Bio:
A native of Connecticut, Greene is considered one of the most respected saxophonists of his generation. His previous solo releases, Flowers: Beautiful Life Vol. 2 (Mack Avenue), the GRAMMY®-nominated Beautiful Life (Mack Avenue), Live at Smalls (SmallsLive), Mission Statement (RazDaz/Sunnyside), The Overcomers Suite (NuJazz), Gifts and Givers (Criss Cross), True Life Stories (Criss Cross), Forever (Criss Cross), Brand New World (RCA Victor) and Introducing Jimmy Greene (Criss Cross) have been met with much critical acclaim. In fact, Tony Hall of Jazzwise Magazine (UK) calls Greene “ . . . . without doubt one of the most striking young tenors of recent years.”
Greene and his groups perform regularly in jazz venues, festivals and clubs worldwide, including Jazz Standard (New York), Newport Jazz Festival (Rhode Island), Detroit Jazz Festival (Michigan), TD Winnipeg International Jazz Festival (Canada), Le Club (Moscow), Casa del Jazz (Rome), Sunside Jazz Club (Paris), Red Sea Jazz Festival (Israel), Lapataia Jazz Festival (Uruguay) and Amazonas Jazz Festival (Brazil). In one such appearance, Jim Macnie of the Village Voice said,"[Greene] is good for a couple of body chills every time you see him. He's got a big barrelhouse sound, and a way of negotiating changes that make academic moves seem natural." Greene's television performances in support of his recordings have included spots on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC-TV), CBS This Morning and The Meredith Vieira Show (Nationally Syndicated). Greene has also performed and presented in churches, faith-based conferences, mental health conferences and arts symposiums throughout the United States and Canada.
In addition to his recordings and appearances as a leader, Greene appears on over 75 albums as a sideman, and has toured and/or recorded with Horace Silver, Ron Carter, Tom Harrell, Freddie Hubbard, Harry Connick, Jr., Avishai Cohen, Kenny Barron, Lewis Nash, Dee Dee Bridgewater, the New Jazz Composers Octet and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, among many others.
Greene was awarded the prestigious Benny Golson Jazz Master Award at Howard University, the ASCAP / IAJE Commission in Jazz Composition in honor of Ornette Coleman, the State of Connecticut Governor's Arts Award in Music, as well as the City of Hartford's Innovator Award in Music. Greene was named a Winner of Chamber Music America's New Works: Creation and Presentation grant for jazz composition, awarded an Artist Fellowship in Music Composition by the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, and awarded an Individual Artist Grant by the Greater Hartford Arts Council. Sixty of Greene's original compositions have been recorded on the Mack Avenue, RCA Victor, SmallsLive, Criss Cross, NuJazz and RazDaz / Sunnyside labels. In addition, Greene's performance of his composition "Mr. McLean" was aired throughout the US and Canada on ABC-TV during a NASCAR pre-race broadcast in September 2007.
Greene is Associate Professor of Music and Co-Coordinator of Jazz Studies at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT. Previously, he served as Assistant Professor of Jazz Saxophone at the University of Manitoba, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Purchase College (State University of New York), as Lecturer at the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School (University of Hartford) and as an Instructor at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. Greene has given clinics and masterclasses throughout the United States, Canada, Brazil, Israel and Russia. Two of his former students were named semi-finalists in the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition and 18 student musicians and small ensembles under Greene's direction won DownBeat Magazine Student Music Awards.
Jimmy was named First Runner-Up in the 1996 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, and was named one of the "25 Young Rising Stars in Jazz" by DownBeat Magazine in 1999. Greene earned a doctorate in music from the Manhattan School of Music and was presented the Helen Cohn Award at MSM for his outstanding doctoral work. Greene holds a M.Mus in Music Education from Boston University and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.Mus in Jazz Studies from the Hartt School. Greene attended Bloomfield (CT) Public Schools and studied music at The Artists Collective and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts as a youth. His mentors over the years have included Jackie McLean, Jim McNeely, Justin DiCioccio, David Liebman, Phil Markowitz, Garry Dial, Dave Santoro, Kris Jensen, Steve Davis, Ken Radnofsky and Janet Arms.
Jimmy Greene is a clinician for Borgani Saxophones and Vandoren Mouthpieces, Reeds and Ligatures and uses their products exclusively.
The canopy rises from Bahia to encircle the planet, but but the roots of the Matrix go back decades to Kingston, Jamaica...
I'm Sparrow. I used the contract above, Bob Marley's first (co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21, and this is a copy I made of Clement Dodd's original) to retrieve unpaid royalties from CBS Records. I retrieved money for Aretha Franklin, Gilberto Gil, Led Zeppelin, Barbra Streisand, Mongo Santamaria and many others. But what if Bob hadn't got out of Kingston, or Aretha out of Chicago? They would have been just as great but there would have been no way for the wider world to know. The world brims with brilliant artists without reach, including writers, filmmakers, painters... So in the Matrix, everybody can potentially be experienced from everywhere in the world. And the famous? Very few people (Bob and Michael Jackson aside) are famous everywhere, plus the famous like to recommend (connect to) too. The pathways are open. As they say in Bahia, "Laroyê!"
Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix. — Susan Rogers (Susan was personal recording engineer for Prince; she recorded "Purple Rain", "Around the World in a Day", "Parade", and "Sign o' the Times" and she is now director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory)
Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched! — Julian Lloyd Webber (Julian is the most highly renowned cellist in the United Kingdom; he is brother of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats...)
This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :))) — Clarice Assad (Clarice is a pianist and composer, with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world)
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made (samba and its precursor chula, per the Saturno Brothers below) evolved...
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — the hand drum in the opening scene above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
SPARROW/PARDAL ROBERTS
SUSAN ROGERS
JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER
CLARICE ASSAD
ALICIA SVIGALS
KAMASI WASHINGTON