John Clark (musician)

John Clark is an American jazz horn player and composer. In Allmusic, Clark is described as "possibly the most fluent jazz French horn soloist since the great Julius Watkins in the 1950s."[1]

John Clark
Background information
Birth nameJohn Trevor Clark
Born (1944-09-21) 21 September 1944
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
GenresJazz
Occupation(s)Musician, composer
InstrumentsFrench horn
LabelsHidden Meaning
Websitewww.hmmusic.com

Biography

John Clark was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Rochester, New York. In 1966 he received a B.A.from the University of Rochester, where he also studied horn with Verne Reynolds at the Eastman School of Music. From 1967 until 1971 he played in the United States Coast Guard Band. Clark received a M.M. degree (with honors) from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1973. He studied composition and improvisation with Jaki Byard, Ran Blake, and George Russell; and horn with James Stagliano, Thomas Newell, and Paul Ingraham. In 1991 he received a patent for the "hornette," an instrument with the same range as a French Horn but with a forward-facing bell for greater projection. He taught at the State University of New York at Purchase from 2001 until 2008, subsequently moving to faculty at Manhattan School of Music.

Performance work

Clark has performed or recorded with a wide variety of musicians, including in jazz: Gary Bartz, Carla Bley, Ornette Coleman, Gil Evans, John Faddis, Johnny Griffin, Dave Grusin, Jerome Harris, Jim Hall, Jimmy Heath, Anthony Jackson, Leroy Jenkins, Howard Johnson, Oliver Lake, Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, Grachan Moncur, Gerry Mulligan, Jaco Pastorius, Rachel Z, Paquito D'Rivera, Mike Richmond, John Scofield, Frank Sinatra, Lew Soloff, Spyro Gyra, David Taylor, Toots Thielemans, the Turtle Island String Quartet, McCoy Tyner, Glen Velez, Paul Winter Consort, Akiko Yano, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Outside of jazz, he has worked with the Aspen Wind Quintet, Ashford and Simpson, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Fugees, Isaac Hayes, Billy Joel, B. B. King, LL Cool J, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Sting, Speculum Musicae, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

He has performed as a studio musician for many films, including Mission to Mars, Fargo, and Pocahontas.

Awards

Discography

As leader
  • 1980 Song of Light (Hidden Meaning)
  • 1981 Faces (ECM)
  • 1992 Il Suono (CMP)
  • 1997 I Will (Postcards)
  • 2003 Confluence (Hidden Meaning)
  • 2015 The Odd Couple Quintet +1
  • 2016 Sonus Inenarrabilis (Mulatta)

As sideman

With Franco Ambrosetti

With Gil Evans

With Benny Green

With Dave Grusin

With Billy Harper

With Jimmy Heath

With Leroy Jenkins

With Jimmy Knepper

With Joe Lovano

With Bob Stewart

With Sting

With Stanley Turrentine

Bibliography
  • 1993 – Exercises for Jazz French Horn (Hidden Meaning Music)

References
  1. Scott Yannow John Clark:Il Suono (review), accessed 2020-12-27
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