received a BM in trombone performance in 2002 and was the first jazz player to receive the prestigious Fiske Performance award from the CU brass department. Heitlinger has also received awards from Down Beat in 2002 for outstanding performances with the university's jazz combo and big band and co-founded and helped run the Coalition for Creative Music, a Boulder-based non profit arts organization. From 1998 until the spring of 2004 -- when he moved to Jersey City, NJ, to be closer to and participate in the vibrant New York City jazz scene and concentrate on his composing -- Heitlinger performed in the Boulder-Denver area in ensembles ranging from big bands, symphony orchestras and brass, salsa and Dixieland bands to Latin jazz, funk, free jazz and afro-pop groups. He cites his trombone studies with Bill Stanley and lessons in improvisation and composition with pianist-composer Art Lande as major influences on his creative development. Local Denver/Boulder guitarist Janet Feder is a guitarist of remarkable scope and depth. Janet's unique style is characterized by her preparation of the guitar using metal and other various objects on the strings. She is able to manipulate a combination of normally pitched strings with 'prepared' ones in her compositions. In this manner, she can create an entire orchestral palette of timbres and articulations; thus, transforming the instrument into an acoustic 'synthesizer' of unfamiliar yet captivating colors and percussive effects. An adventurous and subtle improviser who has established himself as a creative voice in jazz as a pianist, drummer, composer, arranger and educator, Art Lande was born in 1947 in New York City and studied classical piano there under Joseph Kahn. He attended Williams College before moving to San Francisco in 1969 and during the early 1970s played electric piano in a jazz quintet with Steve Swallow. In 1973 Lande recorded in a duo with Jan Garbarek and with the Ted Curson's septet and in 1976 he formed Rubisa Patrol, a quartet that regularly visited Europe and made its recording debut that year on ECM Records. He left Rubisa Patrol in 1983 to teach for three years at a jazz school in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and in 1987 moved to Boulder, CO, where he still resides, to teach at the Naropa Institute. Lande, whose work as a pianist considerably advanced the harmonic innovations pioneered by Bill Evans, has worked with Chet Baker, Woody Shaw, Kenny Wheeler, Gary Peacock, Ernie Watts, Charlie Haden, Eddie Harris, Joe Henderson, Sheila Jordan, Mark Isham and Paul McCandless among others and over the years has mentored emerging improvisers and composers in the Denver-Boulder area, North America and abroad. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Jazz News :: home page |