Bio:
In the early 1980s Barlow moved to New York, where he was a member of two groups, the Cedar Walton Quartet and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, two of the greatest training grounds for musicians in jazz history.
Barlow has also toured and recorded with many other jazz greats including Sonny Stitt, Chet Baker, Gil Evans, Jackie McLean, Billy Cobham, Dizzy Gillespie, Curtis Fuller, Eddie Palmieri, Benny Golson, Lee Konitz, Helen Merrill, Mulgrew Miller, Kenny Barron, Ray Drummond, Dave Kikowski, Richie Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Higgins, Freddie Hubbard and Wynton Marsalis, Cindy Blackman, Ernie Watts, Eddie Henderson, Jeff Watts, Essiet Essiet, Bennie Green and Mike Nock. He played with the Gil Evans’ Big Band, and was a member of the Billy Cobham band for 3 years.
Dale also was a part of the English Jazz scene for some years where he performed at Ronnie Scotts many times as a part of Ronnies’ band, as well as his own units, and was a composer and member of the original ‘Loose Tubes Big Band’. He was in Stan Traceys’ Group, Gordon Becks’ Quintet, and performed with Kenny Wheeler and Django Bates. He recorded and performed with numerous pop artists while in England including- Wham, Style Council, Sting, Ian Dury.
In Australia and SEAsia he has performed with many artists and groups, including Keys Music Association, The Benders, Bruce Cale, Roger Frampton, Vince Jones, Margaret Urlich, Kate Ceberano, Indra Lesmana, and Dwiki Dharmawan. Dale’s group ‘The Wizards of Oz’ with Paul Grabowsky, Lloyd Swanton and Tony Buck, was the first Australian group to undertake a major 2 continent tour (USA/Canada/Europe) with assistance from the Australia Council for the Arts.
Dale was chosen to represent Australia at International Jazz Day 2013 in Istanbul alongside Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper, Ben Williams, Terri Lyne Carrington, Terence Blanchard, Herbie Hancock and others.
Barlow briefly studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in the late 1970s. After moving to New York, he studied saxophone with George Coleman and Dave Liebman, piano with Barry Harris, and Hal Galper, and won a BMI scholarship to study at the “Jazz composers workshop” with Bob Brookmeyer and Manny Album. Dale has a Masters of Music degree originally begun at City College New York under Ron Carter and completed at ANU Canberra. He has received numerous awards and accolades including: 3 ARIA Awards, Album of the Year/ Jazz performer of the year/ International Artist of the Year/ Bicentennial Artist of the Year, four Mo Awards and numerous grants and credits for his achievements and contribution to the arts In Australia.
Dale loves being part of the world jazz community and hosts his own bands featuring his original music in the spirit of the now and oneness with all things.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). 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 MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).