Fred Lipsius (born 19 November 1943 in the Bronx) is an American musician who is the original saxophonist and arranger for the jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears, [1] for which he played alto saxophone and piano. He was with the band from 1967 to 1971 and has collected 3 GRAMMY Awards and 9 Gold Records.
Before Blood, Sweat & Tears, Lipsius played with the Ronn Metcalfe Orchestra.
Lipsius has performed with Simon & Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, and jazz greats Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Eddie Gómez, Al Foster, George Mraz, Larry Willis, Randy Brecker, and Rodney Jones. He has written music for and performed on over 30 CDs as both a leader and sideman. He has authored six books on jazz improvisation and jazz reading.
In 2020, Lipsius retired from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, USA after teaching full-time for 35 years.
In retirement, Lipsius has focused his efforts on his visual art. He has been creating digital pieces since 2000 and has had a number of public showings, some of which have been accompanied by his music.
Lipsius creates his pieces with Photoshop and other materials and has said of his art, "Producing this art has been nothing but fun and a big gift for me. My pieces are mostly improvised with little or no preconceived idea of what they should be. In viewing my art, please know that anything you can imagine already exists somewhere!”
Lipsius has recently listed some of his pieces as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) on OpenSea.
Born in the Bronx, New York City on November 19, 1943, Lipsius began playing the clarinet at age 9, alto and tenor saxophones in junior high school, and the piano at Music and Art High School in Manhattan. He continued his studies at Berklee School of Music (1961–62).
Lipsius was a saxophonist, arranger and conductor with Blood, Sweat & Tears from 1967 to 1971. He also doubled on keyboards. While with the band, he won nine Gold Records plus a Grammy Award for his arrangement of "Spinning Wheel". [1] Lipsius also arranged and co-arranged, respectively, the hit singles "Hi-De-Ho" and "You've Made Me So Very Happy". In both the Down Beat and Playboy jazz polls he placed in the top ten of the alto sax category. Lipsius has composed, arranged and produced radio and TV commercials, including 2 CBS TV logos- themes introducing the season's upcoming shows. In the spring of 1982, he toured in Japan and Europe with Simon and Garfunkel.
Blood, Sweat & Tears is an American jazz rock music group founded in New York City in 1967, noted for a combination of brass with rock instrumentation. BS&T has gone through numerous iterations with varying personnel and has encompassed a wide range of musical styles. Their sound has merged rock, pop and R&B/soul music with big band jazz.
Child Is Father to the Man is the debut album by Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in February 1968. It reached number 47 on the Billboard pop albums chart in the United States.
Louis William Marini Jr., known as "Blue Lou" Marini, is an American saxophonist, arranger, and composer. He is best known for his work in jazz, rock, blues, and soul music, as well as his association with The Blues Brothers.
Blood, Sweat & Tears is the second album by the American band Blood, Sweat & Tears, released on December 11, 1968. It was the most commercially successful album for the group, rising to the top of the U.S. charts for a collective seven weeks and yielding three successive Top 5 singles. It received a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1970. The album has been certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA, with sales of more than four million units in the U.S. In Canada, the album enjoyed a total of eight weeks at number 1 on the RPM national album chart.
Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 is the third album by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears. It was released in June 1970.
B, S & T; 4 is the fourth album by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in June 1971. It peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Pop albums chart.
Greatest Hits is a compilation album by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears, initially released in February 1972.
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Jazzmobile, Inc. is based in New York City, and was founded in 1964 by Daphne Arnstein, an arts patron and founder of the Harlem Cultural Council and Dr. William "Billy" Taylor. It is a multifaceted, outreach organization committed to bringing "America's Classical Music"—Jazz—to the largest possible audience by producing concerts, festivals and special events worldwide. The Jazzmobile educational efforts are now being enhanced by the creation of a not-for-profit music publishing company and not-for-profit recording company.
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Steven Katz is an American guitarist, singer, and record producer who is best known as a member of the rock-pop-jazz group Blood, Sweat & Tears. Katz was an original member of the rock bands the Blues Project and American Flyer. As a producer, his credits include the 1979 album Short Stories Tall Tales for the Irish band Horslips, and the Lou Reed albums Rock 'n' Roll Animal and Sally Can't Dance and the Elliott Murphy album Night Lights.
Now Is the Time is a jazz album released by Jeff Lorber Fusion. The album was released in 2010 on Heads Up Records and was produced by Jeff Lorber, Bobby Colomby, and Jimmy Haslip. It was nominated for the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.
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Darcy Rolston Hepner is a Canadian/American saxophonist, composer, and arranger.