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View Full Version : Antonio Hart- ALTO BADNESS!!


Tim Price
04-02-2003, 12:28 AM
I thought I'd share this with you guys in case there were some people who would be interested.
On Saturday I had the extreme pleasure of sharing a concert-clinic in Pennsylvania with my buddy Antonio Hart. Antonio was there with the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars, which featured John Faddis, Slide Hampton, John Lee, Ignazio Berrozia, and anothere good friend of mine, Mulgrew Miller. The nice thing was that all these high school kids were exposed to this band in concert and clinic. As well as an entire afternoon of judications and clinics by a number of excellent college professors and my good friend Kristy Norter, the alto Sax player who is in Diva now.
During the day, Kristy and I did something very unusual. We tag teamed the sax clinics and improvisition clinics. Kristy and I spoke very briefly about this before hand, and it worked out great. The kids loved it. The highlight with Antonio was hearing him in a standard setting playing tunes associated with Dizzy and going in a more traditionial groove. He is one of the younger guys that I have a tremondous amount of respect for. For starters, he came from studying with Andy McGhee, who I also did, and is very into Cannonball. I heard him a year ago with Dave Holland Big Band and he was killing it. Modern and very personal.
On Saturday, he had the pots on and was dipping back into his roots. It was a pleasure to hear him with Faddis and Mulgrew. To bad the record companies are not paying attention to these kinds of players as much as they should be. This band tore the house up. The support from the audience was very strong. Antonio was using his Yani alto and coming from the darker side of the horn sonically.
I urge you all if you see this band with Antonio...go see it. People like this need all the support they can get. What's happening is the people who book these festivals are weighing bands like this against some of the smooth bands.We must get out more and start to support this music in any way, shape, or form. Numbers count!!!!!!!
Antonio Hart is somebody you really need to hear. he's having fun when he plays and he's telling a story on his horn. Look for him!

Paul S
04-02-2003, 01:27 PM
I had the pleasure of seeing antonio play at the Iridium in New York in 2000 - man that cat can play! and not just fast licks....real soulful, beautiful solo's that spoke volumes!

I was listening to one of his first recording with some japanese dudes in hong kong (with roy hargrove on it too) - even way back then, he was playing great and with that great sound...

u know if he's working on anything new Tim? Would be great to hear more from him.

Tim Price
04-02-2003, 03:16 PM
We are going to hang/shed soon-I'll ask.
Antonio is a strong player....his roots are very very unique today.Glad your hip to him 8)

scale_master
07-28-2003, 05:04 AM
I am sometimes wondering why alto players like him don't get more attention.
Somehow there are quite a few tenor players out there who record and tour constantly and make great contributions to bringing this music to our ears (Lovano, Marsalis, Redman, Potter, Brecker etc.).
On alto, I get the impression that it is more sparse, although there are a lot of excellent contributors.

Is there some business reason? Is alto not that pleasant for the mass of jazz listeners? Why doesn't Phil Woods record more of his wonderful music?

B.