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Peter Welker
He has toured and/or recorded with the likes of Van Morrison, Santana, Cold Blood, Jesse Colin Young, Buddy Miles and Dr. John.
He has been nominated for a Bammie (Bay Area Music Awards) in the Best Horn Player category. Welker's horn section, Horns 'R Us, has often been hired to back touring Soul/R&B acts such as the Temptations, the Four Tops and Smokey Robinson. The horn section is on a newly released CD produced by Bob Dylan, The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute. The guest artists include Jerry Garcia, Aaron Neville, Van Morrison, Bono (of U2), John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson.
Welker led the horn section of super-producer Narada Michael Walden's two-week all-star tour of Japan in 1995, in a band that featured Joe Zawinul and Patti Austin. His previous album, Para "Peachy," an eclectic mix of jazz, R&B and salsa, was released in 1997 on Take One Records. Phil Elwood of the San Francisco Examiner called it "one of the greatest recordings ever made, produced and played by Bay Area musicians."
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Peter Welker: Touching All of Jazz's Bases
by Nicholas F. Mondello
Bay Area-based trumpeter, composer and arranger Peter Welker possesses one of the most musically historically fascinating biographies. His decades-long career emanates and developed from a robust musical heritage in which talent merged with Life's coincidences to set him on a journey few, if any, musicians have had. From his parents performing the days of radio through the eventual development of one the world's foremost music institutions and on through his performing roster of the greats of jazz and popular music, ...
read morePeter Welker: Duke, Billy and Tadd
by Jack Bowers
Trumpeter Peter Welker's labor of love, a warmhearted tribute to three of the jazz world's most renowned composer/pianists--Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and Tadd Dameron--awakened memories of a similar enterprise from some years ago, the late Tom Talbert's 1956 record Bix, Duke, Fats. Like Talbert, Welker uses a pared-down “big band whose numbers range from ten to twelve (with a quartet and digitized “string section on the last number), and like Talbert, his spare, upbeat arrangements lend the session an intimate ...
read morePeter Welker: Paradise Is Awfully Nice
by Jack Bowers
Trumpeter / arranger Peter Welker has dedicated this album to his mother, Elisabeth, a remarkable woman who, in spite of having been born blind, became a band singer who performed on the coast--to--coast radio program Camel Caravan in the '30s, later taught at the Berklee School of Music and developed a Braille course that changed completely the way Jazz was taught to blind musicians, making it more focused and accessible. All of the musicians on Paradise Is Awfully Nice are ...
read morePeter Welker And Friends: Paradise Is Awfully Nice
by Dave Nathan
New York native but San Francisco immigrant, trumpeter {$Peter Welker} is not exactly a household name. Although lacking deserved recognition, he has compiled an impressive resume as a sideman working with performers cutting across a wide swath of styles including Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Bob Dylan and Bread and Roses. On his second excursion as a leader, he shares billing with his “friends" who make up the band on this session. And what a set of friends! There's Herb Pomeroy ...
read morePeter Welker: We'll Be Together Again
by Jack Bowers
Eight beauteous songs lovingly embraced by veteran San Francisco Bay area trumpeter Peter Welker with help from a number of his friends. If Welker’s name weren’t above the marquee one would be hard–pressed to identify him as the foreman; everyone on this assembly line makes an essential contribution, Welker no more than anyone else. Trumpeter Herb Pomeroy, once Welker’s teacher at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, flew to the West Coast to sit in on three numbers, and solos effectively ...
read morePeter Welker: We'll Be Together Again
by Paula Edelstein
Jazz with a conscience is the best description for Peter Welker’s debut on Brownstone Recordings. WE’LL BE TOGETHER AGAIN is a collection of mainstream jazz classics first recorded in the 20s and 30s, with Peter Welker providing a conscientious rework and more than enough breathing room for their cool, soulful comeback. The Berklee trained and famed North Beach Jazz Workshop bandleader, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist, recorded the entire CD “live” in the studio, with such talented guests as trumpet great Herb ...
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