CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
Network Node
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Name:
Greg Yasinitsky
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City/Place:
Pullman, Washington
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
San Francisco, California
Current News
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What's Up?
I am busy writing, performing and recording.
Life & Work
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Bio:
Greg Yasinitsky, composer and saxophonist, is winner of the American Prize for Composition, and is a recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Commission Project, Artist Trust and ASCAP.
He served as the composer and conductor of the JEN All Stars Big Band, which included some of the most acclaimed musicians in the world, and has written music especially for David Sanborn, Sean Jones, Clark Terry, Jeff Coffin, Dave Liebman and the USAF "Airmen of Note" big band. Yasinitsky has hundreds of published musical works which are performed in over 40 countries world-wide, and his compositions and saxophone playing are featured on over 50 recordings.
Yasinitsky has performed with Randy Brecker, Marcus Printup, Tom Harrell, Ed Calle, Alex Acuna, Kirk Whalum, Claudio Roditi, Conrad Herwig, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Louis Bellson, Stan Getz, Lionel Hampton, Lou Rawls, Manhattan Transfer, and many others.
Yasinitsky is a member of the Washington State Music Educators Hall of Fame and is a Regents Professor Emeritus at Washington State University, where he taught jazz studies, saxophone and composition for 40 years, received the WSU Eminent Faculty Award, the Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Research, Scholarship and Arts, and the Distinguished Faculty Award from the College of Arts and Sciences. Yasinitsky is a Yamaha performing artist and a JodyJazz Artist.
My Recordings
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Discography:
Greg Yasinitsky. On the Air. Recorded by the Inland Northwest Recording Orchestra, directed by Yasinitsky, YAZZ Recordings release to streaming and download sites 2023
Washington State University Jazz Big Band directed by Greg Yasinitsky. Gotta Have Soul. YAZZ Recordings EP release to streaming and download sites, includes recordings of Yasinitsky big band compositions and arrangements 2023
Washington State University Jazz Big Band directed by Greg Yasinitsky. Jazz During Lockdown. WSU Recordings compact disc, includes Yasinitsky big band compositions 2022
Greg Yasinitsky’s YAZZ Band. It’s Santa! Digital release of two versions: for big band with solo vocal (with Horace Alexander Young) and for big band with vocal jazz ensemble (JECCA Vocal Jazz Ensemble, Kathleen Hollingsworth, Director). YAZZ Recordings 2022
Greg Yasinitsky. YAZZ Band: New Normal, Origin Records compact disc, includes Yasinitsky saxophone performances and compositions, supported by a WSU Center for Arts and Humanities Fellowship Grant 2021
Greg Yasinitsky. Jazz Concerto: Version for Piano and Wind Ensemble, YAZZ Recordings EP, featuring pianist Willis Delony with the Louisiana State University Wind Ensemble, Damon S. Talley, conductor. 2021
Greg Yasinitsky. String Theory, YAZZ Recordings EP, includes Yasinitsky saxophone performances and compositions for jazz saxophone and string quartet 2020
Vanessa Sielert and Catherine Anderson. Duality. Albany Recordings CD, includes Yasinitsky composition for alto saxophone and piano Heartfelt and Diabolical 2020
Greg Yasinitsky and Teo Ciavarella. Mediterranean Connection. YAZZ Recordings CD, includes Yasinitsky saxophone performances and compositions Laura’s Bossa Nova, Snagglepuss and Partial Eclipse 2018
Greg Yasinitsky. YAZZ Band. YAZZ Recordings CD, includes Yasinitsky saxophone performances and big band compositions Serpentine, New York Confidential, True North, Sideways, Full Blown, Gator Tail, Partial Eclipse, Missing You and One-Two-Three 2018
Jeffrey Jacob. Contemporary Eclectic Music for the Piano. Ariel Recordings, includes Yasinitsky composition Struck by Lightning 2017
Greg Yasinitsky. Gator Tail. YAZZ Recordings CD, produced by Greg Yasinitsky, includes Yasinitsky saxophone performances and compositions Off the Grid, Gator Tail, New Rhumboogie and McCall 2016
WSU Jazz Big Band. Singular Vision. WSU Recordings CD, produced by Greg Yasinitsky, features Yasinitsky compositions Park City Express, Missing You, The Real Deal, One-Two-Three, Serpentine, Sideways and Singular Vision 2016
Eminent Domain Music. American History. Robert Neuenschwander CD, includes Yasinitsky saxophone performances 2016
David Hernando Vitores. Sixth Sense, CD recording by the Spanish saxophonist, includes Yasinitsky composition Sixth Sense 2014
Nighthawk. Nighthawk. WSU Recordings CD, produced by Greg Yasinitsky, features Yasinitsky saxophone performances and compositions 2014
Delbert Bump-Greg Yasinitsky Organ Quintet, ‘Round the Korner, features Yasinitsky compositions Big Time and Atomic Clock and saxophone performances 2014
Gerald Berthiaume. Struck by Lightning. WSU Recordings CD, features Yasinitsky composition Struck by Lightning 2014
Gregory Yasinitsky with Nighthawk. Masterclass: How to Play in a Pianoless Jazz Group. Saxophone Journal magazine Compact Disc, March/April, Vol 37, No 4, includes Yasinitsky compositions Nighthawk, By Chance, Extra Slick and Hangtown Fry, and Yasinitsky saxophone performances 2013
WSU Jazz Big Band. Zoot Suit. WSU Recordings CD, produced and directed by Greg Yasinitsky, includes Yasinitsky compositions and arrangements 2012
Marco Bittelli. Alba. Pacific Coast Jazz CD, features Yasinitsky saxophone performances 2012
Gregory Yasinitsky. The Music of Gregory W. Yasinitsky. Advance Music of Germany CD, includes Yasinitsky compositions New Wave, Four Short Pieces, Nocturne and Steam Train, Saxophone Quartet, Wooden Miniatures, Three Canonic Duets, For All That Has Been Given, Jazz Suite and Deep Phat and Yasinitsky saxophone performances 2011
Gregory Yasinitsky. Yasinitsky Plays Yasinitsky. YAZZ Recordings CD, includes Yasinitsky performances of Yasinitsky saxophone compositions 2011
Seattle Jazz Singers. Thought About You. SMP CD, includes Yasinitsky arrangement of "This Can't Be Love" 2011
Free Range Saxophone Quartet. Fireflies. Origin Classical CD OC 33011, includes Yasinitsky Saxophone Quartet and Yasinitsky saxophone performances 2011
Cory Barnfield. Journey. NCU Dynamic CD, includes Yasinitsky composition Sixth Sense 2011
ÖGZM Orchestra (Vienna) and the London Symphony. Music From Six Continents: 2010 Series. Vienna Modern Masters Compact Disc, VMM 3061, includes Yasinitsky Concertino for Flute and Orchestra and Magic (both with Ann Marie Yasinitsky as flute soloist) 2010
WSU Jazz Big Band. Kinda Fabulous. WSU Jazz Studies CD, produced and directed by Greg Yasinitsky, includes Yasinitsky compositions and arrangements 2008
WSU Jazz Big Band. Setting Standards. WSU Jazz Studies CD, produced and directed by Greg Yasinitsky, includes Yasinitsky compositions and arrangements 2006
Jazz Northwest. Jazz Northwest: With Tracks Recorded Live at Tula's. WSU Jazz Studies CD, produced by Greg Yasinitsky and features Yasinitsky compositions, arrangements and saxophone performances 2006
Greg Yasinitsky. Greg Yasinitsky. Yazz Recordings CD, produced by Greg Yasinitsky, includes Yasinitsky compositions, arrangements and saxophone performances. 2006
Crosscurrent. Alone Together. Yazz Recordings CD, produced by Greg Yasinitsky, includes Yasinitsky compositions, arrangements and saxophone performances. 2006
Gregory Yasinitsky. Masterclass: Double Edge. Saxophone Journal magazine Compact Disc, July/August, Vol 29, No 6 2005
Gregory Yasinitsky. Masterclass: Sixth Sense. Saxophone Journal magazine Compact Disc. Nov/Dec, Vol 19, No 2 2004
Spokane Jazz Orchestra. It's About Time. Spokane Jazz Orchestra Compact Disc 2004
Washington State University Jazz Big Band 2003-2004, Directed and Produced by Greg Yasinitsky, WSU Compact Disc 2004
USAF Band of the Golden West. First Flight. USAF CD 2003
Washington State University Jazz Big Band 2003, Directed by Greg Yasinitsky, WSU Compact Disc 2003
Temple Jazz Orchestra. Soft Lights, Sweet Music, LIVE!, Temple College CD 2001
Brent Jensen and others. Trios. mp3.com CD 34671 2000
Bill Aron. Solo Alto Saxophone. Creative Instrumentation CD 2000.3 2000
Eugene Rousseau and others. America's Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax, Volume II. Arizona University Recordings AUR CD 3068 1999
Greg Banaszak and others. Saxophone Journal CD. Saxophone Journal magazine Compact Disc, March/April; Vol 24, No. 4 1999
Jean-Marie Londeix and others. America's Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax, Volume I. Arizona University Recordings AUR CD 3063 1998
WSU Jazz Ensembles. Inside Track: Jazz @ WSU. WSU Jazz Records Compact Disc #3001 1997
Ann Marie Yasinitsky. Intuition. Yazz Recordings Compact Disc YAZZ #2001 1997
Gregory Yasinitsky. Masterclass: Jazz Duets. Saxophone Journal magazine Compact Disc, May/June; Vol. 20, No. 6 1996
Whitworth College Jazz Band. Cats in Rome. Yazz Recordings Whitworth College Compact Disc 1996
Crosscurrent. Overdue. Yazz Recordings Compact Disc YAZZ #1001 1995
Crosscurrent. Sittin’ In With Greg Yasinitsky and Crosscurrent. JazzPlayer magazine Compact Disc, February/March; Vol. 2, No. 2 1995
Greg Banaszak. Double Vision. Open Loop Records Compact Disc 017 1995
Gregory Yasinitsky and others. Music in Mixed Accents. Vienna Modern Masters Compact Disc VMM 2012 1995
University of New Hampshire Jazz Band and Jazz Singers with Clark Terry. Monk and Then Some. UNH Compact Disc QT 10273 1994
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. Music From Six Continents: 1993 Series. Vienna Modern Masters Compact Disc VMM 3017 1993
Steven Mauk. Distances Within Me. Open Loop Compact Disc 012 1992
University of New Hampshire Jazz Band. Just Passin’ on the Language. UNH Compact Disc QT10272 1992
WSU Jazz Big Band. Blackhawk. WSU Jazz Tapes #4 1992
DeAnza Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Singers. Jazz at DeAnza 1990-1991. DJS90917 1991
Greeley Central High School (winners, 1990 Disneyworld Jazz Festival). Jazz Conceptions, Disneyworld Compact Disc DIDX 008031 1990
WSU Jazz Big Band. I Mean You. WSU Jazz Tapes #3 1990
Lou Fischer’s Rocky Mountain Big Band. Zoot Suit. Mark MJS-57638 1989
Paul Nash. Night Language. Musical Heritage Society 912079K 1987
WSU Jazz Big Band. Back From the Tropics. WSU Jazz Tapes #2 1987
Gregory Yasinitsky. Song for Laura. YAZZ Recordings #101—funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts 1986
WSU Jazz Big Band. Makin’ Tracks. WSU Jazz Tapes #1 1986
Paul Nash. Second Impression. Soul Note SN 1107 1985
Soundsation Jazz Choir. Soundsation ’85. Soundsation Albums IX 1985
University of Miami Concert Jazz Band with David Liebman. Picadilly Lilly. AR 8630 1984
Various Artists including Elvin Jones, Richie Cole, Art Pepper, Joe Henderson and the Full Faith and Credit Jazz Band. Mistletoe Magic: Holiday Jazz Improvisations. Palo Alto Jazz Records PA 8032 1982
Nash, Paul. A Jazz Composers Ensemble. Revelation 32 1979
We use the mathematics of the small world phenomenon to transform the creative universe into a creative village wherein all are connected by short pathways to all... (Wolfram explains how above)
This Integrated Global Creative Economy uncoils from a sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix...
Great culture is great power.
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
Our Matrix was conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Hence A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until...
And hence a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found us (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.comAcross the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Wolfram MathWorld
Ex Terra Brasilis
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Roberto Mendes
Luciano Calazans
Gustavo Caribé
J Velloso
Lázaro Ramos
Fernando Guerreiro
Maria Marighella
Russell Okung
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
RÁDIO MATRIX