Saxophonist Dan Moretti has released 17 CD’s during his 25 years of performing and touring throughout the states Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific Rim.  While covering many genres of jazz from straight to Latin-Jazz and funk he has always been influenced by the Organ groups of the 60’s.   Now Dan is doing his 18^th recording live at Chan’s in Woonsocket on November 23rd.  Dan and another Rhode Island Music legend Duke Robillard have had very divergent careers in music but they overlap in the world of blues and jazz.  Duke will join Dan in this exciting night.  The music will be a tribute to the Hammond B-3 groove-jazz generation including Stanley Turrentine, Gene Ammonds, King Curtis, Kenny Burrell, and Jimmy Smith.  Moretti and Robillard will be joined by Hammond B-3 master Dave Limina, drummer Lorne Entres and bassist Jesse Williams for an exciting groove adventure into the jazz-blues world.

 

Dan Moretti

 

The passion for performing, writing and producing music has fueled Saxophonist Dan Moretti’s eclectic musical career.  His personal sound and original writing have gained him international recognition as a performer, educator, composer and producer.  His inspiration and broad pallet of styles has allowed him to collaborate with musicians across the cultures of Europe, Africa, South America and Asia through performances and educational seminars.  With 17 original solo recordings behind him the muse seems to continues to flow in exciting new ways that leaves you wanting more.

History:

Dan started playing tenor sax and clarinet at the age of 12 and the following year he was fortunate to be invited to perform in the Rhode Island Youth All-State Jazz Band where he played at the world renown Newport Jazz Festival . This was the beginning of a long love and life with music.  After high school Dan attended the University of Rhode Island for 2 years followed by the Rhode Island School of Music for 2 years under the direction of re-nown trombonist Hal Crook.  After returning from a two year long tour with an original funk band Back Bay Brew based in Albany New York, Dan retuned to school and received a BS with a double major in Arranging-Composition and Music Education in 1975 from The Union Institute in Cincinnati.  Throughout the mid 70’s and the early 80’s he continued to perform in the North East United States in various groups while also doing performances with some of the Soul and R&B stars of Atlantic Records.  He maintained a connection with education by teaching privately and in the local school systems and music schools in the Southern New England area.  In 1981 he became a recording studio co-owner at Celebration Sounds in Rhode Island where he honed his engineering and producer and composing skills for the following 12 years.

In 1985 Dan’s recording career was launched with the international release of “Sometime Inside”, an all original self-produced fusion-jazz recording that was released on the Black Hawk Records label of San Francisco .  Along with straight-ahead players Stan Getz and Phil Woods Dan became Black Hawk’s “Fusion” star.  This first recording truly gave Dan his international profile, which was evident when he was asked to autograph this 1^st recording in 1989 after a concert in Yaroslavl, Russia.  Throughout his career Dan has toured in the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia and Russia performing and presenting clinics and seminars.  His musical influences range from jazz and classical to funk and Latin-jazz and New Orleans grooves.  Since the late 70’s, he has performed or recorded with a variety of artists across the musical spectrum.  A short list includes: Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Robert Plant, Kid Rock,  Cornell Dupree, Jerry Jemmott, The Temptations, Mike Stern, Omar Hakim, Jimmy Cobb, Dave Samuels, Dave Liebman, Marvin Stamm, and The Crusaders.  Dan’s love of all styles of jazz has enhanced his performances in straight-ahead jazz as-well-as Latin, funk and soul and is evident throughout his current collection of 17 released solo recordings.
Dan has been on the faculty at Berklee College of Music in Boston since 1996 and currently is holding a full time position in the CWP (Contemporary Writing and Production) department.  He was given the school’s “Curriculum Development Award” in 2006 for his popular on-campus course “Groove Writing”.  He has also been at the forefront of distance learning at Berklee where in 2003 he created the Berklee Online (Berklee’s distance-learning school) version of this course called “Arranging Contemporary Styles” and has been teaching this course to students all over the world.  In 2012 he converted this same course back to Berklee with one of the first on-line on-campus courses for Berklee.  In 2008, his book “Producing and Mixing Contemporary Jazz” was released on Hal Leonard-Berklee Press.  In 2010 Dan collaborated with Matthew Nichol and Oscar Stagnaro on the book “Essential Grooves” for Sher Music, which is required for all Groove Writing sections at Berklee.  In 2009, Dan was awarded the prestigious MacColl-Johnson fellowship for jazz composers, which enabled him to write and produce a project in 2011 with an Italian traditional orchestra called The Piccola Orchestra La Viola (POLV), bringing together his musical and Italian roots.  In 2012 Dan worked with Tutti Dynamics and helped develop the first fully interactive multi-camera and multi-track video versions of the styles in the Essential Grooves book.  www.tuttidynamics.com.  These Tutti grooves are now being used on campus at Berklee.

From 2002 until the present, Dan has also been active in Europe and the states performing his music and presenting seminars in Italy, Turkey, England, Belgium, Holland, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Africa, Ecuador and Gibraltar as-well-as being a sideman with artists like Nile Rodgers and Chic.  In the summer of 2006 he had the opportunity to perform in the house band at the 40th anniversary of The Montreux Jazz Festival tribute to Atlantic records with Nile Rodgers.  This was also a full circle experience being that that’s where it all began for Dan.  The performers he played with which included Dan writing charts and backing up were: Robert Plant, Stevie Nicks, Chaka Khan, Kid Rock, George Duke, Solomon Burke, and Steve Winwood.

For Full Discography and more detail including photo downloads go to: www.sonicbids.com/danmoretti

Duke Robillard

Guitarist. Bandleader. Songwriter. Singer. Producer. Session musician. And a one-man cheering section for the blues, in all its forms and permutations. And every one of those names has shared recording studio space or stage time with a man who is a legend in the blues community.

The Blues Music Awards (formerly W.C.Handy Awards) have named Duke Robillard “Best Blues Guitarist” four years out of five (2000,2001,2003,2004) making him the second most honored guitarist for that award! He was also nominated in that category in 2005, 2007 and again this year of 2008.

In 2007 Duke received a Grammy nomination for his “Guitar Groove-a-rama” CD and was also honored with the prestigious Rhode Island Pell Award for “excellence in the arts” along with actress Olympia Dukakis, actor Bob Colonna, and R.I. Choreographer/Festival Ballet director Mihailo “Misha” Djuric.The Pell award is named for Senator Claiborne Pell who help establish the the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities in 1965.

Other awards over the last decade include three Canadian Maple Blues Awards in 2001, 2002, and 2003 for “Best International Blues Artist,” The Blues Foundation’s “Producer of the Year” award in 2004, The French Blues Association “Album of the Year” award in 2002 (Living with the Blues) and “Guitarist of the Year” awards in 1999 and 2002.

BB King himself has called Duke “One of the great players,” The Houston Post called him “one of God’s guitarists. And the New York Times says “Robillard is a soloist of stunning force and originality.

None of that goes to Robillard’s head. He’s still on the road, still playing as many as 250 dates a year. And still proving, night after night, that his true talent is bringing people out to hear the music, appreciate the show, and dance to the blues.

Duke had his first band in high school — he was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island — and he was fascinated from the beginning by the ways in which jazz, swing, and the blues were linked. In 1967, he formed Roomful of Blues, and the band was tight enough and tough enough to accompany two of its heroes, Big Joe Turner and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson on record and in live appearances.

Always ahead of his time, Duke’s first band pre-dated the renewed interest in jump blues by more than a decade — and almost 20 years later, in 1986, when he recorded with jazz sax master Scott Hamilton, he recorded a collection of classic big band tunes from the ’30s and ’40s, thus skillfully pre-dating the neo-Swing craze of the mid ’90s.

Roomful of Blues — which still continues, forty years later — gave Duke his first exposure to a wide public, and when he left after a dozen years, he played briefly with rockabilly king Robert Gordon, then cut two albums with the Legendary Blues Band (a sterling collection of former members of Muddy Waters’ band). He led his own band until 1990, and then replaced Jimmy Vaughan in the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

In 1993, as he was about to sign a world-wide recording deal with Virgin/Pointblank, he met Holger Petersen, head of the Canadian independent label Stony Plain, at a folk festival in Winnipeg. In conversation, he mentioned he wanted to record a complete album of blues, without the r & b and jazz influences of his work to date.

Petersen was interested; Virgin gave the go-ahead, and the resulting album, Duke’s Blues, earned rave reviews. It was so successful, in fact, that Virgin soon licensed the record from Stony Plain and released it around the world (except in Canada, where it continues in the Canadian company’s catalogue.

In the years since his relationship with the Canadian label has been astonishingly fruitful. As a soloist , he has released eleven CDs, plus one with label mate Ronnie Earl and one with The New Guitar Summit. Duke’s next release will be in May/June of 2008

Just as remarkable have been the projects he has produced (and played on) for Stony Plain, including two albums with the late Jimmy Witherspoon, two with Kansas City piano king Jay McShann, comeback CDs for Billy Boy Arnold and Rosco Gordon, a swinging confection with the Canadian band The Rockin’ Highliners, and a superb album of guitar duets with the jazz legend Herb Ellis.

As if this growing catalogue was not enough, he has found time to share studio gigs with Bob Dylan (the Daniel Lanois-produced Time Out of Mind sessions), Ruth Brown, the late Johnny Adams, John Hammond, Pinetop Perkins, and Ronnie Earl, among many others. He now has his own 24-track studio in his home, and he has become deeply involved in graphic design and photography as well as record production.

Duke Robillard is a man in command of a full range of creative talents — unique in the blues, and rare in the music industry as a whole. He is, in fact, a complete artist at the height of his power.

Jesse Williams

Jesse Williams has been teaching music since 1991. He teaches at Milton Academy, Phillips Academy, Berklee College of Music’s Summer Performance Program, Beaver Country Day. He developed and directed the Jazz Program at Shady Hill School for 12 years.

He has performed throughout the world at major jazz festivals for 20 years, has recorded on two Grammy Nominated recordings, and has performed with the likes of Al Kooper, Duke Robillard, Jay Giels, Bucky Pizzarelli, Karin Alyson, Jay McShann (Charlie Parker), John Hammond, Ruth Brown, Harry Allen, Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, Maria Muldaur, Charles Neville, Johnnie Johnson, and many others.
He has appeared on PBS, Sesame St., Mountain Stage, AMC, National Film Archives, as well as multiple commercial spots. Mr. Williams holds a B.A. from Berklee College of Music.   He is currently bassist for the New Black Eagle Jazz Band.

FLYER
Chan’s Jazz and Blues Club, 267 Main St. Woonsocket R.I.  8 pm November 23, 2013.  Call 401-765-1900 for reservations.