Marty Ehrlich TRIO EXALTATION
CD Release performance
THIS TIME -Sunnyside Records
Marty Ehrlich - Saxophone, Clarinet
John Hebert - Bass
Nasheet Waits - Drums
Saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist Marty Ehrlich (b.1955) is celebrating over 40 years in the nexus of creative music centered in New York City. He began his musical career in St. Louis, Missouri, performing and recording with the Human Arts Ensemble. He then graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1977, where his teachers included George Russell, Jaki Byard, Gunther Schuller, and Joseph Allard. Since coming to New York in 1978, he has made thirty recordings of his compositions written for his Dark Woods Ensemble, Traveler's Tales Quartet, Trio Exaltation, The Rites Quartet, Philosophy of a Groove, and the Marty Ehrlich Large Ensemble.
He has sustained three collective groups, C/D/E with Andrew Cyrille and Mark Dresser, Relativity with Peter Erskine and Michael Formanek, and the Ray Anderson/Marty Ehrlich Quartet. His compositions are represented on the Enja, New World, Muse, OmniTone, Palmetto, Tzadik, and Clean Feed labels. As a woodwind multi-instrumentalist passionate about improvisation and interpretation, he has performed and recorded with a who's who of contemporary composers including Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, John Carter, Andrew Cyrille, Jack DeJohnette, Anthony Davis, Mark Dresser, Marianne Faithful, Don Grolnick, Chico Hamilton, Jerome Harris, Julius Hemphill, Andrew Hill, Robin Holcomb, Wayne Horvitz, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Myra Melford, Modeski/Martin/Woods, Bobby Previte, Rufus Reid, Wadada Leo Smith, and John Zorn, among many others.
He has performed with the New York City and Metropolitan Opera's, most recently as a saxophone soloist in Anthony Davis' "X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X." He has toured with the Jose Limon and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance companies, and premiered concertos written for him by composers David Lang and David Schiff. The Marty Ehrlich Archive is in the Fales Library of New York University. He is the chief researcher for the Julius Hemphill Archive in the Fales Library and has edited Hemphill’s compositional corpus for Subito Music Corporation. Ehrlich’s honors include composition grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Chamber Music America, the NEA, and NYFA.E Ehrlich is Professor Emeritus of Jazz and Contemporary Music at Hampshire College and was Interim Director of Jazz Studies at SUNY Stonybrook in 2023/24.
Hebert -Bass, Nasheet Waits - Drums
I have performed in the sax/bass/drum trio context since my first recording as a leader “The Welcome” (1986), with Anthony Cox and Pheeroan Aklaff. I recorded and toured in later years with two collective trios, “C/D/E” , with Mark Dresser and Andrew Cyrille, and “Relativity”, with Michael Formanek and Peter Erskine. After focusing on composing for larger groups, I felt the need to get back to the trio context about a decade and more ago. John and Nasheet were the artists I thought of for Trio Exaltation, knowing their great individuality of voice, and knowing the propulsive interplay they achieve from our years playing together in the Andrew Hill Sextet. Their artistry and their enthusiasm for the work at hand is an ongoing inspiration for me.