MASTERCLASS SERIES
THURSDAY, MAY 18 2023
6:30p – 8:30p
@ Raue Center For The Arts
Join Ernie Watts as he discusses his musical process and regales us with stories. Watts discusses how to create musical freedom through discipline and shares stories from his life lived in music for over 60 years followed by a Q&A.
BIOGRAPHY
Ernie Watts is one of the most prolific and versatile saxophone players in music. Winner of two GRAMMY Awards, Watts has been featured on over 500 recordings by artists ranging from Cannonball Adderley to Frank Zappa. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, he began playing saxophone at the age of 13. He attended Berklee College of Music on a Downbeat Magazine scholarship. He toured with Buddy Rich in the late-1960s. He visited Africa on a U.S. State Department tour with Oliver Nelson’s group. It was with Oliver Nelson that Watts had the occasion to record with the legendary Thelonious Monk on Monk’s Blues for Columbia Records. For 20 years he played alto saxophone with The Tonight Show Band under the direction of Doc Severinsen. He was a featured soloist on many of Marvin Gaye’s albums on Motown during the 1970s, as well as on many other pop and R&B sessions.
Watts’s charter membership in Charlie Haden’s critically acclaimed Quartet West continued for almost 30 years until Haden’s death. In 2014, Watts received the prestigious Frankfurt Music Prize given by the city of Frankfurt, Germany. Per the Frankfurt Music Prize Foundation, Watts was selected for his “strikingly melodic saxophone style and his original tone language with which he has already enriched several generations of musicians.” Watts has performed and/or recorded with a long list of who’s who in Jazz including Pat Metheny, Billy Cobham, Kurt Elling, Arturo Sandoval, and Jack DeJohnette to name just a few. His saxophone can be heard on countless television and film scores, and recordings too numerous to list. Corky Siegel and Ernie Watts met in India while touring together with the iconic South Indian violinist Dr. L. Subramaniam’s Global Fusion project.
In addition to Watt’s own quartet recordings, he can also be heard on Siegel’s most recent Chamber Blues releases, 2017’s Different Voices, which received Critic’s Choice from the Editors of Downbeat, and the September 2022 release of More Different Voices, which will be added to Downbeat’s Best CD of the Year commendation for 2022.
“He is one of the greatest living tenor saxophone players, at the top of his game.” -Ian Petterson – All About Jazz
Learn more at www.ErnieWatts.com
This program is made possible by the generous support of
