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Gary Bartz is an award-winning alto saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, instructor, and sideman. Though he began his career with the
Max Roach and
Abbey Lincoln group in 1964 as well as many peers and mentors including
McCoy Tyner,
Pharoah Sanders,
Woody Shaw, and
Terumasa Hino. During the early 1970s
Bartz founded
NTU Troop and issued a series of pioneering albums including Follow the Medicine Man and
I've Known Rivers and Other Bodies. The band's albums seamlessly integrated funky soul, African folk musics, post-bop, and spiritual jazz. During that decade
Bartz worked extensively with
Norman Connors,
Donald Byrd, and groundbreaking jazz-funk producers, the
Mizell Brothers. Though he led fewer dates during the '80s and '90s, he remained active as a collaborator and sideman. In 2003,
Bartz joined the faculty of the Jazz Studies department at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He won a Grammy for his playing on
Tyner's
Illuminations in 2005 and released the acclaimed
Coltrane Rules: Tao Music Warrior in 2012. In 2019
Bartz celebrated the 50th anniversary of his Another Earth at the Newport Jazz Festival alongside
Ravi Coltrane and original personnel
Charles Tolliver and
Nasheet Waits. In 2020 he collaborated with London-based jazz-funk outfit
Maisha on
Night Dreamer: Direct to Disc Sessions. The following year, he collaborated with
Adrian Younge and
Ali Shaheed Muhammad on a dedicated volume in their ongoing Jazz Is Dead series,
Gary Bartz JID006.
Born in Baltimore in 1940,
Bartz is the son of nightclub-owning parents. He picked up the alto at age 11, influenced by the many top-level jazz musicians who made their way through his parents' club; he even got to sit in with
Art Blakey and
George Benson during his teens. After graduating from high school,
Bartz attended the Juilliard Conservatory of Music. He became a member of
Charles Mingus' Jazz Workshop from 1962-1964, where he worked with
Eric Dolphy and encountered
McCoy Tyner for the first time. He also began gigging as a sideman in the mid-'60s with the
Abbey Lincoln and
Max Roach group. He briefly joined
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and made his recording debut on their 1965 release
Soul Finger, and remained for the following year's Hold On I'm Coming. In 1968
Bartz formed his own band and signed to Milestone. His debut, Libra, was performed by a quintet that included drummer
Billy Higgins, bassist
Richard Davis, pianist
Albert Dailey, and trumpeter
Jimmy Owens; the saxophonist continued to tour with
the Roach/
Lincoln band. He followed it with Another Earth in 1969, an album since celebrated as influential on both the American and European jazz scenes. His sidemen for the date included
Pharoah Sanders,
Reggie Workman,
Charles Tolliver,
Freddie Waits, and
Stanley Cowell. In 1970,
Miles Davis tapped
Bartz for his
Bitches Brew tour and featured him as a soloist on the
Live-Evil recording. Subsequently, a more complete portrait emerged after his contribution to the
Davis band was documented on
The Cellar Door Sessions.
Bartz formed the
NTU Troop who, from the very beginning, melded soul, funk, African folk music, hard bop, and spiritual jazz in a vibrant multivalent whole. Vocalist
Andy Bey joined the group for Harlem Bush Music: Taifa,
Harlem Bush Music: Uhuru, Juju Street Songs and remained for several years. In 1972,
Bartz began a longstanding working relationship with drummer
Norman Connors on his groundbreaking soul-jazz outing
Dance of Magic; he would record with the drummer throughout the decade. From 1973-1975,
Bartz was on a roll.
NTU Troop's
I've Known Rivers and Other Bodies is one of the most revered jazz fusion outings of that decade and has proven influential for two generations of musicians in its wake. That same year, he collaborated with
Jackie McLean on the acclaimed Ode to Super for Steeplechase, and appeared with
Charlie Mariano on Altissimo for Philips.
NTU Troop issued its final outing,
Singerella: A Ghetto Fairy Tale, in 1974 with producer
Larry Mizell; he and
Bartz formed a studio relationship that would last several years. In 1975,
Bartz, the producer, and his brother
Fonce Mizell (as well
Davis' bandmembers
Reggie Lucas,
James Mtume, and
Michael Henderson), collaborated for
The Shadow Do. Two years later, with the same production team and an all-star guest list that included
Syreeta,
Mtume,
James Gadson,
David T. Walker, and others,
Bartz issued the charting
Music Is My Sanctuary, an album that initially proved far too funky for most jazz critics.
Bartz stayed on a radio-friendly, pop-oriented jazz-funk tip for the remainder of the decade, issuing
Love Affair in 1978 and
Bartz in 1980.
The saxophonist spent most that decade as a sideman and billed collaborator. He worked steadily with
Tyner,
Phyllis Hyman,
Mtume,
Ndugu Chancler, and
Woody Shaw. He returned to recording hard bop as a leader in 1988 with Monsoon and the following year's Reflections on Monk. Beginning with 1990's
West 42nd Street,
Bartz reveled in the hard bop tradition. 1991 saw the release of
There Goes the Neighborhood, followed by Shadows, the latter with pianist
Benny Green, bassist
Christian McBride, drummer
Victor Lewis, and tenor saxophonist
Willie Williams. In 1994,
Bartz briefly signed to Atlantic and issued one of his most enduring outings, the charting
Red & Orange Poems. In its liner essay, critic
Stanley Crouch wrote that: "he is one of the very finest to have ever picked up the instrument." He followed it a few months later with
Episode 1: Children of Harlem, featuring a quartet that included pianist
Larry Willis (
Bartz had also been playing with his group), drummer
Ben Riley, and bassist
Buster Williams. In 1996,
Bartz began to open up his sound again. Forming a studio band, he cut Blues Chronicles: Tales of Life with a star-studded lineup that included
Jon Hendricks,
Cyrus Chestnut,
Dennis Chambers,
Russell Malone, and rappers Nezkar Keith and Ransom. That same year,
Bartz worked with organist
Robert Walter on the
Greyboy-produced Spirit of '70 that also included saxophonist
Karl Denson. He closed the decade with the live Music for Ebbe: Live at San Sebastian with
Jeanne Lee and
Jorge Pardo.
Bartz returned to his role as a collaborator during the early part of the new century. In 2000, he was co-billed with Jarek Śmietana on African Lake, which also included bassist
Cameron Brown and trumpeter
Jeremy Pelt. Three years later, in addition to releasing Jazz Time co-billed to Kankawa Toshihiko, he was featured on
Blue Jazz with Malachi Thompson & Africa Brass and guest
Billy Harper. Also in 2003,
Bartz joined the staff of the Jazz Studies department at Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he remains. He issued Soprano Stories with a band that consisted of pianists
John Hicks and
George Cables, bassist James King, and drummer
Greg Bandy. It marked his first album-length showcase for his soprano saxophone playing.
Bartz spent the next seven years teaching, playing out only occasionally. He received a Grammy for his work as a sideman on
McCoy Tyner's
Illuminations (2005). He re-emerged as a bandleader on 2012's
Coltrane Rules: Tao Music Warrior on his own OYO label. In 2015, he was a featured guest on tenor saxophonist
Allen Lowe's electro-acoustic score for Man with Guitar: Where's Robert Johnson? That same year
Bartz was awarded the BNY Mellon Jazz 2015 Living Legacy Award. In 2019, after being celebrated for two decades as one of jazz's true fusion pioneers influencing everyone from
Kamasi Washington,
Yazz Ahmed,
Shabaka Hutchings, and others, Revive Music invited
Bartz to perform in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Another Earth at New York's Winter Jazzfest. He reprised the performance at the North Sea and Newport Jazz Festivals and then at the Newport Jazz Fesitval with original personnel
Charles Tolliver and
Nasheet Waits as well as
Ravi Coltrane.
In 2019, DJ and producer
Gilles Peterson invited
Bartz to play the annual We Out Here festival and selected the London-based spiritual jazz ensemble
Maisha -- Amané Suganami, Twm Dylan, Tim Doyle, Yahael Camara-Onono,
Shirley Tetteh, and
Nubya Garcia -- to serve as his backing band. The gig went so well the group not only began playing dates across Europe, they re-assembled for a
Peterson-curated We Out Here-branded gig at London's Royal Festival Hall, and a few months later, as part of the annual EFG London Jazz Festival. While they were playing their European dates, they booked two days in a recording studio in the Netherlands and cut five tunes for the direct-to-disc label Night Dreamer Records. Two early
Bartz tunes, "Uhuru Sasa" and "Doctor Follows Dance," were rearranged by this group from the original recordings
Harlem Bush Music: Uhuru and Follow the Medicine Man, respectively, while the other three were collectively written and arranged by the saxophonist and
Maisha while they were on the road. The set was released in mid-2020, a few months shy of
Bartz's 80th birthday. Just after, he went to Los Angeles and worked with Jazz Is Dead's multi-instrumentalist producers,
Adrian Younge and
Ali Shaheed Muhammad; that meeting resulted in 2021's
Gary Bartz JID006. ~ Thom Jurek