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Patrick Zimmerli
Patrick Zimmerli is a New York- and Paris-based composer, producer, and saxophonist. His 2019 CD Sun on Sand, with Joshua Redman and the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, was released on Nonesuch Recordings. This marks his third collaboration with Nonesuch, following Modern Music, with Kevin Hays and Brad Mehldau, and Redman’s Walking Shadows. In 2021 he released Book of Dreams on Newvelle.
Since winning the inaugural Thelonious Monk Composers Competition in 1993, he has written, recorded and performed with leading lights in the classical and jazz worlds.
During the COVID crisis Zimmerli created a “Virtual Venue” concept featuring musicians filmed in different places around the world, using filmic techniques to make it seem like they are playing together. The success of the pilot, Children of Bronzeville, of songs based Gwendolyn Brooks poems, spawned video collaborations with such artists as Kurt Elling, Shelly Berg, Carmen Bradford, Tierney Sutton, Niki Harris, and many others. Children of Bronzeville is currently being produced as a video/documentary for Savage Content, with vocalists Samara Joy, Vanisha Gould, and Joshua Banbury, along with pianists Helen Sung and Aaron Diehl. This work will launch in summer 2022.
Pre-COVID projects include Alan Seeger: Instrument of Destiny, an oratorio for male choir, vocal solo, jazz percussion and piano, premiered at the Invalides Cathedral in Paris; it was reprised in Reims and at the Fondation Boghossian in Brussels, with a New York premiere at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in November, 2019. A radio program was created from the work with narration by NPR’s Scott Simon, that was aired on over 50 NPR stations nationwide on Memorial Day 2021.
Other recent projects include Views of Chicago, a “multi-composition” of nine pieces for nine ensembles across many genres in the Chicago area (of which Children of Bronzeville is an offshoot); Messages, a commission from the Seattle Commissioning Club for an evening-length work for saxophone quartet + jazz trio premiered in Paris; a Concerto for Flute and Jazz Percussion for Jasmine Choi, Satoshi Takeishi and the New York Classical Players, premiered in early 2020; and Clockworks, a Chamber Music America Commission, premiered at (le) Poisson Rouge and released on the Songlines table in 2018.
From 2016-17 Zimmerli curated the INTERSECT festival in NYC’s Bryant Park, and developed a TV series juxtaposing old and new music for National Sawdust and WNET. He also created a site-specific piece entitled Waterfall/Gathering Pools for the Centre Pompidou in Paris with the Paris Percussion Group. His prolific catalog also includes two four-movement Piano Trios and two Piano Concertos with jazz percussion.
His music has been heard at many of the most prestigious concert venues worldwide. He has taught at the Paris Conservatoire, Sciences Po, and Columbia University, where he holds a DMA in Composition.
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Take Five With Patrick Zimmerli
by Patrick Zimmerli
About Patrick Zimmerli New York-and Paris-based composer/saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli writes a sophisticated yet approachable hybrid of contemporary classical and jazz music. Recent collaborators include Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, Brian Blade, Luciana Souza, the Knights Orchestra and the Escher String Quartet. His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, Salle Pleyel in Paris, Sala São Paolo in Brazil, the Vienna Konzerthaus Grosser Saal and the new ...
read morePatrick Zimmerli: Phoenix
by Andrew Velez
The notes accompanying this sixth release from Patrick Zimmerli, a New York-based composer/saxophonist, give no hint of when he may have fallen to earth from parts unknown, bringing with him an unclassifiable mix of jazz, strings, and electronics.The set opens with the dreamlike landscape of “M, which is dramatically revisited later mid-set with Kevin Hays' piano carrying the theme, only to re-emerge in more subdued fashion for the finale. Subsequently Hays turns positively frolicksome in the company of ...
read morePatrick Zimmerli: Phoenix
by Eyal Hareuveni
On his sixth release, New York-based composer and saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli hybridizes the sounds of a jazz quartet with a string quartet, adding a gentle dose of samples and electronics and spicing it all up with popular and ethnic elements. Phoenix, Zimmerli's fourth release for the Vancouver based Songlines label, attempts to integrate these styles into what he calls “pan-stylistic art music," but he succeeds only partially.
Zimmerli enlisted a string quartet for this project that's led by ...
read morePatrick Zimmerli: The Book of Hours
by Elliott Simon
A crisp brass alarm announces the dawning of a new day in composer Patrick Zimmerli's The Book of Hours, a musical cycle that proceeds through the seven medieval daily periods of worship. In place of spoken prayer, interspersed allusions to Coltrane's A Love Supreme serve as sacred moments. Soprano saxophonist Zimmerli, guitarist Ben Monder, and the Belgian 10-piece ensemble Octurn turn in a sharp performance that is classical in its accuracy and postmodern in its soul."Dawn" presents each ...
read morePatrick Zimmerli Ensemble: Expansion
by Glenn Astarita
A 1993 winner of jazz' prestigious BMI/Thelonious Monk Institute Composer's Competition, saxophonist/composer Patrick Zimmerli's 2000 release titled, “Expansion" represents the artist's third recording as a leader and signifies his penchant for combining multifarious musical elements with poignant, breezy themes amid wavering rhythms and engaging group dialogue. A distinct sense of flotation prevails yet Zimmerli, guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Stomu Takeishi and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi are quite adept at melding fragmented motifs into comprehensive statements that intertwine and redevelop into climactic ...
read morePatrick Zimmerli: Expansion
by Mark Corroto
It was a hot and humid summer day a few years ago as I asked the ticket seller which of the 10 movies showing was the longest. That was the lone criteria for me to catch director John Salles' Lone Star. You see, normally I go in for escapist science fiction, car chase, and suspense movies, what my wife calls testosterone theatre. The movie, lasting nearly three hours (a respite before I had to face the sweaty world), unfolded in ...
read moreJust Released: "Clockworks" (Songlines Recordings) Featuring Patrick Zimmerli Quartet with Ethan Iverson, Chris Tordini, John Hollenbeck
Source:
AMT Public Relations
Completing a 25-year compositional arc, saxophonist-composer Patrick Zimmerli releases his new jazz suite Clockworks (Songlines) following the release in 2016 of his first quartet’s 1992 recording Shores Against Silence (with Kevin Hays, Larry Grenadier and Tom Rainey). Both records feature rhythmically and melodically advanced composition largely inspired by Zimmerli’s love of serial composers such as Babbitt, Carter, Stockhausen and Boulez, though still grounded in a jazz ethos. Both explore a different third stream direction in jazz that Zimmerli made his ...
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Songlines Recordings Releases "Shores Against Silence," The First Of A Two-CD Set Featuring Works By Patrick Zimmerli Spanning The Past 25 Years
Source:
AMT Public Relations
Composer/saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli offers a unique view on the evolution of musical and artistic ideas on his latest recordings: Shores Against Silence and Clockworks. Recorded in 1992 and circulated only as an underground tape in the New York scene, Shores Against Silence is being released commercially for the first time this November. Bookending a compositional arc that began 25 years ago, Zimmerli now revisits his early musical ideas in Clockworks, commissioned by Chamber Music America, and to be released as ...
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Nonesuch Releases Collaboration Between Pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and Composer/Arranger Patrick Zimmerli, Modern Music, September 20
Source:
Michael Ricci
Nonesuch Records releases Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli, on September 20, 2011. The album features pieces written by each of the three musicians as well as works by Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, and Philip Glass, performed by the two pianists in arrangements by Zimmerli. Modern Music may be pre-ordered now from www.nonesuch.com, with the title track available for download immediately at checkout. This collaboration grew out of the long-standing desire ...
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“The score’s irresistible energy seemed to come from everywhere: classical forms, jazz harmonies, and Arvo Pärt-like meditativeness, were all on tap, and the last bars were pure Romanticism.” —The New York Times
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Boogaloo of the Polyrhythmic Palindrome
From: ClockworksBy Patrick Zimmerli
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Patrick Zimmerli
Location: New York City
Instrument: Saxophone
Publicist: AMT Public Relations
