Mark Turner in a Matrix of Fabulous Discoveries

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"Just as Mark Turner and billions of fellow human beings are by virtue of the small-world phenomenon positioned within 6 or fewer degrees of each other ... musicians, writers, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, quiltmakers, multimedia artists et al in a system of interlinked recommendations are likewise positioned — by the identical phenomenon — within a handful of transitable steps of each other — and by extrapolation — within discoverable, accessible reach of just about everybody everywhere here on planet earth. Algorithms not necessary."
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CURATIONS & PROVENANCE

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ARTIST/CREATOR/EDUCATOR

Name: Mark Turner
City/Place: New York City
Country: United States

Life & Work

Bio: Born in 1965 in Ohio and raised in Southern California, I grew up surrounded by music. There was always a lot of R&B and jazz and soul and gospel going on in the house all the time, he recalls. This was in the early 70s, when the whole integration and civil rights thing had begun to go mainstream, and my mother and stepfather were in the first wave of young black professionals and intellectuals who moved to upper-middle-class white neighborhoods. They and their friends were always going out to see live jazz. I was intrigued by that, and I was intrigued by the whole history of jazz music and African-American culture, as well as the music itself. And my father, who died when I was one and a half, had played saxophone, so maybe I was looking for a connection with him too.

After starting out on clarinet in elementary school, I gravitated towards saxophone in high school, while also exploring my talent for the visual arts. Although I briefly studied design and illustration at Long Beach State University, my passion for jazz ultimately led me to pursue a career in music. I studied and dissected the work of such saxophone giants as John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Warne Marsh and Lester Young in the pursuit of my own musical voice.

I really got into it and worked really hard, just trying to figure out who I am. That's how I am with everything. It took a while, and it was kind of an arduous struggle, but it allowed me to figure out what I wanted from music. Even when I was spending my time sounding like other people, I felt like that was part of my path to sounding like myself. The more you spend time with the form and the language, the more your own personality comes out.

After graduating from Bostons prestigious Berklee College of Music in 1990, I moved to New York. Between 1995 and 2001 I recorded five albums of my own—Yam Yam, Mark Turner, In This World, Ballad Session and Dharma Days—while keeping busy as a collaborator and sideman.

It was around 1992 that I began to notice or feel that what I was doing was uniquely mine. It had been two and a half years of struggle, but the summer of 1992 was the period where I was finally able to hear it. Maybe no one else would notice, but that's where I could see how things were gonna go.

Contact Information

Email: winwin@me.com
Telephone: 212.212.8888

Media & Markets

▶ Twitter: markturnerjazz
▶ Website: http://markturnerjazz.com
▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCUYt6CfKaqoa9lYI-Mvw2hA
▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/6ymLizMskVol73exzqzOBQ
▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/4rP5qYtTUgaqLHNUJmvNIk
▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/2EZmzJgxlf21SPRymPeQ2H
▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/6kH8QpNHYkUXZlqU2787NB

Quotes, Notes & Etc. A few months ago I had an experience that starkly demonstrated how important Mr. Turner is among younger musicians. While reporting on the Thelonious Monk Institute saxophone competition in Washington an annual contest that has become something like the Van Cliburn competition of jazz I heard 15 young players. As expected, most of them drew much of their sound from one source: John Coltrane. There was no mistaking that gruff, keening tone, those scale-based patterns. But to my surprise, the second most prevalent sound among the 15 was very different. It was lighter, more evenly produced from the bottom to the very top of the horn, in long, chromatic strokes. At first I thought it was the sound of Warne Marsh. But there was no reason to think that Marsh, who died in 1987 and was always a minority taste, had suddenly become au courant. Then I realized that it was the sound of Mark Turner.
– Ben Ratliff, the New York Times

I think Mark Turner is one of the most important players that has come along in the last 20 years, easily the most influential. He never seems to have any doubt about what hes doing.
– Ravi Coltrane (from his Before & After listening session, Jazz Times)

His music is the freshest thing around. I want to write like that. Its out music that still sounds very musical and consonant.
– Luciana Souza, singer and composer

I went and practiced with him once. He showed me these music books of things he writes out; just in one book of 36 pages he had tons of different chords and exercises. Because of the purity of his approach, he influences a lot of different people in that way either like me, who does freer stuff, or someone else, who does straight-ahead music: it doesnt matter.
– Bill McHenry, Musician