While in New York City, Zilber recorded two critically acclaimed OWL-EMI Records as a leader, "The Heretic" and "Stranger in Brooklyn", which was named one of the top 30 CDs of all time by Jazzfusion.com.
Since his move to San Francisco, Michael has performed in numerous musical settings as a leader and sideman, including co-leading a quartet featuring the renowned drummer Steve Smith and directing CARMA, the Bay Area's "all-star Jazz Orchestra".
Michael's 2000 release, the critically hailed "Two Coasts", features Steve Smith, Rachel Z, James Genus, and Rodney Holmes. This CD was a finalist for the 2001 Independent Music Awards Jazz Record of the Year.
In 2003 Zilber and Smith released a top 20 jazz recording on Blue Jay records entitled "Reimagined" which Michael Brecker called truly amazing and David Liebman said was the next step forward in reworking jazz standards. That same year, Zilber and Liebman were the featured artists on Jazzschool Records inaugural release, "Live at the Jazzschool".
Michael's next release, in 2005 was a reunion with his East Coast comrades Liebman, Bruce Barth, James Genus and Clarence Penn, and featured all original compositions, and was Zilber's first release to be primarily available online.
In 2010, Zilber released a recording of poems set to music, poems by the world-renowned American poet Billy Collins. Released on Origin Records of Seattle, it received favorable reviews, including from Bill Milkowski of Jazz Times, who said "This is art music of the highest order performed with passion, wit and verve."[1]
Current projects include recordings and performances with guitar master John Stowell, with whom he has released 2 recordings on Origin Records, Shot Through with Beauty in 2011 and Live Beauty in 2015, both records were well-reviewed, including a 4 star review in Downbeat Magazine for Live Beauty. As well Zilber has ongoing performances and recordings with his own quartet and as a member of trumpeter Erik Jekabson's Stringtet and Big Band. The Big Band, the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, performs weekly at Doc's Lab in San Francisco and will be releasing a CD, Cheap Rent, on Origin Records in August 2015.[2][3]
Zilber directs the Advanced High School Jazz Workshop at the Jazzschool in Berkeley, California, a group that won Outstanding High School Combo from Downbeat Magazine for 11 consecutive years. He also teaches at the California Jazz Conservatory, including Composition, Advanced Theory and Ensembles.[4]
Zilber is the Director of Jazz and Popular Music at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, California.[5]
Personal life
In 1987, he married singer-actress Carla Anne Smith, who later changed her name to Carla Zilbersmith (1962–2010). Their son, Maclen Jacob Zilber, was born in 1992 in New York City, and married Christine Truong in 2021. They separated in early 2007 and later divorced. Zilber remarried in June 2014.[6]
John McLaughlin is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Indian classical music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues. After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with drummer Tony Williams's group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator. His career includes more than fifty recordings as a leader and more than 500 published compositions. His ensembles include the Dave Douglas Quintet; Sound Prints, a quintet co-led with saxophonist Joe Lovano; Uplift, a sextet with bassist Bill Laswell; Present Joys with pianist Uri Caine and Andrew Cyrille; High Risk, an electronic ensemble with Shigeto, Jonathan Aaron, and Ian Chang; and Engage, a sextet with Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, Anna Webber, Nick Dunston, and Kate Gentile.
Carla Bley is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and bandleader. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill, as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, John Scofield and her ex-husband Paul Bley.
Charles Edward Haden was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than 50 years. In the late 1950s, he was an original member of the ground-breaking Ornette Coleman Quartet.
Joseph Salvatore Lovano is an American jazz saxophonist, alto clarinetist, flautist, and drummer. He has earned a Grammy Award and several mentions on Down Beat magazine's critics' and readers' polls. His wife is singer Judi Silvano with whom he records and performs. Lovano was a longtime member of drummer Paul Motian‘s trio with guitarist Bill Frisell.
David Liebman is an American saxophonist, flautist and jazz educator. He is known for his innovative lines and use of atonality. He was a frequent collaborator with pianist Richie Beirach.
Roswell Hopkins Rudd Jr. was an American jazz trombonist and composer.
Michael Mantler is an Austrian avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer of contemporary music.
Vijay Iyer is an American composer, pianist, bandleader, producer, and writer based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway." Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. He was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the Downbeat Magazine international critics' polls in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2018. In 2014 he received a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he is jointly appointed in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.
Loren Stillman is a jazz saxophonist and composer. He has received two Outstanding Performance Awards and the Rising Star Jazz Artist Award (2004) from Down Beat Magazine. and received the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming and the ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Award in 2005.
Steve Wilson is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, who is best known in the musical community as a flutist and an alto and soprano saxophonist. He also plays the clarinet and the piccolo. Wilson performs on many different instruments and has performed and recorded on over twenty-five albums. His interests include folk, jazz, classical, world music, and experimental music. Wilson is currently on the faculty of New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts. He was elected as an American Champion by the National Flute Association. Wilson has maintained a busy career working as a session musician, and has contributed to many musicians of note both in the recording studios, but as a sideman on tours. Over the years he has participated in engagements with several musical ensembles, as well as his own solo efforts.
Ben Perowsky is an American drummer, percussionist, composer, and music producer. He is the drummer on stage in the 8 TONY award winning Broadway musical Hadestown. Perowsky leads the Ben Perowsky Trio, Moodswing Orchestra and Upstream Trio with Chris Speed and John Medeski. He is a founding member of the electric jazz group Lost Tribe. A prolific sideman, Perowsky has performed with Roy Ayers, John Scofield, The Lounge Lizards, Joan As Police Woman, Elysian Fields, Darryl Jenifer, Uri Caine, Dave Douglas, Mike Stern, Bob Berg, Walter Becker, Steven Bernstein., and John Zorn.
John F. Stowell is an American jazz guitarist, composer, author, and lecturer.
JAZZ: The Smithsonian Anthology is a six-CD, box-set released by Smithsonian Folkways that covers the history of jazz. The set includes 111 tracks with representative works from many styles, including big band, dixieland, free jazz, fusion, Latin jazz, swing, and smooth jazz. An accompanying 200-page book includes essays, analysis, and photographs.
Gary Keller is a jazz and classical saxophonist, recording artist, a lecturer at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, and a Conn-Selmer Artist. He has played with Woody Herman, Frank Sinatra, and Jaco Pastorius, among many over a career spanning more than four decades. He appears on numerous recordings. He has performed in the pit of Broadway orchestras and for television shows.
Ryan Keberle is an American trombone player, composer, arranger, and educator. Described by The New York Times as a "trombonist of vision and composure", he leads Ryan Keberle & Catharsis, his All Ears Orchestra, the Big Band Living Legacy Project and co-leads the international chamber jazz ensemble, Reverso. Keberle has performed with David Bowie, Maria Schneider, Wynton Marsalis, Darcy James Argue, Alicia Keys, and Sufjan Stevens, among others, and has appeared on seven Grammy Award-winning records.
Jim Hart is a vibraphonist, drummer and composer on the European contemporary jazz and alternative music scene. He leads Cloudmakers Trio with Michael Janisch and Dave Smith and, since 2017, Cloudmakers Five with saxophonist Antonin-Tri Hoang and guitarist Hannes Riepler, in addition to Janisch and Smith.
Michael Blake is a Canadian-born American saxophonist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. Over the course of his career he formed the bands Blake Tartare, Hellbent, Mr Carefree, Elevated Quartet, The Eulipion Orchestra, The Variety Hour, Red Hook Soul, Blake & Brass XL, Chroma Nova and co-lead the groups Made in China and Slow Poke. As a sideman Michael has performed with Charlie Hunter, The Lounge Lizards, Steven Bernstein/Henry Butler and the Hot 9, Ben Allison, Nicole Mitchell, Hamid Drake, Oliver Lake Big Band, Dafnis Prieto Big Band, Ricki Lee Jones and Ray LaMontagne.
Chad Taylor is an American drummer, percussionist, and composer. Taylor leads both the Chad Taylor Trio with Brian Settles and Neil Podgurski and Circle Down with Angelica Sanchez and Chris Lightcap. He is a founding member of the Chicago Underground along with Jeff Parker and Rob Mazurek.
Erik Jekabson is an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhorn player, and vibraphonist. A Bay Area-based musician, he is known for the jazz group The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, which he leads. He is also a composer and arranger.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
