Updated: September 1, 2020
Already established as a guitarist why change horses? Why not? Is reinvention a key to the creative process? Oteri explains, “I've always been an explorer and this need for change drives me to new frontiers. While some are cautious about change for me it's about accepting it.”
Oteri's flute and sax work became his focus recently after a purchase of a new flute in 2016 and a couple of tenor saxes in early 2017. “I played flute in my late teens after borrowing my sister's flute, since she was not very interested in it, and played professionally for five or six years in the early part of my career along with guitar, bass and pedal steel, whatever seemed to be needed. Around this same time, I had an old Conn sax that I played for maybe a year until both the flute and sax needed more work than I could afford at the time. (see tragedy and time off from music in bio below) When I came back to music after several years off I focused on guitar for a few reasons, one being I was living on a sailboat with not much space and guitar was small enough to use on the boat and compose. I did not think about getting back to flute and sax until I had produced several guitar-based albums but alas, here I am and looking forward to recording and performing anyway I can get it out” Willie will still be playing guitar when called for, but for now.......forward.
Willie Oteri is an anomaly in the music world having survived tragedy and financial hardship that forced him to quit music as a profession in the early part of his career. After nearly ten years away from performing and most of this time not even owning an instrument Oteri came back to music, first part-time then full. Older, wiser and as eager and excited as anyone to again have a life of music.
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—Peoples Press
Whatever is in Willie Oteri's water, I think it's high time that it was poured into the two dimensional cesspool which is what some of the homogenized and pasteurized modern music industry has become today. —-Bruce Stringer (Music street jounal)
This is one of those CDs that entirely deserves to be heard by anyone who likes to live inside exotically compelling musical environments. It's rather beautiful too.—Gapplegate Music
...goes beyond anything Charlie Parker or Miles Davis did during even the most experimental years of the Be-Bop jazz era, although there's some of that influence in this album, also