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Andy Biskin

Andy Biskin is a clarinetist and composer with a broad range of interests. In addition to leading several ensembles in the New York area, he has composed scores for film, dance, and theater. Born and raised in Texas, Biskin studied music and anthropology at Yale and later worked as an assistant to folklorist Alan Lomax. His music, scored for the traditional New Orleans front line of clarinet, trumpet, and trombone, recalls early jazz and social music, but with sudden shifts in unexpected directions. Biskin's compositions have been compared to Raymond Scott, Charles Mingus, Charles Ives, Carla Bley, and Lawrence Welk.

Biskin's debut album Dogmental, on Gunther Schuller's GM Recordings label, received widespread critical acclaim. The record was featured twice on NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross" and has been used regularly between news stories on "All Things Considered."

Ben Ratliff named Dogmental "Album of the Week" in the New York Times, and wrote "It's hard to find gentle humor in jazz but the clarinetist Andy Biskin has perfect radar for it. Dogmental, his first album, is full of short pieces that break down into contrapuntal arrangements and short, pungent solos; it's a sweet-tempered album that doesn't take itself too seriously but has a lot of hidden virtues.... You can't say it's indicative of what jazz is up to or where it's going, but it's a little triumph nonetheless."

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75
Album Review

Andy Biskin: Songs from the Alan Lomax Collection

Read "Songs from the Alan Lomax Collection" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Alan Lomax's (1915-2002) field recordings and research heightened our awareness of folk music, i.e. Americana. He reintroduced many of us to our cultural origins where other musical genres received their humble beginnings. Shortly after graduating college, clarinetist, composer Andy Biskin was Lomax's research assistant. And here, the artist revisits the aura of Lomax's lifelong plight and efforts by forging a union with folk, jazz, classical and manifold interpretations that intimate little big band-like arrangements. The clarinetist and trumpeters ...

3
Album Review

Andy Biskin 16 Ton: Songs from the Alan Lomax Collection

Read "Songs from the Alan Lomax Collection" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Maybe you're not the type of American comfortable shouting “USA...USA...USA!" at sporting events. You might though, reconsider the prohibition after listening to clarinetist Andy Biskin and 16 Tons' Songs From The Alan Lomax Collection. If you know your history you're aware the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, beginning just before WWII, recorded (and preserved) folk and blues music in North America. Criss-crossing the states, he safeguarded our traditional music, much of which would have been lost to time. Consider, for a moment, ...

2
Album Review

Andy Biskin Ibid: Act Necessary

Read "Act Necessary" reviewed by Libero Farnè


Questo CD del nuovo quartetto Ibid, anomalo nel coniugare tre fiati e una batteria, rappresenta l'ultimo approdo dell'onnivoro Andy Biskin, nato in Texas, formatosi alla Yale University e con molte esperienze nel suo bagaglio musicale. Si percepiscono echi del passato nel percorso movimentato di Act Necessary; evidentemente Biskin appartiene a quella schiera di artisti che non può fare a meno di misurarsi col materiale consegnatogli da un patrimonio storico, jazzistico e non solo, di un ampio arco temporale. Nel brano ...

13
Album Review

Andy Biskin's Ibid: Act Necessary

Read "Act Necessary" reviewed by Dave Wayne


A working jazz musician in New York City and environs since 1991, clarinetist, composer, and filmmaker Andy Biskin is a modern-day Renaissance Man. The Texas native was already a fixture in San Antonio's polka scene (yes, people, this is a thing) as a teenager, Biskin attended Yale where he double-majored in music and anthropology. Later, he joined the staff of the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax. While working as an independent videographer and video producer / director, fate intervened and a ...

16
Album Review

Andy Biskin Ibid: Act Necessary

Read "Act Necessary" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Act Necessary is clarinetist-composer Andy Biskin's fifth album, where he integrates the jazz idiom into Americana, slapstick fare, funk and other disparate genres. He's an artist who stands out among his peers as he goes against the grain, while always mingling wit and whimsy into his overall musicality. Biskin's amiable and bubbly clarinet work forges an entryway into off-center rhythmic exercises amid a good-timey vibe; however, his music is not saccharine or schmaltzy. And he employs an all-star unit on ...

167
Album Review

Andy Biskin Quartet: Early American: The Melodies of Stephen Foster

Read "Early American: The Melodies of Stephen Foster" reviewed by George Kanzler


Stephen Foster was America's first pop songwriter, his music widely sung and played, as well as reproduced on music boxes (this album begins and ends with examples) in the last half of the 19th Century. But Foster is not the only uniquely American musician clarinetist Andy Biskin takes inspiration from in this idiosyncratic album.

The spirit of Raymond Scott, whose music was created roughly a century after Foster's, also informs this project. Scott's antic style--best known from his soundtrack work ...

177
Album Review

Andy Biskin: Trio Tragico

Read "Trio Tragico" reviewed by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio


Andy Biskin spins a musical tragicomedy on Trio Tragico. With Dave Ballou (trumpet) and Drew Gress (bass), he presents a melancholic but discretely jovial blend of chamber music and exciting new rhythms. The clarinetist's live set at Cornelia Street Café in early October captured the electricity of the trio. The improvisational bits of the performance were clean and affable, without tonal contradictions or awkward transitions. Onstage, Biskin seemed to be just as comfortable talking about his songs ...

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1

Recording

Andy Biskin's Ibid "Act Necessary" (Strudelmedia) Out May 20

Andy Biskin's Ibid "Act Necessary" (Strudelmedia) Out May 20

Source: Fully Altered Media

With An All-Star Quartet, Featuring Cornetist Kirk Knuffke, Trombonist Brian Drye, & Drummer Jeff Davis “It’s hard to find gentle humor in jazz but the clarinetist Andy Biskin has perfect radar for it. ...it’s a sweet-tempered [music] that doesn’t take itself too seriously but has a lot of hidden virtues.” —Ben Ratliff, The New York Times Clarinetist-composer Andy Biskin is up to his old tricks again on Act Necessary (strudelmedia), the debut release by his new quartet, Ibid. Mashing up ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Act Necessary

Strudelmedia
2014

buy

Trio Tragico

Strudelmedia
2006

buy

Dogmental

GM Recordings
2000

buy

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