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Michael Zilber

San Francisco Bay Area based saxophonist and composer Michael Zilber is described by NEA Jazz Master David Liebman as “one of the best players and composers around anywhere. Period!” The Canadian-born ex-New Yorker has 10 albums to his name as a leader or co-leader. He has also performed or recorded with everyone from Liebman to Miroslav Vitous, Mike Clark, Dizzy Gillespie and Bob Berg, to name just a very few.

Zilber co-led a band with drumming great Steve Smith for eight years, releasing the top 20 recording Reimagined: Jazz Standards, Volume 1 in 2003. For the past decade, he has teamed up with guitar virtuoso John Stowell, most recently on 2016’s Basement Blues, which All About Jazz’s Dan McClenaghan calls “as compelling and modernistic and compelling as any group out there,” hailing Zilber as “soulful and flawless”. Their 2015 Origin Records recording Live Beauty, made DownBeat magazine’s “best of the year” list for 2015, as well as garnering rave reviews from JazzTimes and All About Jazz. This was a follow-up to the group’s Shot Through With Beauty, which NPR jazz critic Andrew Gilbert picked as a top 10 record of the year. On Turning Ten: The Billy Collins Project, providing musical settings for the American Poet Laureate’s poems, was hailed by famed jazz journalist Bill Milkowski as a “work of art of the highest order.”

Zilber currently leads his “Originals for the Originals” project, with an upcoming 2017 Origin album release of the same name to feature high-profile sidemen Dave Kikoski, James Genus and Clarence Penn. Zilber also leads a project called Weather Wayne, his electric jazz homage to Wayne Shorter, recently playing to a sold out house at SFJAZZ.

Zilber is also a sideman in various projects, including in top Trumpet/composer Erik Jekabson’s Stringtet, and playing in and writing for SF-based Electric Squeezebox Orchestra. This highly acclaimed composers’ big band recently released Cheap Rent, receiving 4.5 stars in DownBeat. In Berkeley, California, he leads the multiple DownBeat award-winning Jazzschool Jazz Workshop, as well as overseeing the composition program and teaching ensembles at the California Jazz Conservatory. Zilber holds a Doctorate in composition from NYU.

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5
Album Review

Mike Clark & Michael Zilber: Mike Drop

Read "Mike Drop" reviewed by Paul Rauch


A first encounter with saxophonist Michael Zilber in a live setting leaves a very large impression. Enshrouding the marvelous facility and deeply melodic approach to improvisation is “the sound" which allows the listener to receive the music in a soulful way. When that sound and imagination are driven by the post-bop mastery of drummer Mike Clark, illuminating things can and will take place.Celebrating a ten-year friendship, Zilber and Clark laid down this session in Oakland in 2018 for ...

1
Album Review

Michael Zilber: East West / Music for Big Bands

Read "East West / Music for Big Bands" reviewed by Jack Bowers


On East West, his first-ever big-band enterprise, Canadian-born saxophonist Michael Zilber leads world-class ensembles in New York City and San Francisco, which speaks volumes about his artistry and gravitas. Zilber not only plays saxophone on both bands, he composed eight of the fourteen numbers on this handsome two-CD set and arranged all of them. Even while playing and recording in smaller groups on both coasts and in Canada, Zilber had been writing and setting aside big-band charts ...

14
Album Review

Michael Zilber: Originals For the Originals

Read "Originals For the Originals" reviewed by Paul Rauch


Saxophonist/composer Michael Zilber is better known by fellow musicians than by the jazz public, this is an unfortunate truth. The Vancouver, B.C., native moved to Boston in his late teens, then to New York City to begin his musical odyssey. Musicians there recognized his prodigious talent, resulting in recordings with jazz royalty such as Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, the Brecker Brothers and Dave Liebman. Zilber has spent the last 25 years in the San Francisco area, though he ...

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3

Recording

Legendary Drummer Mike Clark and Superlative Saxophonist Michael Zilber Present Collaborative Album 'Mike Drop'

Legendary Drummer Mike Clark and Superlative Saxophonist Michael Zilber Present Collaborative Album 'Mike Drop'

Source: Lydia Liebman Promotions

Sunnyside Records is proud to announce the July 16th, 2021 release of Mike Drop, an impressive new album co-led by iconic jazz drumming legend Mike Clark and renowned saxophonist Michael Zilber. The culmination of a decade-long musical relationship, Mike Drop features these two consummate players alongside two top Bay Area stalwarts bassist Peter Barshay and pianist Matt Clark. Recorded at Oakland’s 25th Street Studio in 2018, the tight-locked group created a buoyant celebration of time and place that is both ...

3

Recording

All About Jazz Top 10 MP3 Downloads: February 2017

All About Jazz Top 10 MP3 Downloads: February 2017

Source: All About Jazz

All About Jazz features a free song every day spanning all genres of jazz, and of the 30 tracks featured in February, these ten represent our personal favorites. We also included the top ten reader favorites as indicated by total downloads. Musicians and record labels can submit full length MP3s for consideration here. Enjoy! EDITOR'S PICKS Breackerfast Club 5:57 Michael Zilber From: Originals for the Originals Winter Sweet 08:06 University ...

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Mike Drop

Sunnyside Records
2021

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East West / Music for...

Origin Records
2019

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Originals For the...

Origin Records
2017

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Outside the Box –...

Global Fusion Music
2013

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