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Who: Steve Wilson Quartet
What: Jazz at the Conservatory Concert series
When: Saturday, April 26th 2008 at 8:00 PM
Where: Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, 58 7th avenue, Brooklyn. NY
Tickets:$25/ $15. Please call Zerve ticket services at 212.209.3370

Featuring:
Steve Wilson on Saxophone
Adam Cruz on drums
Bruce Barth on piano
Corcoran Holt on bass.

“It’s not surprising that everyone wants to hire the saxophonist Steve Wilson: with a light but commanding sound, he plays lines that sound fresh and airily bluesy, unencumbered by the too- common will to overwhelm. More and more, too, he’s a jazz composer, which means not just that he has control over notated harmonies but that he has worked out cueing routines with his band, which he executes on the fly in the heat of performance. He’s among the best New York jazz has to offer.” – Ben Ratliff, New York Times

A musician’s musician, Wilson has brought his distinctive sound to more than 100 recordings led by such celebrated and wide-ranging artists as Chick Corea, George Duke, Michael Brecker, Dave Holland, Dianne Reeves, Bill Bruford, Gerald Wilson, Maria Schneider, Joe Henderson, Charlie Byrd, Billy Childs, Karrin Allyson, Don Byron, Bill Stewart, James Williams, and Mulgrew Miller among many others. Wilson has seven recordings under his own name, leading and collaborating with such stellar musicians as Lewis Nash, Carl Allen, Steve Nelson, Cyrus Chestnut, Greg Hutchinson, Dennis Irwin, James Genus, Larry Grenadier, Ray Drummond, Ben Riley, and Nicholas Payton.

A native of Hampton, Virginia, Steve Wilson began his formal training at age 12 and played in various R&B and funk bands throughout his teens. While studying music at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, he had opportunities to perform and/or study with Jimmy and Percy Heath, Jon Hendricks, Jaki Byard, Frank Foster and Ellis Marsalis. In 1986, Wilson landed a chair in the band O.T.B (Out of the Blue) a sextet of promising young jazz players who were sponsored by Blue Note Records.
In the summer of 1987, he moved to New York and continued to perform and record with O.T.B. until 1989. He also toured the US and Europe for one year with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. In 1988, drummer Ralph Peterson, another O.T.B. alumnus, asked Wilson to join his quintet and subsequently his critically acclaimed, Fo’tet. Wilson’s career began to develop further the following year while working with Michele Rosewoman, Renee Rosnes and the American Jazz Orchestra and the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. Later that year he joined the Buster Williams Quintet, Something More.

Wilson continues to tour with the Steve Wilson Quartet: Bruce Barth, Ed Howard and Adam Cruz and Generations (From Hard Bop to Here) his multi-generational quartet with Mulgrew Miller, Ray Drummond and Ben Riley. He also performs with his long-time friend and colleague, Lewis Nash, in Musical Dialogue with Lewis Nash and Steve Wilson.