# Getting human with Art Lande: Videos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/02/24/getting-human-with-art-lande-videos/
- Published: 2019-02-24T13:52:19+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**It’s not quite a secret society or an underground movement, but scattered across
the country wherever jazz is played former students of Art Lande are in the thick
of the creative action. A brilliant pianist, accomplished drummer and dauntless 
improviser, Lande has been based in Boulder, Colorado, for some three decades, but
he’s got deep ties to the Bay Area.**

With his general disregard for publicity and come-what-may attitude toward recording,
Lande is a jazz giant who flies under the radar, while the musicians he’s nurtured
keep his name circulating. A former Berkeley resident, he’s playing a series of 
late-night jam sessions this weekend as part of Piedmont Piano’s 40th birthday celebration
in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood joined by bassist Peter Barshay, drummer Alan Hall
and various special guests.

A San Jose native who studied with Lande during his formative years, Hall is one
of the top drummers in the Bay Area, and leader of the acclaimed jazz sextet Ratatet.
He describes the pianist as “like my musical father. Playing with him there’s so
much openness. Anything goes. I love playing in that environment.”

Lande also performs Tuesday at the California Jazz Conservatory’s Rendon Hall as
part of the school’s Way Out West series that focuses on ensembles playing new compositions.
It’s a rare concert in the weekly showcase not featuring an ongoing band, but Lande
is in good company, joined by Oakland trombonist Rob Ewing and Kensington drummer
Jason Levis, who both studied with Lande at the Naropa Institute in the late 1990s.
Rounding out the ensemble are San Francisco bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, an essential
force on the Bay Area’s creative music scene, and trumpeter Josh D Reed, a longtime
Lande collaborator who recently relocated to the Bay Area to run the Santa Clara
University jazz program.

For Levis, who leads the live dub-reggae ensemble Joseph’s Bones, Lande’s profound
influence on numerous musicians can be explained by his holistic approach to creativity.“
The thing he does when he’s teaching, it’s not just about music,” says Levis, who
returns to the CJC on April 23 for a night of original music with his septet featuring
Mezzacappa, Ewing, trumpeter Max Miller-Loran, and saxophonists Cory Wright and 
Beth Schenck. “Art has this way of making whatever you’re doing about being a human
being. The music he makes is about his experience as a human being. That’s the underlying
influence that he’s had on all these musicians. Improvisation is about being human
together.”

The fact that Lande keeps such a low profile these days would surprise people who
got to know him when he first landed in San Francisco in 1969 after studying at 
Williams College. Within a few weeks word spread about a hot new player in town,
and he started gigging with emerging and established masters like Noel Jewkes, Eddie
Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, and John Handy, “not all the time, but
I was the new kid on the block, and I was getting calls,” says Lande, 72.

He first gained widespread attention in the early 1970s with a prodigious quintet
featuring bassist Steve Swallow, saxophonist Mel Martin, trumpeter Tom Harrell, 
and drummer Eliot Zigmund. But it was his debut album for ECM, 1973’s duo project
_Red Lanta_ with Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, that gave him a crucial foothold
in Europe. He continued to record often for ECM while living in Berkeley, earning
a cult following with his mid-1970s quartet Rubisa Patrol featuring bassist Bill
Douglass and trumpeter Mark Isham (now an A-list Hollywood composer).

Often sought out by young musicians looking to study with him, he ended up creating
a school while living on Russell Street and later Bonar Street. There were so many
people clamoring for lessons, Lande wasn’t sure what to do at first “so I said anyone
who wants to come over to Berkeley at 7 a.m. I’ll take as a student, and I created
a school out of that,” Lande recalls. “I ended up with about 120 students just teaching
in the house and garage and in the park. People paid five bucks a class. It gave
me a lot of chops in terms of teaching.”

But his instruction often took place outside formal lessons. Like today, his ensembles
tended to coalesce in teaching situations. Several generations of stellar jazz artists
have come of age under his wing, and then took flight to lead their own bands. He
doesn’t seem to fret at all that some of his former students have attained far more
renown. For Lande, music is as much a vehicle to connect with people as a forum 
for self-expression.

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