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Chris Cheek

Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Chris Cheek, the son of a junior high school band director, began playing the alto sax at the age of 12. Chris played in a variety of local Jazz and Blues bands in the St. Louis area while attending Webster University. In 1988, on scholarship, he went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts where he studied with Joe Viola and Hal Crook, eventually receiving a bachelors degree in performance.

Chris moved to New York in 1992 and since then has played and recorded with a number of different groups including: Paul Motian's "Electric Bebop Band", "The Bloomdaddies", Charlie Haden's "Liberation Music Orchestra", The Brian Blade Fellowship, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Luciana Souza, David Berkman, and Guillermo Klein's "Los Guachos". Chris has played in Japan, China, Russia, Canada, throughout much of Europe and the United States, with these and other bands.

In addition to appearing on over 60 albums as a sideman, Chris has recorded 4 albums as a leader on Fresh Sound Records, "I Wish I Knew", "A Girl Named Joe", "Vine", and most recently "Blues Cruise", featuring Brad Mehldau. While he continues to be actively involved in a number of different musical projects, Chris plays regularly with his own band at various clubs in the U.S. and abroad.

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8
Album Review

Alex Hitchcock: Dream Band

Read "Dream Band" reviewed by Geno Thackara


Alex Hitchcock has a lot of energy and a lot of ideas; four recordings have apparently left him in no danger of running out. Clearly it helps to have met plenty of friends and collaborators along the way. Besides the mutual inspiration that arises between generous players, he knows he will probably have a voice available (instrumental or literal) for just about any germ of a song that arises. Where each previous recording revolved around a single lineup, the cast ...

15
Album Review

Pablo Ablanedo: Christreza

Read "Christreza" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


This LP clocks in at around 38-minutes and is a bit of a tease since it progresses rather quickly and may leave many listeners wanting more. Here, Argentine-reared pianist/composer/educator Pablo Ablanedo's compositional gifts often take on cinematic film scoring intonations and developments, executed with jazz luminaries who the artist met while attending the Berklee College of Music in 1999. Owing to his heritage, the leader infuses subtle Latin jazz foreground grooves into several movements, whereas the opener “La ...

12
Album Review

Rajiv Jayaweera: Pistils

Read "Pistils" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann


New York-based drummer Rajiv Jayaweera had quite the international upbringing. Born in London to Sri Lankan parents, Jayaweera grew up in Melbourne, where he completed his Bachelor of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts before finishing his Masters in Jazz studies in New York in 2013. In the liner notes of his debut album Pistils, Jayaweera explains that the album is dedicated to his grandparents and the music on it draws inspiration from his Sri Lankan roots and ...

6
Album Review

Rajiv Jayaweera: Pistils

Read "Pistils" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


While London-born, Melbourne-reared, New York-based drummer Rajiv Jayaweera's work is naturally colored by his experiences spanning those points on the map, it's his Sri Lankan heritage that most greatly informs and influences this debut. Drawing inspiration from memories of nature, sounds and scents surrounding his grandparents' garden there, Jayaweera creates a musical sanctuary and wonderland painted in vivid colors. Pistils, a title referencing the seed-bearing, reproductive portion of a flower, plays on blooming beauty at its first ...

7
Album Review

Andrew Hartman: Compass

Read "Compass" reviewed by Edward Blanco


New York-based jazz guitarist Andrew Hartman offers his second album as leader with the modern jazz-like Compass featuring nine originals and a newly-arranged rendition of the Paul Simon classic “America." The music is decidedly modern with a taste of the Brazilian and Indian musical influences. Originally from Cincinnati, OH, Hartman moved to London, UK in 2011 where he worked as a freelance musician and teacher and during that time, the guitarist began working on a handful of compositions and arrangements ...

6
Album Review

Charlie Haden / Liberation Music Orchestra: Time/Life:Songs For The Whales And Other Beings

Read "Time/Life:Songs For The Whales And Other Beings" reviewed by Ian Patterson


Formed by bassist Charlie Haden in 1969 to protest America's war in Vietnam/Indochina, the Liberation Music Orchestra has reconvened roughly every ten years to record musical protest in the face of major injustices. Time/Life: Song for the Whales and Other Beings was inspired by concern at global ecological destruction, and to that end the music has a pervasive melancholy colored by the LMO's signature lyricism, and broken up by stirring collective and individual passages. The LMO's personnel has ...

1
Album Review

Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra: Time / Life

Read "Time / Life" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


Due anni dopo la scomparsa di Charlie Haden si pubblica questo ultimo documento della sua Liberation Music Orchestra, un lavoro che il compianto contrabbassista progettò ma che non ebbe modo di portare a compiuta realizzazione. Vessillo del suo impegno civile e umano, l'orchestra era nata nel 1969 raccogliendo una pletora di musicisti straordinari, molti dei quali oggi non sono più con noi: Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman, Paul Motian. L'album è forse diverso da quello che sarebbe ...

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Recording

Saxophonists Seamus Blake/Chris Cheek Release "Reeds Ramble" -- CD Release Party at Smalls in March

Saxophonists Seamus Blake/Chris Cheek Release "Reeds Ramble" -- CD Release Party at Smalls in March

Source: Dan Blake

Seamus Blake & Chris Cheek Celebrate New CD Reeds Ramble With 3 Nights @ Smalls March 13, 14 & 15 Smalls Jazz Club 183 West 10th Street Greenwich Village 183 W 10th St New York, NY 10014 About Reeds Ramble Seamus Blake, Thelonious Monk Competition winner in 2002, teams up with former Bloomdaddies band member Chris Cheek for his latest outing on the Criss ...

Ricardo Pinheiro
guitar, electric
Ben Bryden
saxophone
Waxwing
band / ensemble / orchestra
Jon Bentley
saxophone, tenor
Oleksandr Kolosii
saxophone, tenor
Itay Goldberg
saxophone, tenor
Patricia López
saxophone

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Up High, Down Low

Sunnyside Records
2023

buy

Dream Band

Fresh Sound New Talent
2021

buy

Pistils

Outside in Music
2020

buy

Christreza

Newvelle Records
2020

buy

Stars and Garters

Self Produced
2020

buy

London Blues

From: Compass
By Chris Cheek

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