SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2017
VOLUME FOUR NUMBER ONE
JILL SCOTT
DAVID MURRAY
(February 25--March 3)
OLIVER LAKE
(March 4–10)
GERALD WILSON
(March 11-17)
DON BYRON
(March 18-24)
KENNY GARRETT
(March 25-31)
COLEMAN HAWKINS
(April 1-7)
ELMORE JAMES
(April 8-14)
WES MONTGOMERY
(April 15-21)
FELA KUTI
(April 22-28)
OLIVER NELSON
(April 29-May 5)
SON HOUSE
(May 6-12)
JOHN LEE HOOKER
(May 13-19)
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/donbyron
Don Byron
For well over a decade, Don Byron has been a singular voice in an astounding range of musical contexts, exploring widely divergent traditions while continually striving for what he calls “a sound above genre.” As clarinetist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and social critic, he redefines every genre of music he plays, be it classical, salsa, hip-hop, funk, rhythm & blues, klezmer, or any jazz style from swing and bop to cutting-edge downtown improvisation. He has been consistently voted best clarinetist by critics and readers alike in leading international music journals since being named “Jazz Artist of the Year” by Down Beat in 1992. Acclaimed as much for his restless creativity as for his unsurpassed virtuosity as a player, Byron has presented a multitude of projects at major music festivals around the world, including recent performances in Vienna, San Francisco, Hong Kong, London, Monterey, New Zealand, and on New York's Broadway.
BEGINNINGS: Born and raised in the Bronx, Byron was exposed to a wide variety of music by his father, who played bass in calypso bands, and his mother, a pianist. His taste was further refined by trips to the symphony and ballet and by many hours spent listening to Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Machito recordings. He formalized his music education by studying classical clarinet with Joe Allard while playing and arranging salsa numbers for high school bands on the side. He later studied with George Russell in the Third Stream Department of the New England Conservatory of Music and, while in Boston, also performed with Latin and jazz ensembles.
COLLABORATIONS: His artistic collaborations include performances and recordings with Mario Bauza, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Hicks, Tom Cora, Bill Frisell, Vernon Reid, Marc Ribot, Cassandra Wilson, Hamiet Bluiett, Anthony Braxton, Geri Allen, Hal Willner, Marilyn Crispell, Reggie Workman, Craig Harris, David Murray, Leroy Jenkins, Bobby Previte, Gerry Hemingway, DD Jackson, Douglas Ewart, Brandon Ross, Ed Neumeister, Tom Pierson, Steve Coleman, Living Colour, Ralph Peterson, Uri Caine, Mandy Patinkin, Steve Lacy, the Kansas City All-Stars, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Medeski Martin & Wood, Angelique Kidjo, Carole King, Daniel Barenboim, Salif Keita, the Atlanta Symphony, Klangforum Wien, Joe Henry, Paul Auster, Meshell Ndegeocello, and many others.
PROJECTS: An integral member of New York's cultural community for almost two decades, Byron has taken part in an extraordinarily wide range of projects. From 1996-99, he served as Artistic Director of Jazz at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where he curated a concert series for the Next Wave Festival and premiered his children's show, Bug Music for Juniors (formerly Tunes and 'Toons). From 2000-05, he was Artist-in-Residence at New York's Symphony Space, where he established is Adventurers Orchestra through another concert series titled Contrasting Brilliance, featuring his takes on music as diverse as Henry Mancini, Sly Stone, the pioneering hip-hop label Sugar Hill Records, Igor Stravinsky, Raymond Scott, Herb Alpert and Earth, Wind and Fire.
Other projects include arrangements of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musicals; There Goes the Neighborhood, a piece commissioned and performed by the Kronos Quartet; and original scores for the silent film Scar of Shame and a 1961 television episode by comedy pioneer Ernie Kovacs. He wrote and performed music for the dance companies of Donald Byrd, Bebe Miller, Mark Dendy, and Ellen Sinopoli, and was featured in Robert Altman's movie Kansas City and the Paul Auster film Lulu on the Bridge. He also composed and recorded the score for Joel Katz's film Strange Fruit, a documentary about the 1930s protest song made famous by Billie Holiday. Composing commissions include “Spin”, a duet for violin and piano premiered at the Library of Congress; “Red”, a big band suite premiered at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 2002, and a new string quartet piece for Ethel.
RECORDINGS: Don Byron has released a diverse array of recordings. Since his ground-breaking debut album, Tuskegee Experiments (Nonesuch, 1992), he has recorded prolifically: Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz (Nonesuch, 1993), a tribute to the sly and bitingly humorous works of the neglected 1950's klezmer band leader; Music for Six Musicians (Nonesuch, 1995) which explores a significant side of his musical identity, the Afro-Caribbean heritage of his family and the neighborhood where he grew up; No-Vibe Zone (Knitting Factory Works, 1996), a vibrant live recording featuring his quintet; and Bug Music (Nonesuch,1996), his spirited showcase of the nascent Swing Era music of Raymond Scott, John Kirby and the young Duke Ellington.
His 1998 Blue Note debut, Nu Blaxploitation, is a funk and hip-hop inspired and “genre-bending” musical meditation with his band Existential Dred, with poet Sadiq and rap icon Biz Markie in performances reminiscent of the spoken-word pieces of Gil Scott-Heron, Amiri Baraka and Henry Rollins; Romance With The Unseen (1999), features a quartet consisting of guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Jack DeJohnette playing a wide-ranging repertory, from obscure Ellington (”A Mural from Two Perspectives”) to popular Beatles (”I'll Follow the Sun”) to Byron originals loaded with socio-political commentary (”Bernhard Goetz, James Ramseur and Me”, a reference to the notorious 1984 New York City subway shooting).
With 2000's A Fine Line: Arias & Lieder, Byron continued to blur stylistic borders by exploring and expanding the definition of the modern art song from Robert Schumann and Giacomo Puccini to Roy Orbison and Stevie Wonder. His 2001 release, You Are #6, once again finds him in the company of his longest-standing group, Music for Six Musicians, paying tribute to the Latin and Afro-Caribbean rhythms at his musical roots. His latest Blue Note release, Ivey-Divey, inspired by Lester Young's classic trio recording with Nat King Cole and Buddy Rich, features pianist Jason Moran and Jack DeJohnette and is also his recording debut on tenor saxophone. Ivey-Divey received a Grammy nomination for best instrumental solo and was voted Album of the Year 2004 by Jazz Times Magazine.
Byron's newest CD releases are A Ballad for Many, an album of his compositions performed by the Bang On A Can All-Stars (Cantaloupe Music) and Do the Boomerang, his interpretations of the music of saxophonist, singer, and soul/R&B legend Junior Walker (Blue Note, October 2006).
Don Byron is also an experienced and gifted teacher, who has led residencies at the University of California San Diego, the University of Nevada Reno, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Columbia University. He is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at The State University of New York (Albany) where he teaches theory, saxophone, improvisation, and composition.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/don-byron-thinking-and-rethinking-don-byron-by-riel-lazarus.php
Don Byron: Thinking and Rethinking
by RIEL LAZARUS
July 25, 2006
AllAboutJazz
"What distinguishes him from a lot of other artists and musicians is this insatiable curiosity in exploring. In that way, he's almost like a scientist."
—Hans Wendl
Don Byron
Few musicians can lay claim to tackling the wild mix of music Don Byron has. No matter how hard critics and audiences try to corner him, the clarinetist and composer succeeds in slipping their grips, in search of new ground to break. And yet as predictably unpredictable as Byron has been, his approach to music remains constant: one of diligence, determination and unquenchable curiosity. "My intent isn't to shake people, he says. "What I'm trying to do is be good at things and figure out how to do them where I've rethought something about the music.
From modern jazz to klezmer to swing, Latin, hip hop, classical and soon soul, Byron somehow manages to find room for his own voice through it all. And the deeper one penetrates his music, the less surprising the achievement becomes. After all, only an artist with a firm sense of self would ever be so bold as to cover such vast terrain.
Even as he first broke onto the scene, Byron appeared determined to challenge assumptions. His debut album, Tuskegee Experiments (Elektra/Nonesuch, 1992), saw the clarinetist carve his way through a range of solo, duo and ensemble numbers. Not only were listeners alerted to the arrival of an inventive new composer (all but two of the album's tracks were originals), but Byron's playing hinted at a new dawn for jazz clarinet. No longer was it largely an instrument of Swing-era sentimentality, nor was it destined to remain obscured by the hard shadows of the classical repertory. Instead, he drew it squarely into the field of modern jazz.
A year later for his second release, Byron chose to dish out the first of his many blindsides—Plays the Music of Mickey Katz (Elektra/Nonesuch, 1993), dedicated to klezmer's flamboyant and ambitious "King of Schving. Although the record made waves in both jazz and klezmer circles, it wasn't entirely unexpected, as Byron had helped spark the music's revival some years before with his involvement in Hankus Netsky's Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Despite his success at invoking Katz's spirit and energy, the outing also introduced him to one of the main challenges befalling the uniquely inclined. "I had a hard time finding musicians who would take that music seriously, he recalls. "Now, playing weird Jewish music is an industry, but at the time it was difficult to get people to be serious about something that wasn't jazz or high-paid classical music. Byron has since developed a keen sense for the kind of sidemen he wants to engage with. And while the nature of a project goes a long way in determining his needs, there are certain fundamental characteristics he is partial toward. "They have to have a real ability to interpret things. I think a lot of jazz musicians are more about playing and less about that. And I tend to need people who can absorb notation in a pretty intense way.
Although most of his recordings give an appearance of ease, several have proven quite difficult in the doing. Bug Music (Nonesuch, 1996), for instance, required substantial planning and rehearsal. Billed as a tribute to the bands of John Kirby, Raymond Scott and Duke Ellington, the music here swings as tightly as it did back then, while contributing an appetite for modern arrangement and improvisation. Veteran drummer Billy Hart played on the John Kirby portion of the sessions and attests to the somewhat unexpected challenge of interpreting the music: "When I heard it was going to be music of the '30s, I just assumed it was going to be very simple, Hart remembers. "I had no idea it was going to take the amount of investigation it did.
As all of Byron's projects come from deeply personal interests, they often take on added complexities. Over years of attention and study, he explores the nature of a music, its mechanics and his own relationship to it. "I think I've been very thorough about what makes a style work, what the rules are, the harmonic scene is and how that plays in several other ways. I'm a composer, so every time I look at something, even if I didn't write it, it's about making it look the way it's supposed to look and then doing something unique with it.
Before his emergence as a leader, Byron studied classical and jazz clarinet at the New England Conservatory. He also paid dues in the bands of Mercer Ellington, David Murray, Hamiet Bluiett and Geri Allen, among others. Somewhere along the line, he developed a fluidity in his approach that, paired with a willingness to venture, has allowed him to move effectively through diverse musical settings. Hans Wendl, Byron's manager and longtime producer, has witnessed first hand the process by which he develops and executes his endeavors. "What distinguishes him from a lot of other artists and musicians is this insatiable curiosity in exploring. In that way, he's almost like a scientist. Wendl notes that this rigorousness is part of what has allowed Byron to be "capable of doing different projects, that on the surface appear to not have much in common. But there's always a thread that he finds. "
And that thread appears to be none other than Byron himself. On albums like Music for Six Musicians (Nonesuch, 1995) and Nu Blaxploitation (Blue Note, 1998), he delves into the Latin inflections of his Afro-Caribbean heritage, as well as the poetry, funk and hip hop that permeated New York throughout his formative years. Also addressed in these works are events and figures that have clearly influenced Byron's outlook on the world. Titles that reference Shelby Steele, Rodney King, Al Sharpton, Princess Diana and Abner Louima point to his willingness to engage his music politically.
So while all of his expressions stand on their own, collectively they paint a boldly colored portrait of both the man and artist behind them. Adding light and figure to the image are the musical names that have influenced Byron's development: Katz, Kirby, Scott, Ellington, Mandrill, Basquiat and Stravinsky, to name just a few.
Don Byron: Ivey-Divey
Another such name emerged from his highly-acclaimed Ivey-Divey (Blue Note, 2004). The album was a tribute to saxophone legend Lester Young and, more specifically, his 1946 trio with drummer Buddy Rich and pianist Nat Cole. While Byron's interest in Young spans many years, his decision to interpret that particular combo arose from its unique instrumentation. "I was interested in playing without a bass and the amount of accuracy you have to play with harmonically when you don't have one. It just puts more pressure on everybody to define the song. With this in mind, he wisely chose pianist Jason Moran and drummer Jack DeJohnette as sidemen for the date. The result is a record that at times lilts and swings with the same airiness of the original trio, but also projects the distinct musical voices of all three artists involved.
Another defining quality of the album is the way Byron mixes his own compositions with those standard to Young, as well as two Miles Davis numbers. This ability to write and interpret music from several different sources, while remaining coherent in mood is something few other artists are able to pull off. Hart, who regularly gigs with Byron's Ivey-Divey group, has long admired his keenly connected senses of writing and interpretation. "I don't know anybody who can go so far into the past with his authority. And yet when you hear his compositions, there are very few people in the future who are with him.
Speaking to the balance between past, present and future, Byron has just released an new album alongside the eclectic Bang on a Can All-Stars. Entitled A Ballad For Many (Cantaloupe, 2006), the disc is comprised of a wide range of works by Byron, including a six-movement piece dedicated to the late, great comedian, Ernie Kovacs, piano-cello duets and some inspired ensemble grooves. It also marks his first full-length recording with the troupe, whom he has collaborated with for several years now.
On top of this, listeners can look forward to a new Blue Note release this October, Do The Boomerang. As has come to be expected, Byron will pull yet another rabbit from his hat, this time in the form of a tribute to Motown's one-time hit machine, Junior Walker. "Well, it's soul music, he explains, in a typically understated way, "so it's not about any kind of jazz thinking. It's really about thinking the blues and playing the blues in a way that's very vocal. Of particular note is the fact that, on all but two tracks, Byron trades his usual clarinet for tenor sax. Remarkably, he doesn't miss a beat, although other aspects of the outing were less evident: "It's not a big deal for me to play tenor, but it is a big deal for me to play in a language that doesn't have anything to do with jazz. In spite of the challenge, however, he and his band succeed in speaking soul's groove-laden dialect and in breathing new life into the Walker songbook.
As for the more distant future, one can only guess that it includes many more surprises. Like all those who travel their own path, the map to Don Byron cannot be drawn until the journey ends.
But luckily for us all, the ride is still just beginning.
Selected Discography
Don Byron, Ivey-Divey (Blue Note, 2004)
Don Byron, You Are #6: More Music for Six Musicians (Blue Note, 2001)
Don Byron, Bug Music (Nonesuch, 1996)
Don Byron, Tuskegee Experiments (Elektra/Nonesuch, 1992)
Bill Frisell, Have a Little Faith (Elektra/Nonesuch, 1992)
Ralph Peterson's Fo'Tet, Ornettology (Blue Note, 1990)
Photo Credit: Cori Wells Braun
Don Byron
(b. November 8, 1958)
Artist Biography by Chris Kelsey
(b. November 8, 1958)
Artist Biography by Chris Kelsey
An inspired eclectic, Byron has performed an array of musical styles with great success. Byron first attained a measure of notoriety for playing Klezmer, specifically the music of the late Mickey Katz. While the novelty of a black man playing Jewish music was enough to grab the attention of critics, it was Byron's jazz-related work that ultimately made him a major figure. Byron is an exceptional clarinetist from a technical perspective; he also possesses a profound imagination that best manifests itself in his multifarious compositions. At heart, Byron is a conceptualist. Each succeeding album seems based on a different stylistic approach, from the free jazz/classical leanings of his first album, Tuskegee Experiments (Nonesuch, 1992), to the hip-hop/funk of Nu Blaxpoitation (Blue Note, 1998). Byron's composition "There Goes the Neighborhood" was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and premiered in London in 1994. He's also composed for silent film, served as the director of jazz for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and scored for television. Byron was born and raised in New York City, the son of a mailman who also occasionally played bass in calypso bands, and a mother who dabbled on piano. As a child, Byron developed asthma; his doctor suggested he take up a wind instrument as therapy. Byron chose clarinet. His South Bronx neighborhood had a sizeable Jewish population, which partly explains his fascination with Klezmer. Byron was encouraged by his parents to learn about all different kinds of music, from Leonard Bernstein to Dizzy Gillespie. Byron's models on clarinet included Tony Scott, Artie Shaw, and especially Jimmy Hamilton. As an improviser, Joe Henderson was a prominent influence. As a teenager, Byron studied clarinet with Joe Allard. Byron attended the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with George Russell. While at NEC, Byron was recruited to play in Hankus Netsky's Klezmer Conservatory Band. Byron moved from Boston back to New York in the mid-'80s, where he began playing with several of the city's more prominent jazz avant-gardists, including David Murray, Craig Harris, and Hamiet Bluiett. A year after recording Tuskegee Experiments, Byron made Plays the Music of Mickey Katz(Nonesuch), which put something of an end to his Klezmer career (at least in terms of recording). Byron's career built steadily over the course of the '90s. By the end of the decade he had signed with Blue Note records. While hardly a radical, Byron is an original voice within the bounds of whatever style he happens to embrace.
https://jazztimes.com/features/don-byron-don-leaps-in/
JazzTimes
Don Byron: Don Leaps In
10/01/2004by Nate Chinen
DON BYRON
In mid-spring 1946, tenor saxophone legend Lester Young entered a Hollywood recording studio and laid down some of the first tracks of his postwar solo career. His partners were Nat “King” Cole, one of the era’s most successful entertainers, and Buddy Rich, popularly regarded as the world’s greatest drummer. No bassist was employed on the session, the results of which were issued by Clef and repackaged years later by Verve. A mere footnote in most biographies, The Lester Young Trio has long been an unassuming highlight of Young’s catalog.
In late-spring 2004, another trio of musicians entered another studio, this one in upstate New York. Recording several of the same standards picked by Young, they readily invoked the spirit of their predecessors. But what clarinetist Don Byron, pianist Jason Moran and drummer Jack DeJohnette produced together is no time-capsule exhumation. Ivey-Divey, Byron’s latest for Blue Note, retells Pres’ trio tale in an ultramodern language. And close examination of the album’s backstory yields a host of lessons-not only about Young and Byron, but also rhythm sections, repertory and the innovations of jazz’s last 60 years.
“Let me just turn down the music here,” says Byron, moments after answering. “It’s just getting to the good part.” An Elliott Carter string quartet coruscates in the background, the aural equivalent of a lightning storm on the horizon. The music peaks, the storm passes, and Byron returns to the phone.
It’s a moment so perfect as to seem preconceived. But over the course of a decade or so in the public eye, Byron has proved the sincerity of his artsy eclecticism many times over.
Born and raised in a multiethnic neighborhood in the Bronx, the clarinetist spent his formative years inundated with classical music (his mother was a pianist), Latin and Caribbean music (his father played bass in calypso bands) and many strains of jazz (Dizzy and Miles were early favorites). He studied classically in high school and attended the New England Conservatory, where he apprenticed with Third Stream originator George Russell and served on the frontline of Hankus Netsky’s Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Byron’s name has been more or less linked to klezmer, a strain of Eastern European Jewish folk music, since the 1993 Nonesuch Records release of Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz. Although it was the clarinetist’s second effort as a leader (after the acclaimed Tuskegee Experiments, also on Nonesuch), the Katz album served as his introduction to a mass audience. And once the initial frisson wore off-yes, Byron has dreadlocks, and yes, he’s pattering in Yiddish-perceptive listeners recognized the musical acuity of his homage. Leading a band of similarly broad-minded players, including the then undervalued Dave Douglas and unknown Uri Caine, Byron managed to bestow dignity on his subject without casting him in bronze. Katz was edified but not deified, and his music lost not an ounce of its punch-drunk high spirits.
Radical repertory became a Byron trademark, as the clarinetist continued to draw inspiration from within and beyond jazz traditions. Bug Music (Nonesuch) harnessed the exuberant swing of bandleaders John Kirby, Duke Ellington and Raymond Scott; Nu Blaxploitation (Blue Note) offered a revisionist ode to ’70s funk, balancing three tracks by the band Mandrill against spoken-word vignettes featuring poet Sadiq Bey and rapper Biz Markie. A Fine Line: Arias and Lieder (Blue Note) referenced a truly dizzying cross-section of composers-not only Robert Schumann and Giacomo Puccini, but also Stephen Sondheim, Roy Orbison and Stevie Wonder. Such unobvious juxtaposition is also at the heart of Byron’s artist residency at New York’s august Symphony Space. The first show of his Contrasting Brilliance series there paid tribute to Henry Mancini and Sly Stone; the second paired Igor Stravinsky with Raymond Scott. Last October he placed Earth, Wind & Fire alongside Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass.
But it would be a mistake to peg Byron as merely a clever conceptualist. Before he was recognized for his vision, he was hailed for his prowess-all the more impressive given the choice of an instrument relegated to the dustbin of jazz history. Byron’s clarinet virtuosity distinguished him in such trailblazing early-’90s ensembles as Marc Ribot’s Rootless Cosmopolitans and the Ralph Peterson Fo’tet. As a leader, he’s balanced his repertory projects with improv-enabling excursions; one major example is Music for Six Musicians, inspired by Afro-Cuban and Caribbean music. Another is the 1999 album Romance With the Unseen (Blue Note), on which Byron weaves through a multihued tapestry of tunes, aggressively and sensitively engaging with DeJohnette, bassist Drew Gress and guitarist Bill Frisell. Here as in all of Byron’s albums, the clarinet commands center stage even when an idea, or another instrument, takes the spotlight.
Ironically, it was another instrument that pulled Byron in the direction of his latest infatuation. “I had decided to put some Coltrane in my playing, and I wanted to have my tenor around for it, so I got my tenor back,” he recalls. “And somehow Lester Young just started playing stronger with me. After a while I wasn’t working on any Coltrane, I was just looking at this Lester Young stuff and trying to figure out how somebody who played like that practiced.”
Byron’s reappraisal of Young quickly extended beyond the study of the tenor saxophone, ranging into the more general area of jazz technique. “There’s a discipline afoot in [Young’s playing] that at that moment was really easy for me to hear,” he attests. “It’s overhauled all the instruments I play, in terms of my technical command. And yet when people first listen to his music, that’s not the impression they get at all. It’s about a guy sounding relaxed, sounding like he doesn’t care. Sounding like he might get to the next note, or he might not. He likes to put that feeling out there. But the reality of his playing was something much more stringent.” This gentle contradiction is never clearer, Byron maintains, than on the trio record he discovered during his recent sweep; the record he’s now bringing into his orbit.
One of the many prevailing myths about Lester Young is his precipitous musical decline in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Young did suffer untold traumas during his Army service, which ended in court martial. And his postwar recordings do reveal methods far removed from the surging epiphanies of his tenure in the Count Basie Band. But Young had started changing his approach before the Army stint, and his postwar style shimmers with emotional expression. It’s a quality evident on “These Foolish Things,” which comes from the first session of Young’s return to civilian life. It’s a quality that suffuses the ’46 trio recording no less.
In some regards, the date actually found Young at a peak. Thanks largely to Norman Granz’s barnstorming Jazz at the Philharmonic, Pres was a figure of some celebrity. At the time of the session, some movie theaters were likely still showing the 10-minute short film Jammin’ the Blues, which portrayed Young as a literal icon. Jammin’s artsy opening shot peers down on the crown and concentric brim of Young’s porkpie hat, shrouded in cigarette smoke. Panning to eye level, the camera captures a bemused expression and the trademark tilt of a tenor saxophone, as Pres begins “The Midnight Symphony.” Writing in Metronome, Leonard Feather praised the performance, and for good reason. Although highly stylized, it’s a moment unequaled in the jazz filmography. To find a more arresting screen entrance, you’d have to look to Orson Welles in The Third Man.
According to Douglas Henry Daniel’s Young biography, Lester Leaps In, the saxophonist’s income in 1946 was roughly $75,000-not too far down the scale from the top-shelf $100,000 brought home by Nat “King” Cole. And that wasn’t the only thing that brought the two artists into the same league. Young and Cole had played together on numerous occasions, recording a well-received album in ’42. For their studio reunion in ’46, Cole sidestepped his Capitol Records contract by recording as “Aye Guy”-a ruse that probably fooled no one. Rich, meanwhile, was operating as a free agent at the time. No stranger to either of his session-mates, he fit himself into their equation with an unobtrusive but active hand. The results were effervescent, whether the trio is heard swinging “I Want to Be Happy” or finessing the ballad “Mean to Me.” On “I’ve Found a New Baby,” Rich’s propulsive brushwork sparks a rhythmically aggressive streak in Cole, which in turn nudges Young toward solo phrases of sparkling wit. It’s a highlight all the more striking given what’s missing from the mix.
“You don’t really notice that there’s no bass there,” Byron says. “Which means that everybody is really contributing to the feeling of the form of the song. And I think when you’re missing something like bass, it just makes everybody have to work harder. But there’s also something really orchestral about that record. Some of the duet stuff between Buddy Rich and Nat ‘King’ Cole really shows an orchestral way of thinking. It’s not about playing jazz where there’s a racket that goes on all the time, and you just do your role in the racket. It’s people really thinking about the sounds that they’re making, in a way that’s different than if there were more people around, or if they were in a different situation. The communication, something about it….” He pauses for a moment. “You know, for me, the way ‘avant-garde’ people play and the way straightahead people play aren’t really two different things. On that record, you see both things coming together. Because some of what they’re playing, it’s not like these are normal voicings or normal things to play; they’re really playing into the sound.”
The idea resonates deeply with Byron, even though his own methods are markedly more contemporary. He doesn’t shy away from explaining the difference. “It’s the degree to which you can be not playing chords but still feeling harmony, building on the recent history that we’ve had post-Ornette, post-Coltrane, post-AACM, post-whatever-and combining that with a real sense of chords and song form that’s maybe older than 1960.”
Such are the forces at work on Ivey-Divey.
Among the many terms coined by Lester Young, “ivey-divey” was among his personal favorites. Although its definition was mutable, the phrase usually implied reconciliation with one’s circumstances-an attitude Albert Murray has strongly identified with the blues. “The blues,” Murray writes, “is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.” It’s hardly a stretch to apply the definition to a post-Army Young, and to The Lester Young Trio. Byron’s appropriation of the term decades later capitalizes on its ambiguity. Jason Moran suggests as much when he alludes to a conversation between Young and French journalist Francois Postif recorded in 1959, mere weeks before the saxophonist’s demise. “If you heard Lester Young say ‘ivey-divey’ in that interview,” says the pianist, “you would understand the entire attitude of this record.”
Moran had never heard The Lester Young Trio when he got Byron’s call. But he found an original LP copy on eBay, and quickly fell under its spell. “Everybody was taking their time,” he marvels, “really comfortable with where they were as musicians. Hearing how Nat ‘King’ Cole was navigating those tunes, and how Buddy Rich played the time, and how Lester Young phrased the melodies-it was amazing, absolutely amazing. So I was very curious as to how we were going to address this piece, because they had done it in such a way that you might call perfect.”
Much of that perfection had to do with Cole, whose nimble pianism often implied the ghost presence of a bassist. “On a lot of those tracks, he’s walking bass lines,” says DeJohnette, who has admired the album for years. “And he’s doing it so smoothly and effortlessly, just like the way he sings. It’s very fluid. You hardly even notice that there’s all this harmonic and polyrhythmic stuff going on, and that he’s phrasing over bar lines. It’s very sophisticated, what he’s doing. It still sounds fresh.” Byron offers another perspective: “He goes little stretches playing the bass. But he also uses a lot of moving voicings without really playing four-on-the-floor every minute. There’s just some way he’s orchestrating the thing that implies steady bass.”
So Moran was inheriting quite a challenge on this project. Fortunately, it was one for which the pianist is uniquely suited. “If I’d had my druthers,” muses Byron, “I would have made this record some years ago and Jaki Byard would have played on it. I like Jason’s playing and I responded to that thing he has that’s like Jaki: kind of old-timey and new-timey at the same time. Then I found out that he had studied with Jaki. And I was like, ‘All right. That’s it!'”
Moran’s comportment on Ivey-Divey does reflect glints of his flirtation with stride piano. But he rarely sounds like a facsimile of Cole, which may be due in part to a fortunate mistake. “When I was driving up to the studio,” Moran recalls, “I thought I had brought a CD of the album with me. I said: ‘OK, so I’ll listen to this when I get up there, just to be reminded of what that sound was.’ But I had left it at home. So I couldn’t remember what Nat was doing; I couldn’t remember any of that stuff. I could remember what Lester was playing, how he phrased and things. But I couldn’t remember what my part was!” He laughs. “So the music became a lot fresher than I had wanted it to, which was great.”
While Byron and DeJohnette are veteran collaborators, Moran had played with neither of them before this year. In January, Byron set up a quartet date at New York’s Village Vanguard with Moran and a rhythm section, including bass. But DeJohnette couldn’t commit to the gig. So the Ivey-Divey band first convened shortly before their session, playing a rehearsal and a casual gig in Woodstock, New York.
What resulted was a decidedly contemporary chemistry. The absence of bass is just as irrelevant on this recording as on the original, but Byron and his cohorts pursue a different kind of compensation: elasticizing time, responding to the moment, applying the techniques of a half-century’s avant-garde. DeJohnette, whose career has encompassed all manner of unusual groupings, explains the exercise as a matter of the mind. “If you’re thinking about a trio and you say, ‘There’s no bass,'” he explains, “you need to think in terms of ‘What is the trio?’ So you don’t miss what’s not there. Without a bass you listen more attentively to the trio; everything is more exposed. And then you really start to hear the fullness. The fact is, there is no hole. There is no empty space.”
Ivey-Divey begins with a bass clarinet invocation that dances around and then clearly states the interval of a major third to a perfect fifth. That two-note figure forms the crux of “I Want to Be Happy,” a tune whose swinging cadence is obvious as soon as drums and piano enter the fray. Simple at first, the rendition accrues both complexity and fire. By the conclusion of an almost nine-minute track, Byron, Moran and DeJohnette have articulated a litany of smart digressions without ever abandoning the theme.
The next few tunes are also borrowed from the original recording. Byron and Moran play a kind of sly peek-a-boo on “Somebody Loves Me” and wax seemingly nostalgic on “I Cover the Waterfront.” The trio rumbles through “I’ve Found a New Baby” like a Model T with twin turbines. Then, a twist: “Himm” is an original duet for clarinet and piano that may as well be Byron’s requiem for Young. Things take another unexpected turn with “The Goon Drag,” a minor-key ditty from Young’s early-’40s confab with boogie-woogie pianist Sammy Price. What’s striking about the song in this rendition is its performance by a fleshed-out quintet, with bassist Lonnie Plaxico and trumpeter Ralph Alessi. Just as surprising is Byron’s statement of the theme on tenor saxophone-the instrument’s only appearance on the record. Despite a shift in dynamic and tone, the song complements the Lester-philia of the preceding performances. Frontloaded on the CD, these half-dozen tracks suggest an imaginary LP’s side A.
Were this true, side B would lead with “Abie the Fishman,” a head-bobbing original inspired by a Chico Marx routine. Performed in full quintet mode, it evokes the sharp-cornered harmonies and start-stop cadences of postmodern jazz-funk. That vibe is reprised a few tracks later in “Leopold, Leopold,” another Byron tune. The rest of the disc consists of a quartet version of Byron’s loping “Lefty Teachers at Home” and a double dose of Miles Davis, “Freddie Freeloader” and “In a Silent Way.”
In other words, side B doesn’t explicitly reference Lester Young. “It’s not a repertory record,” Byron declares, adding that his Pres investigations were never intended as fodder for an album. “I just ended up making a record about it. It was like the kind of thing that Sonny Rollins would do to himself, just to give himself a challenge. A lot of my records are influenced by that and have their own specific challenges. But I think this is the first specific challenge record that’s about my playing.” He further posits that the ghost of Pres hovers over “In a Silent Way,” the atmospheric electric opus composed by Davis and Joe Zawinul nearly a decade after Young’s demise. “I’m not an impressionist,” Byron cautions. “But the lines that I’m playing there, they just sound the most influenced by Lester. I can hear myself thinking like that-thinking in the ways that Lester Young thinks.”
It’s far from an obvious connection. But it’s a very Byronic one. It’s not a stretch to contemplate Ivey-Divey as a bridge between the repertory strain of Bug Music and the straightforward blowing of Romance With the Unseen. “In a certain kind of way,” Byron allows, “it brings together the study of the two streams that I’ve been doing.” He pauses. “Maybe it brings everything together.”
http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/interview-with-don-byron/
Interview with Don Byron
by Frank J. Oteri
January 1, 2000
Don Byron
Photo courtesy Don Byron
Saturday, December 18, 1999
American Music Center, New York NY
Don Byron – Composer and Clarinetist
Frank J. Oteri – Editor and Publisher, NewMusicBox
Nathan Michel – Assistant Editor, NewMusicBox
Interview transcribed by Karyn Joaquino
- Venue, Audience and Genre Expectations
- The Clarinet
- Klezmer
- The Downtown Scene
- Hip-Hop And Racial Politics
- The Audience
- Live Recordings
- Stravinsky
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/don-byron-music-wikipedia-don-byron-by-george-colligan.php
Don Byron: Music Wikipedia
by GEORGE COLLIGAN
October 3, 2012
"It's not a jazz concert, I'm just a black guy. It's really classical, and I'm a black guy. It's really Klezmer music, and I'm a black guy! That's basically it. Deal with it!”
--Don Byron
[Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth]
I got my Bachelor's in Music Ed and Trumpet from Peabody Conservatory. I got my Master's in Jazz from Queens College. But I did my realgraduate work playing with clarinetist Don Byron. My first gigs with Byron were playing Stravinsky and Raymond Scott. We also played Duke Ellington, Earth Wind and Fire, Herb Alpert, Klezmer music, the music of Junior Walker & the All Stars, and we even did some performances of music from the Sugar Hill Gang! Byron is a walking music Wikipedia. He's into such a wide range of music; he's also a really unique composer and arranger. I was able to get a quick interview with him recently for jazztruth.
George Colligan: In terms of your musical scope, all the things that you are into and that you have explored as an artist, is that something you are conscious of or just how you've always been, into different musical avenues?
Don Byron: Well, I always had a few different things that I was into. When I was an undergrad, I kind of thought what I wanted to know was how to play classical music of a certain ilk, how to play jazz of a certain ilk, I was playing a lot of Latin music, and I was starting to play with the Klezmer Conservatory band. When I first started being interested in being a jazz musician, the job of being a jazz clarinetist was really very limited. Most musicians my age, black musicians especially, were not really interested in the instrument. So I guess my idea of jazz clarinet really kind of evolved out of trying to keep a theoretical thing going and a technical thing going on the instrument but that I would have one foot in the classical thing and one foot in the jazz thing. And certain ethnic traditions that I came upon that I might be playing authentically. Like I played even as an undergrad Latin music authentically, Klezmer music authentically, that there were traditions other than jazz and classical music where the clarinet was a well-used instrument. And at that point a lot of people that played good clarinet were not willing to play music like Klezmer music. They weren't willing; they didn't want it to drag them down. Maybe some of them came from Jewish backgrounds; they weren't going to go backwards.
Nowadays, any underemployed clarinetist plays some Klezmer music, it's just normal. But my thinking was more to have an awareness of these ethnic avenues where the clarinet was going, where it was vital—in Colombia, in Trinidad, in Brazil—these are places just in the Western Hemisphere that at this point, not even in the past but currently, have moving clarinet traditions that were moving ahead. Whereas I didn't see the jazz clarinet tradition moving ahead. I saw more "traditional jazz," pseudo-New Orleans whatever, that kind of thing, and then the swing era stuff. Then all of a sudden, there's very little clarinet. There's Jimmy Hamilton, there's Tony Scott, there's Buddy DeFranco, but in general there's not a lot. Basically whatever it is, I kind of fashioned it out of feeling like there wasn't a real clarinet job, I was going to have to make this job, and the job that I made was kind of a collection of skills.
GC: So it was really motivated by your relationship with the instrument rather than an all-encompassing desire to embrace many styles?
DB: Well in my undergrad days, I knew guys like [saxophonists] Greg Osby and Donald Harrison and those guys, and being a jazz saxophonist was much more of a job. There was just a job. And it wasn't a job that you never saw black people doing. So they went to New York and they pursued that job, whereas I kind of prepared myself for many jobs. On the classical tip, I never thought I was going to be chosen to deliver the Mozart and Brahms stuff that's the center of clarinet literature, but I did think that I had grown up seeing a lot of people on a lot of instruments who only played really contemporary new music. And they were good players, but they seemed kind of stylistically dedicated to that sound. And so I decided that, if I was going to keep preparing myself as a classical player, that's the way I would prepare myself. I would make sure I played some Schoenberg, some Stravinsky, some Messiaen, Bartok...those things that I considered modern; I would prepare myself in that way.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/ivey-divey-don-byron-blue-note-records-review-by-ty-cumbie.php
Don Byron: Ivey-Divey
by TY CUMBIE
September 18, 2004
AllAboutJazz
Jazz is deep into a critical phase, through which all mature art forms must pass—look out rock, your time is coming!—the point at which the music either changes or dies, becoming something different or a dusty museum piece. All who choose to enter the field at this time face this challenge, whether they know it or not (especially if they hope to get signed to Blue Note and sell a few records). A player/composer as smart as Don Byron must be well aware of it, and he faces it with wit, courage and skill.
On Ivey-Divey he demonstrates once again his commitment and feeling for the music's roots, forging ahead with a rare combination of caution and daring. The personnel list alone cues the savvy listener to what might lie ahead: his choices of excellent veteran drummer Jack DeJohnette, fine trumpeter Ralph Alessi (for two solid tracks), and young firebrand pianist Jason Moran foreshadow music that is both finely wrought, true enough to tradition, yet progressive enough to be noteworthy. Byron takes on Lester Young, an odd pair of Miles Davis tunes, and his own material, managing to freshen up the oldies well enough so they live comfortably aside the new material.
This is a record likely to satisfy listeners who love Lester Young but are open minded enough to hear him interpreted, and those who are hanging in there with mainstream jazz to see where it might be headed. DeJohnette is in great form, and Moran relaxes into his role as sideman, handling the traditional forms capably while stretching them ever so carefully to make room for his own sophisticated harmonic ideas. Alessi is a technically flawless trumpeter, and he delivers his two cents with plenty of fire, eliciting at least one audible, approving grunt from a band mate.
Ivey-Divey is a noble new addition to the Blue Note continuum. Mainstream jazz, and especially Blue Note's blue chip roster, is by nature rarely at the leading edge of new music. Rather, at its best it has offered up works that carry on the lineage, adding small touches of originality that nudge the music gingerly forward without outraging purists. Ivey-Divey is such a document.
Track Listing: I Want to be Happy; Somebody Loves Me; I Cover the Waterfront; I've Found a New Baby; Himm (for our Lord and Kirk Franklin); The Goon Drag; Abie the Fisherman; Lefty Teachers at Home; "Leopold, Leopold..."; Freddie Freeloader; In a Silent Way; Somebody Loves Me (alt. tk.)
Personnel: Don Byron (clarinet, bass clarinet,tenor saxophone), Jason Moran (piano), Jack DeJohnette (drums except "Himm"), Ralph Alessi (trumpet on "The Goon Drag," "Leopold, Leopold..."), Lonnie Plaxico (bass on "The Goon Drag," "Abie the Fisherman," "Lefty Teachers at Home," "Leopold, Leopold...," "In a Silent Way")
Year Released: 2004 | Record Label: Blue Note Records | Style: Straight-ahead/Mainstream
http://arts.mit.edu/artists/don-byron/#about-the-residency
Don Byron
American clarinetist and composer Don
Byron presents a gospel concert with his own New Gospel Quintet and
premieres a clarinet concerto performed by the MIT Wind Ensemble.
Rome
Prize recipient, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and 2007 Guggenheim Fellow Don
Byron comes to MIT to collaborate with students and faculty to
experiment in the concert hall and the music studio. MIT has a
long-standing tradition of commissioning new music and opera that is
first performed by professionally-led student ensembles in an
educational setting.
DON BYRON
In March, 2013, the MIT Wind Ensemble, conducted by Fred Harris, premiered a concerto written by Byron with a clarinet solo by Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music Evan Ziporyn. Byron is well known at MIT, having visited campus to perform with his ensemble and Paul Auster, and he was appointed a Martin Luther King Scholar in 2008-2009.
The MIT Wind Ensemble is composed of outstanding MIT student musicians studying a wide variety of fields. Since 2001, the MIT Wind Ensemble has commissioned 20 original works by MIT faculty and internationally renowned composers.
Presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and MIT Music and Theater Arts.
Photo: Don Byron at MIT. Credit: L. Barry Hetherington.
http://forward.com/culture/173734/how-don-byron-brought-klezmer-music-and-mickey-kat/
How Don Byron Brought Klezmer Music and Mickey Katz back to life
by Jake Marmer
March 29, 2013
A pre-eminent contemporary multi-instrumentalist and composer rooted in jazz, Don Byron has engaged with a wild variety of musical styles — from rap to neo-classical, funk to heavy metal — and is currently touring with the New Gospel Quintet, exploring the heritage of African-American spirituals It was his encounter with klezmer, however, and his tribute album to the Borscht Belt musician and comedian Mickey Katz (“Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz”), that brought him a great deal of attention earlier in his career, two decades ago.
Over the years, this encounter served as a source of both mirth and awe; in retrospect, Byron’s attempt to resuscitate Katz (1909-85), and his peculiar interpretation of the klezmer legacy has had a major impact on further development of klezmer and on the unfolding of what came to be known as the Klezmer Revival. The Forward’s Jake Marmer talked to Byron about klezmer, cultural appropriation, assimilation and hipness.
Jake Marmer: In his seminal “Visions of Jazz,” Gary Giddins has an essay about encountering your Mickey Katz tribute at the Knitting Factory for the first time. He mentions that one of his friends, who is Jewish, admitted he knew Katz’s music but was sort of embarrassed by this legacy. And so Giddins (very bravely, I think) admits that although you probably didn’t intend this at all, somehow your engagement with this music made it okay for a lot of assimilated Jewish musicians to engage with klezmer and reconsider it as legit. Have you seen the effects of this?
Don Byron: A lot of people had those kinds of feelings about the music. If you were trying to be hip, and hip meant being assimilated, it was going to be hard to face the thing you ran away from, especially at first. I know many of the downtown types had never seriously thought about doing that music, though many would deny my impact on them; however, you couldn’t really argue with the crowds we were getting. That probably broke the ice for many of them. The first anniversary of the premiere of “Mick at the Knit” suddenly became a downtown festival, including all the revival acts and the downtown folks.
There were club owners of Jewish descent who wanted nothing to do with the music at the time. I remember a guy, who will remain nameless, who said he didn’t want “those people” in his club. On the one hand, if someone programs their venue with a certain kind of thing, that’s okay, but this seemed very personal, had real venom in it. On the other hand, I don’t judge someone for not wanting to be into klezmer music. It’s not the mark of coolness or good person-hood.
Recently I saw “Django” (which I thought was too long and boring in spots). The main thing I came away with was that [Quentin] Tarantino could face the subject with a level of glee that no black director could possess. The subject would be too personal, too hot. In retrospect, the distance I had sociologically gave me the objectivity to make the thing work. Yet I feel like I learned a lot from the experience of doing it. I saw and heard a lot of things that most Jewish folks don’t even get to experience, saw the religion from many angles, from Orthodox to hippie Reform. And I watched people tackle their basic issues in front of me, and sometimes at my expense. It was an interesting ride.
How did you discover Katz in the first place?
DON BYRON: My discovery of Katz, it came after I had been in the KCB [Klezmer Conservatory Band] for a bit and had performed most of the Tarras/Brandwein stuff that I was interested in. This is not to say that I didn’t like the music, but there was a finite group of recordings, and everyone in the music was playing the same pieces. I heard a tape of “The Dreidel Song” and immediately wanted to play it…. You had to know a bit of advanced harmony just to transcribe it accurately, and had to have near-concert technique to play it. Playing that music always made the band perk up, because Katz’s guys were serious, well-trained, working American musicians. You could hear that these guys could really play, and nobody was playing that music. As I recall, during the same period, I was living with [KCB’s famed bass player] Jim Guttmann, and he came home with a copy of the Musiker Brothers’ Tanz that he found in a used record store, asked me to listen to it and asked if it was any good. The rest is history.
Mickey Katz was very raw, unassimilated — un-American in his sound and sense of humor. How did you come to understand his world, klezmer and the whole Eastern European Jewish headspace so profoundly?
I firstly related to the format of Katz’s arrangements, which I described at the time as concerto for orchestra-esque. But overall, I saw Katz’s group as a forum for technically and harmonically well-trained American musicians like Nat Farber and Mannie Klein, and I staffed my group with great players like Uri Caine, Mark Feldman, Josh Roseman and Dave Douglas way before the jazz world was fully ready to give it up to any of us. There were klezmer groups around, but none that could match that group’s edginess and creativity. It was that edge that brought the Knitting Factory crowd and Katz’s music together, making the way for the radical Jewish movement of John Zorn.
The students I’ve taught in recent years are very unobjective. If they don’t know anybody who’s into something, they won’t take it seriously. If the musicians don’t look like them, don’t come from similar backgrounds, they can’t hear it. Maybe most folks are like that. I have studied and played all kinds of music. When I was still in school I played with downtown musicians, Latin musicians, free jazz musicians, straight-ahead jazz musicians, classical musicians, ethnic types. Anyone who knew me in my undergrad days knows, I played many musics successfully and with empathy.
Certain thinkers, like Amiri Baraka, have had strongly negative feelings about non-African-American musicians playing jazz — and in particular, Baraka has singled out Benny Goodman a lot. At times, Baraka’s issue is with socioeconomic disadvantage, in which African-American jazz musicians have all too often found themselves; but he tends to probe beyond that, into questions of cultural appropriation. What are your thoughts on this, and in general, how do you see a musician’s identity factoring into both the content and forms of his/her work?
DON BYRON: Well, to start, we need to be able to look objectively at how American culture has worked. So much of so-called white American culture comes from black musical roots, along with the disturbing repeating scenario that once whites are involved, the music suddenly isn’t black anymore. In country music, separating the music from blackness was a big part of the music’s development and marketing, this despite the fact that the much of the music was blues based. When I was active in klezmer, I could feel people’s concerns about these issues, yet I never said that the music wasn’t Jewish just because I was in it. African Americans are the only group in the world this has happened to. Rock, country, jazz, all these musics have become formerly black. If that happened to you, it might make you a bit cranky. This is where identity comes into play. European-American assimilation and music originating in the black community seem to go hand in hand…. I used my objectivity to present it in a different way, opened up new audiences to the idea that it could have some relevance and hipness, but I never denied its fundamental Jewishness. Nor was it an act of musical self-hatred to play it. I have stood up for my musical and personal blackness, injecting more of that into jazz clarinet than anyone of my era. It was never one or the other.
http://www.npr.org/artists/15322181/don-byron
Only Available in Archive Formats.
Real Media
http://www.donbyron.com/5_music.html
Compositions by Don Byron
Published by Nottuskegeelike Music
Underlined titles registered as concert works (classical compositions).
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G-H-I | J-K-L |
| M-N-O-P | R-S | T-U | V-W-X-Y-Z |
A
Abel Meeropol—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Abie the Fishman -Ivey-Divey
Alien—Nu Blaxploitation
Allure of Entanglement, —The Music for Six Musicians
Allure of Entanglement—The No-Vibe Zone
Anti-Lynching Movement—The Strange Fruit (soundtrack)
B
Basquiat—A Fine Line: Arias & Lieder
Basquiat—A Ballad For Many
Basquiat—Romance with the Unseen
Beautiful Insults in Random Order (for contrabass and clarinet)
Belmondo’s Lip—You Are #6
Bernhard Goetz, James Ramseur, and Me—Romance with the Unseen
Blinky—Nu Blaxploitation
Blinky Blanky Blokoe—A Ballad For Many
B-setting—You Are #6
B-Train—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
C
Closer to Home—Romance with the Unseen
Credits—A Ballad For Many
Crown Heights—Music for Six Musicians
top
D
Dark Room—You Are #6
Dark Room* (Eugene I)—The Bang On A Can All-Stars (no recording)
Despite A Barrage—A Ballad For Many
Diego Rivera—Tuskegee Experiments
Dodi—Nu Blaxploitation
Domino Theories, Part 1— Nu Blaxploitation
Domino Theories, Part 2—Nu Blaxploitation
Dub-Ya—You Are #6 (Blue Note 32231-2)
E
Epilogue: Tears—Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz
Eugene I* (Dark Room)—The Bang On A Can All-Stars (no recording)
Eugene (Movements I-IV)—A Ballad For Many
Explanation—A Ballad For Many
F
Fascism: Theater Arts Committee—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Finally in 1941—A Ballad For Many
Flatiron Building-Strange Fruit (Film)
For Macho—The Clarinet Summit (Soul Note)
Fortunately—A Ballad For Many
Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye -Ethel Light
450 Tuskegee Airmen—A Ballad For Many
Furman—Nu Blaxploitation
Fyodorovich—A Ballad For Many
top
G-H-I
Gay Tango
Going To the Wall
HIMM—Ivey-Divey
Homegoing—Romance with the Unseen
Homegoing—Ralph Peterson Presents the Fo’tet (Blue Note)
I’ll chill on the Marley tapes…” —Music for Six Musicians
I’m Stuck—Nu Blaxploitation
Importance of being SHARPTON, The —The Music for Six MusicianA
In Memoriam: Uncle Dan -Tuskegee Experiments
Integrity -Ballad For Many
Izzy’s Last Jam—Lulu On The Bridge (film soundtrack)
J-K-L
JAM
Klang—You Are #6
Lefty Teachers At Home—Ivey-Divey
Leopold, Leopold—Ivey-Divey
Leopold, Leopold—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Lude —Romance with the Unseen
M-N-O-P
Molly
Music for Silent Film Scar of Shame (1927)
Next Love —No-Vibe Zone
Next Love —Tuskegee Experiments
No Whine —You Are #6
Phonograph Recording Industry —vStrange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Prologue: “…shed no tears before the rain…” D.B. Plays Plays the Music of Mickey Katz
top
R-S
Red (Suite for big band)
Retired Teachers Chill At Home—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Return To The Crime Scene—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
(The press made) Rodney King (responsible for the LA riots)—Music for Six Musicians
Rosenberg Adoption,—The Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Sad Twilight—Romance with the Unseen
Schizo Jam—Nu Blaxploitation
7 Etudes (for piano and voice)
SEX/WORK (Clarence/Anita)—Music for Six Musicians
SEX/WORK (Clarence/Anita)—No-Vibe Zone (Knitting Factory Works)
Shelby Steele would be mowing your lawn—Music for Six Musicians
Show Him Some Lub—A Ballad For Many
Silver Wings (arr. by Don Byron—A Ballad For Many
Spin—A Ballad For Many
Strange Fruit Loops—Strange Fruit
Suite for Lester Young (3 movements)
T-U
Tears—Tuskegee Experiments
That sucking sound…” (for Ross Perot)—Music for Six Musicians
There Goes The Neighborhood—(Kronos Quartet, no recording)
Tin Pan Alley—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Tuskegee Experiment—Tuskegee Experiments
Tuskegee Experiment—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack soundtrack)
Tuskegee Strutter’s Ball—No-Vibe Zone
Tuskegee Strutter’s Ball—Tuskegee Experiments
Uh-Oh, Chango!”—Music for Six Musicians
top
V-W-X-Y-Z
Waltz for Ellen—Tuskegee Experiments
Whisper In My Ear, A (For Mario Bauza)—You Are #6
White History Month—Music for Six Musicians
You Are #6—You Are #6
You Are #6.5
You Can Fly-A Ballad For Many
Check back for complete scores of selected compositions in PDF format .
performances | projects | biography | discography | music
press | pictures | contact | links
contact management
© 2002–2012 Don Byron
http://www.nonesuch.com/artists/don-byron
Real Media
http://www.donbyron.com/5_music.html
Compositions by Don Byron
Published by Nottuskegeelike Music
Underlined titles registered as concert works (classical compositions).
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G-H-I | J-K-L |
| M-N-O-P | R-S | T-U | V-W-X-Y-Z |
A
Abel Meeropol—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Abie the Fishman -Ivey-Divey
Alien—Nu Blaxploitation
Allure of Entanglement, —The Music for Six Musicians
Allure of Entanglement—The No-Vibe Zone
Anti-Lynching Movement—The Strange Fruit (soundtrack)
B
Basquiat—A Fine Line: Arias & Lieder
Basquiat—A Ballad For Many
Basquiat—Romance with the Unseen
Beautiful Insults in Random Order (for contrabass and clarinet)
Belmondo’s Lip—You Are #6
Bernhard Goetz, James Ramseur, and Me—Romance with the Unseen
Blinky—Nu Blaxploitation
Blinky Blanky Blokoe—A Ballad For Many
B-setting—You Are #6
B-Train—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
C
Closer to Home—Romance with the Unseen
Credits—A Ballad For Many
Crown Heights—Music for Six Musicians
top
D
Dark Room—You Are #6
Dark Room* (Eugene I)—The Bang On A Can All-Stars (no recording)
Despite A Barrage—A Ballad For Many
Diego Rivera—Tuskegee Experiments
Dodi—Nu Blaxploitation
Domino Theories, Part 1— Nu Blaxploitation
Domino Theories, Part 2—Nu Blaxploitation
Dub-Ya—You Are #6 (Blue Note 32231-2)
E
Epilogue: Tears—Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz
Eugene I* (Dark Room)—The Bang On A Can All-Stars (no recording)
Eugene (Movements I-IV)—A Ballad For Many
Explanation—A Ballad For Many
F
Fascism: Theater Arts Committee—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Finally in 1941—A Ballad For Many
Flatiron Building-Strange Fruit (Film)
For Macho—The Clarinet Summit (Soul Note)
Fortunately—A Ballad For Many
Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye -Ethel Light
450 Tuskegee Airmen—A Ballad For Many
Furman—Nu Blaxploitation
Fyodorovich—A Ballad For Many
top
G-H-I
Gay Tango
Going To the Wall
HIMM—Ivey-Divey
Homegoing—Romance with the Unseen
Homegoing—Ralph Peterson Presents the Fo’tet (Blue Note)
I’ll chill on the Marley tapes…” —Music for Six Musicians
I’m Stuck—Nu Blaxploitation
Importance of being SHARPTON, The —The Music for Six MusicianA
In Memoriam: Uncle Dan -Tuskegee Experiments
Integrity -Ballad For Many
Izzy’s Last Jam—Lulu On The Bridge (film soundtrack)
J-K-L
JAM
Klang—You Are #6
Lefty Teachers At Home—Ivey-Divey
Leopold, Leopold—Ivey-Divey
Leopold, Leopold—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Lude —Romance with the Unseen
M-N-O-P
Molly
Music for Silent Film Scar of Shame (1927)
Next Love —No-Vibe Zone
Next Love —Tuskegee Experiments
No Whine —You Are #6
Phonograph Recording Industry —vStrange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Prologue: “…shed no tears before the rain…” D.B. Plays Plays the Music of Mickey Katz
top
R-S
Red (Suite for big band)
Retired Teachers Chill At Home—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Return To The Crime Scene—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
(The press made) Rodney King (responsible for the LA riots)—Music for Six Musicians
Rosenberg Adoption,—The Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Sad Twilight—Romance with the Unseen
Schizo Jam—Nu Blaxploitation
7 Etudes (for piano and voice)
SEX/WORK (Clarence/Anita)—Music for Six Musicians
SEX/WORK (Clarence/Anita)—No-Vibe Zone (Knitting Factory Works)
Shelby Steele would be mowing your lawn—Music for Six Musicians
Show Him Some Lub—A Ballad For Many
Silver Wings (arr. by Don Byron—A Ballad For Many
Spin—A Ballad For Many
Strange Fruit Loops—Strange Fruit
Suite for Lester Young (3 movements)
T-U
Tears—Tuskegee Experiments
That sucking sound…” (for Ross Perot)—Music for Six Musicians
There Goes The Neighborhood—(Kronos Quartet, no recording)
Tin Pan Alley—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack)
Tuskegee Experiment—Tuskegee Experiments
Tuskegee Experiment—Strange Fruit (Film documentary soundtrack soundtrack)
Tuskegee Strutter’s Ball—No-Vibe Zone
Tuskegee Strutter’s Ball—Tuskegee Experiments
Uh-Oh, Chango!”—Music for Six Musicians
top
V-W-X-Y-Z
Waltz for Ellen—Tuskegee Experiments
Whisper In My Ear, A (For Mario Bauza)—You Are #6
White History Month—Music for Six Musicians
You Are #6—You Are #6
You Are #6.5
You Can Fly-A Ballad For Many
Check back for complete scores of selected compositions in PDF format .
performances | projects | biography | discography | music
press | pictures | contact | links
contact management
© 2002–2012 Don Byron
http://www.nonesuch.com/artists/don-byron
- Don Byron
Latest Release
October 1, 1996
Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, John Kirby, and Raymond Scott all
employed groundbreaking compositional techniques that both bewitched
and bewildered the public and critics alike. With Bug Music,
clarinetist Don Byron, an inventor and innovator in his own right, has
reexamined this substantial body of American music, choosing, as he
says, "to combine information from outside sources with one’s individual
sense of what is possible.”
THE MUSIC OF DON BYRON: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. BYRON:
Don Byron--"Ivey-Divey"-- EPK
Interview and performance of Don Byron with his project, Ivey-Divey:
Don Byron ~ "I'll Follow The Sun"
August 28, 1999 Saalfelden, Austria
Don Byron - leader/clarinet, Bill Frisell - guitar, Drew Gress - bass, Jack DeJohnette - drums
Don Byron Quartet
Live in Italy, April 2014:
Don Byron--"Tuskegee Experiments":
From the album 'Tuskegee Experiments'
(1991-Nonesuch 79280):
Don Byron--"Fencewalk"
(Composition by MANDRILL; arrangement by Don Byron):
Don Byron – Nu Blaxploitation
Label: Blue Note – 7243 4 93711 2 5
Format: CD
Country: Europe
Released: 1998
Genre: Jazz, Rock, Funk / Soul, Blues
(composition by Miles Davis & Joe Zawinul)
Don Byron: tenor sax
Donald Byron (born November 8, 1958) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. He primarily plays clarinet, but has also used bass clarinet and saxophones.
Though rooted in jazz, Byron's music is stylistically eclectic. He has worked in many different musical genres, ranging from klezmer music and German lieder, to Raymond Scott's "cartoon-jazz," hard rock/metal, and rap. Most of Byron's albums have been conceptual, devoted to works of a particular musician and/or style of music.
He studied clarinet with Joe Allard[2] and studied music at the New England Conservatory in Boston with George Russell.[2] While in Boston, Byron performed and recorded with the Klezmer Conservatory Band, founded by NEC faculty member Hankus Netsky.
Byron is a practicing jazz historian, and some of his albums have been recreations (in spirit) of forgotten moments in the history of popular music. Examples are Plays the Music of Mickey Katz and Bug Music.[3] Byron has been nominated for a Grammy Award for his bass clarinet solo on "I Want to Be Happy" from Ivey-Divey.
Byron has worked as a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver (2015), The University at Albany (2005-2009) and MIT (2007-2008), teaching composition, improvisation, music history, clarinet, and saxophone.
Byron is a member of the Black Rock Coalition. He has recorded with Allen Toussaint, Marc Ribot, Vernon Reid, Bill Frisell, Joe Henry, and others.
Byron was a judge for the 2nd annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.[4]
In 2001, Byron performed "Bli Blip" for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot + Indigo, a tribute to Duke Ellington, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease.
Byron was named a 2007 USA Prudential Fellow[5] and awarded a US$50,000 grant by United States Artists, a public charity that supports and promotes the work of American artists. He also won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007.
Byron won the Rome Prize Fellowship awarded by the American Academy in Rome in 2009, and his Seven Etudes for solo piano, commissioned by pianist Lisa Moore, made him a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Musical Composition in 2009.
Byron plays a mouthpiece by Fred Rast.[6]
"Don Byron". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2010-01-17.
Kelsey, Chris. "Don Byron". Allmusic. Retrieved 2010-01-17.
Yanow, Scott. "Bug Music". Allmusic. Retrieved 2010-01-17.
Independent Music Awards - Past Judges Archived July 13, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
"Meet the USA Fellows - United States Artists - Great Art Forms Here". Usafellows.org. Retrieved 2014-07-28.
Label: Blue Note – 7243 4 93711 2 5
Format: CD
Country: Europe
Released: 1998
Genre: Jazz, Rock, Funk / Soul, Blues
"The Dicty Glide"
(Composition by Duke Ellington; arrangement by Don Byron)
Bug Music by Don Byron Orchestra:
℗ 1996 Nonesuch Records
Alto Saxophone: Steve Wilson
Banjo: Paul Meyers
Bass Guitar: Kenny Davis
Clarinet, Conductor, Lead Vocals, Saxophone: Don Byron
Drums: Billy Heart
Drums: Joey Baron
Drums: Pheeroan akLaff
Guitar: David Gilmore
Piano, Vocals: Uri Craine
Tenor Saxophone: Robert De Bellis
Trombone: Craig Harris
Trumpet: Charles Lewis
Trumpet: James Zollar
Trumpet: Steve Berstein
Vocals: Dean Bowman
Composer: Duke Ellington
Don Byron --"In A Silent Way"
(Composition by Miles Davis and Joe Zawinul; arrangement by Don Byron):
Don Byron- clarinet; Jason Moran- piano; Jack DeJohnnette- drums; Lonnie Plaxico- bass.
(composition by Miles Davis & Joe Zawinul)
"Ivey Divey" (Blue Note, 2004)
Don Byron - "There It Is"
(Composition by James Brown; arrangement by Don Byron)
From the Don Byron release "Do the Boomerang: The Music of Junior Walker (Blue Note, 2006):
Don Byron: tenor sax
Chris Fowlkes: trombone
David Gilmore: guitar
George Colligan: Hammond B-3 organ
Brad Jones: bass
Rodney Holmes: drums, tambourine
Dean Bowman: vocals
http://www.donbyron.com
http://www.bluenote.com/artists/don-b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Byron
Don Byron
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Don Byron | |
|---|---|
Photo by Ed Newman
|
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Donald Byron |
| Born | November 8, 1958 |
| Origin | New York, United States |
| Genres | Avant-garde jazz Post bop M-Base Klezmer |
| Instruments | Clarinet Bass Clarinet Saxophone |
| Years active | 1980s–present |
| Labels | Nonesuch/Elektra Records Blue Note/EMI Records |
| Associated acts | Hankus Netsky M-Base Collective |
Donald Byron (born November 8, 1958) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. He primarily plays clarinet, but has also used bass clarinet and saxophones.
Though rooted in jazz, Byron's music is stylistically eclectic. He has worked in many different musical genres, ranging from klezmer music and German lieder, to Raymond Scott's "cartoon-jazz," hard rock/metal, and rap. Most of Byron's albums have been conceptual, devoted to works of a particular musician and/or style of music.
Contents
Early life
Byron was born in The Bronx, in New York City. Both parents were musicians: his mother was a pianist and his father played bass in calypso bands. As well as listening to jazz recordings by Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and others, he was exposed to other styles through trips to the ballet and symphony concerts.[1]
He studied clarinet with Joe Allard[2] and studied music at the New England Conservatory in Boston with George Russell.[2] While in Boston, Byron performed and recorded with the Klezmer Conservatory Band, founded by NEC faculty member Hankus Netsky.
Musical career
Byron is a gifted performer on clarinet, bass clarinet and saxophone, but on many of his albums he subordinates his own playing to the exploration of a particular style. Byron is representative of a new generation of conservatory-trained jazz musicians who explore and record in a rich array of styles; his first album, Tuskegee Experiments, is a stew of classical avant garde and jazz improvisation, while albums such as Ivey Divey represent a straight-ahead exploration of the traditional jazz 'tune'.
Byron is a practicing jazz historian, and some of his albums have been recreations (in spirit) of forgotten moments in the history of popular music. Examples are Plays the Music of Mickey Katz and Bug Music.[3] Byron has been nominated for a Grammy Award for his bass clarinet solo on "I Want to Be Happy" from Ivey-Divey.
Byron has worked as a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver (2015), The University at Albany (2005-2009) and MIT (2007-2008), teaching composition, improvisation, music history, clarinet, and saxophone.
Byron is a member of the Black Rock Coalition. He has recorded with Allen Toussaint, Marc Ribot, Vernon Reid, Bill Frisell, Joe Henry, and others.
Byron was a judge for the 2nd annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.[4]
In 2001, Byron performed "Bli Blip" for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot + Indigo, a tribute to Duke Ellington, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease.
Byron was named a 2007 USA Prudential Fellow[5] and awarded a US$50,000 grant by United States Artists, a public charity that supports and promotes the work of American artists. He also won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007.
Byron won the Rome Prize Fellowship awarded by the American Academy in Rome in 2009, and his Seven Etudes for solo piano, commissioned by pianist Lisa Moore, made him a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Musical Composition in 2009.
Byron plays a mouthpiece by Fred Rast.[6]
Discography
As leader
- Tuskegee Experiments (Nonesuch, 1992)
- Plays the Music of Mickey Katz (Nonesuch, 1993)
- Music for Six Musicians (Nonesuch, 1995)
- Don Byron Quintet: No-Vibe Zone: Live at the Knitting Factory (Knitting Factory Works, 1996)
- Bug Music (Nonesuch, 1996)
- Don Byron & Existential Dred: Nu Blaxploitation (Blue Note, 1998)
- Romance with the Unseen (Blue Note, 1999)
- A Fine Line: Arias and Lieder (Blue Note, 2000)
- You Are #6: More Music for Six Musicians (Blue Note, 2001)
- Ivey-Divey (Blue Note, 2004)
- Do the Boomerang - The Music of Junior Walker" (Blue Note, 2006)
- Love, Peace, and Soul (Savoy, 2011)
As composer
- String Quartet No. 2; Four Thoughts on Marvin Gay, III, ETHEL: Light (Cantaloupe, 2006)
- Bang on a Can All Stars & Don Byron: A Ballad for Many (Cantaloupe, 2006)
- Lisa Moore: Seven (Cantaloupe, 2009)
- String Quartet No. 2; Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye, I-IV, ETHEL: Heavy (Innova, 2012)
As sideman
- Hamiet Bluiett: The Clarinet Family (Black Saint, 1987)
- Craig Harris: Shelter (JMT, 1987)
- Craig Harris Tailgater's Tales: Blackout in the Square Root of Soul (JMT, 1988)
- Living Colour: Time's Up (Epic, 1990)
- Mandy Patinkin: Dress Casual (CBS, 1990)
- Ralph Peterson: Presents The Fo'tet (Somethin' Else/Blue Note, 1990)
- Marc Ribot: Rootless Cosmopolitans (Antilles, 1990)
- Third Person (Tom Cora and Samm Bennett): The Bends (Knitting Factory Works, 1990)
- Reggie Workman: Images (Music & Arts, 1990)
- Gerry Hemingway Quintet: Special Detail (hatArt, 1991)
- Alan Lowe: At the Point of Impact (Fairhaven, 1991)
- David Murray: David Murray Big Band conducted by Lawrence "Butch" Morris (DIW/Columbia, 1991)
- Bobby Previte: Weather Clear, Track Fast (Enja, 1991)
- Steve Coleman: Drop Kick (Novus, 1992)
- Geduldig und Thimann: A Haymish Groove (Extraplatte, 1992)
- Hoppy Kamiyama: Welcome to Forbidden Paradise (Toshiba-EMI, 1992)
- Ralph Peterson: Ornettology (Somethin' Else/Blue Note, 1992)
- Hal Willner (producer): Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus (Columbia, 1992)
- Uri Caine: Sphere Music (JMT, 1993)
- Anthony Braxton: 4 (Ensemble) Compositions 1992 (Black Saint, 1993)
- Bill Frisell: Have a Little Faith (Elektra Nonesuch, 1993)
- David Murray: South of the Border (DIW/Columbia, 1993)
- Bobby Previte's Weather Clear, Track Fast: Hue and Cry (Enja, 1993)
- Reggie Workman: Altered Spaces (Leo, 1993)
- Cassandra Wilson: Blue Light 'til Dawn (Blue Note, 1993)
- Marilyn Crispell: Stellar Pulsations (Leo, 1994)
- Bill Frisell: This Land (Nonesuch, 1994)
- Leroy Jenkins: Themes & Improvisations on the Blues (CRI, 1994)
- Uri Caine: Toys (JMT, 1995)
- Marilyn Crispell: Live in San Francisco (Music&Arts, 1995)
- Jerome Harris: Hidden in Plain View (New World/Countercurrents, 1995)
- The Seedy Arkhestra (Chris Dowd): Puzzle (Profile, 1996)
- Douglas Ewart & Inventions Clarinet Choir: Angles of Entrance (Aarawak, 1996)
- Kansas City Band: Kansas City Soundtrack (Verve, 1996)
- Tom Pierson: Planet of Tears (Auteur, 1996; originally 1990?)
- President's Breakfast: Bar-B-Q Dali (Disc Lexia, 1996)
- Vernon Reid & Masque: Mistaken Identity (Sony, 1996)
- Suzanne Vega: Nine Objects of Desire (A&M, 1996)
- Uri Caine/Gustav Mahler: Primal Light / Urlicht (Winter & Winter, 1997)
- Kansas City Band: K. C. After Dark (Verve, 1997)
- Titilayo: Beware the Short Hair Girl (Blue Pantry, 1997)
- D. D. Jackson: Paired Down, Vol. 2 (Just In Time, 1998)
- Hector Martignon: The Foreign Affair (Candid, 1998)
- Neufeld-Occhipinti Jazz Orchestra (NOJO): You Are Here (Auracle, 1998)
- Daniel Barenboim and Guests: A Tribute to Ellington (Teldec, 1999)
- Uri Caine: The Sidewalks of New York: Tin Pan Alley (Winter & Winter, 1999)
- Bill Frisell: The Sweetest Punch: The New Songs of Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach Arranged by Bill Frisell (Decca, 1999)
- Uri Caine: The Goldberg Variations (Winter & Winter, 2000)
- Michael Occhipinti: Creation Dream – The Songs of Bruce Cockburn (True North, 2000)
- Lalo Schifrin: Esperanto (Act, 2000)
- Ralph Alessi: This Against That (RKM Music, 2002)
- Edsel Gomez: Cubist Music (Tba, 2002)
- Neufeld-Occhipinti Jazz Orchestra (NOJO): Highwire (True North, 2002)
- Uri Caine: Gustav Mahler: Dark Flame (Winter & Winter, 2003)
- Joe Henry: Fuse (Anti-, 2003)
- Craig Harris: Souls Within the Veil (Aquastra Music, 2005)
- Allen Toussaint; The Bright Mississippi (Nonesuch, 2009)
References
- Rast, Fred. "Biography". Rast Music.
External links
- Official site
- Don Byron (January 1, 2000). "Interview with Don Byron". NewMusicBox (Interview). Interview with Frank J. Oteri on December 18, 1999.
- Art of the States: Don Byron
- CNN interview with Don Byron
- United States Artists, arts advocacy organization
