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John W. Ricci

"When you play, your music must groove enough to make your soul dance. When you play, your music must groove enough to make everyones soul dance with yours." Paraphrased from the great pianist Donald Brown who John Ricci quoted on his debut jazz quartet CD release: Holding Time.

Combining the culture of his Argentine roots and background in a musical family with a deep study of saxophone influences such as John Coltrane, Ben Webster, Stan Getz, Michael Brecker, Branford Marsalis and Mark Turner, John Ricci draws together soulful, hard swinging and harmonically modern and rhythmically diverse elements to his compositions and arrangements.

John Ricci has been a performer, jazz educator, composer, and clinician in the North Florida area for over eleven years. John attended the jazz studies program at the University of Tennessee Knoxville where he was mentored directly by internationally recognized saxophonist and jazz pedagogue Jerry Coker and former Art Blakey Jazz Messenger Donald Brown. He then attended Florida State University earning a Masters of Music in Jazz Studies under a teaching assistantship. In that time he performed with Blue Note Trumpeter Marcus Printup and at Preservation Hall in New Orleans. He has received many awards including a Downbeat Magazine award in 1995. John has since performed with a myriad of top recording artists and regularly in numerous club dates spanning from New York to Savannah, He’s performed locally as a tenor saxophone soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony Pops Orchestra, the Four Tops, The Temptations, and in festivals including Chijazz Festival in Singapore, as a regular performer in the Jacksonville Jazz Festival, the Savannah Jazz Festival, as a guest artist with pianist/composer Donald Brown in the Knoxville Jazz Festival, and was invited to headline the Inaugural Jacksonville jazz Series with his own quartet. most recently, John opened for Julian Lage with his popular trio to head the Riverside Fine Arts Series, a highly prestigious concert series hosted in Riverside, Jacksonville.

John’s CD Holding Time received high critical acclaim, and is a debut release of some of his own very inspired compositions and arrangements and includes some of the finest musicians in the southeast. And in January 2009, John was judged the winner of the jazz song category of the 8th Annual Independent Music Awards. John has taught at the University of North Florida assisting legendary saxophonist Bunky Green, and is now Director of Jazz Studies at Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, FL.

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By JOHN BARRON at AllAboutJazz Published: May 26, 2008 John Ricci: Holding Time

Saxophonist/educator John Ricci comes out swinging for his debut recording Holding Time. The Jacksonville University Professor of Jazz Studies combines original compositions and arrangements of standards for an intriguing set of mainstream jazz.

The disc opens in vigorous fashion with the up-tempo "Mode Time," a perfect minor key workout for Ricci's robust tenor tone. The saxophonist weaves together a tight-knit solo, heavy on thematic development. Pianist Joshua Bowlus follows Ricci with a sweltering solo turn. The mood is lightened somewhat on the floating waltz "Ballerina." Here, Ricci is able to comfortably display his edgy, vibrato-laden phrasing, which straddles traditional swinging ideals and contemporary influences.

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