Tim Luntzel

Tim Luntzel was born and raised in Palo Alto, California where at the age of 11 he began playing the bass guitar. In high school, repeated and involuntary exposure to the music of Count Basie and Duke Ellington eventually led to a fledgeling enthusiasm for jazz, manifesting itself in scholarships to the Monterey Jazz Camp, the coveted Louis Armstrong Award, a tour of Europe and enrollment at the Berklee College of Music.

In 1994, while still at Berklee, Tim undertook the study of the double-bass, garnering further scholarship dough for his seeming ease in handling this very difficult transition. In the years following graduation ('94-'98) Tim went on to lead the popular and critically acclaimed Venus Band and play a pivotal role in the founding of the forward-looking hip-hop band Red Time, at the same time freelancing for such artists as George Garzone, Frank Tiberi and Danillo Perez.

He furthered his study of the contrabass under the tutelage of Ron Carter and later Marc Johnson. Tim Luntzel moved to Brooklyn in Autumn of '98, and immediately became busy filling people's bass-related needs with artists such as Cocktail Angst, the Bloomdaddies (feat. Seamus Blake and Chris Cheek), Jesse Harris and the Ferdinandos, Jim Campilongo, Tony Scherr, Tracy Bonham and the Melvin Sparks Band, as well as founding his own soul-jazz quintet, the Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout.

He has performed and/or recorded with Steven Bernstein, Tracy Bonham, Bright Eyes, The Bruces, Jim Campilongo, Knox Chandler, Nels Cline, Jay Collins, Anton Fier, Bill Frisell, Rachelle Garniez, Larry Goldings, Guaranteed Swahili, Jamey Haddad, Emmylou Harris, Jesse Harris, Robin Holcomb, Smokey Hormel, Wayne Horvitz, Sten Hostfalt, Norah Jones, Richard Julian, Gina Leishman, Rachel Loshak, Mat Maneri, Cat Martino, Willy Mason, Van Dyke Parks, Danilo Perez, Bernard Purdie, Mickey Raphael, David Rawlings, Marc Ribot, Johnathan Rice, Peter Rowan, Jenny Scheinman, Tony Scherr, Steve Shelley, Bill Sims, Jr., Nicky Skopelitis, Melvin Sparks, Maria Taylor, Russ Titelman, Martha Wainwright, M. Ward, Robert Walter's 20th Congress, Doug Weiselman, Gillian Welch, The Wollesens Marching Band, Timothy Young...

Tags