2010 line-up for the 2nd Annual Red Hook Jazz Festival

The Red Hook Jazz Festival is quickly becoming one of the best shows in town. Now in its second year, the festival is hosted in Red Hook’s beautiful Urban Meadow and features a serious line-up of some of the city’s most exciting improvisers. Come down and mingle with the locals, have some neighborhood pizza (generously provided for the event!) and hear some great music!

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Originally from the small town of Grayling, Michigan (located, notably, half way between the uniquely named cities of Paradise, Michigan, and Hell, Michigan), Hunter has since lived in Cleveland and Shanghai, and since 2004 has called Brooklyn, New York home. As both a sideman and a leader, his performing, composing, and arranging can be heard on numerous recordings and in a wide variety of musical styles (see discography).

Over the past decade, an earnest desire to share the truly international music of jazz with wider and wider audiences has found him as an advisor and M.C. for jazz festivals in China, as a jazz educator on four continents, and as a host on Shanghai’s recently launched jazz station, Soulfire Radio. Recently he has been involved with growing frequency in teaching and and performing in South and Central America, in such countries as Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Panama. During the first half of this calendar year alone his music has brought him to India, Japan, Peru, Colombia, Morocco, Ghana, and about a dozen locations across the United States.

Some of the musicians he feels honored to have performed or recorded with include: The Saturday Night Live band, The Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty and Mingus Orchestra, The Dave Holland Big Band, Richard Bona, T.S. Monk, The Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, Slide Hampton and the World of Trombones, The Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, The Drifters, Nnena Freelon, Billy Hart, Marcus Belgrave, Cui Jian, Dave Binney, Michael Mossman, Robin Eubanks, Conrad Herwig, Dave Kikoski, Monday Michiru, Alex Sipiagin, Gene Jackson, Jeff Tain Watts, Bill Lee, Ralph Bowen, Jonathan Blake, Frankie Negron, Peter Dominguez, John Fedchock, Leslie Gore, Terry Gibbs, Wendell Logan, Ernie Krivda, Nils Landgren, the Guy Lombardo Orchestra, The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, Sam Moore (Sam and Dave), Dick Contino, Dennis Mackrel, Tito Nieves, Hugh Ragin, Adalberto Santiago, Yomo Toro, Greg Bandy, Donald Walden, and Dan Wall.

Andy Hunter holds a M.M. in Jazz from Rutgers university where he was a student of Conrad Herwig, a B.Mus. from Oberlin Conservatory where he studied with Robin Eubanks, and is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy. He also holds a B.A. in Chinese from Oberlin College.

Dan’s musical roots lie in the historic jazz town of Saint Louis, Missouri. There he had to fortune to come under the musical mentorship of the bassist Tom Kennedy and pianist Reggie Thomas. Under their guidance and through extensive gigging in the Saint Louis scene, Dan learned the fundamental importance of groove and sound and came away with the firm commitment for music-making that reaches people on a heart level. From Saint Louis Dan stopped in Rochester, NY for a period of intense study at the Eastman School of Music with Jeff Campbell. At Eastman he forged some of his most important musical relationships and found his love and commitment to the contemporary edge of music. Upon graduating with his Masters Degree he was awarded with jazz department’s highest award in performance. By then his playing was already receiving national attention; Downbeat magazine selected The Very Tall Band, made up of Dan and his Eastman compatriots, as Best Collegiate Small Ensemble. Dan hand-picked a chord-less quartet composed of two saxophones, bass and drums from that ensemble to form the DLQ, which would record his first album, Tondos.

His second album with the DLQ, I Love Paris, marked Dan’s arrival in New York, and it earned him quite a welcome, called ‘one the top new releases of 2007’ by the noted jazz historian Scott Yanow. This group toured US extensively for much of 2006 and 2007. At the same time Dan kept quite busy as a sideman in New York. In his brief stint in New York, he has already appeared on over 20 albums with styles ranging from jazz to indie-pop to eastern-European-improv music to post-punk. He has been active with a large number of projects including Benny Reid’s Findings, the Erica VonKleist Quintet, the Jay Collins Trio, the Brian VanArsdale Trio, The Ben Holmes Trio, the Rob Mosher Quartet, Tucksy, The Sultans of Swing, The Trachy/Lacy Collective, The Belly of a Drunken Piano and Lindsay Sullivan Lightbody. His work as a sideman has seen him performing in some New York’s most prestigious venues including The Blue Note, The Jazz Standard, Birdland, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has also toured extensively though the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada.

In 2007 Dan formed two collaborative groups that have showcased the scope of his performance and compositional talents. First, Spoke, with trombonist Andy Hunter, alto saxophonist Justin Wood and drummer Danny Fischer, features some of the most inspired, adventurous improvisers of the new generation of jazz coming together to create a sound that is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Their self-titled debut, Spoke, earned pre-release praise, being called ‘one of the most inventive records we’ve heard all year’ (HotHouse). Second, The Wee Trio – with vibraphonist James Westfall and Jared Schonig – created a sonic landscape all their own with their debut album, Capitol Diner, Vol. 1. The album made an immediate stir with the press, who called The Wee Trio ‘definitely a group to watch’ (Downbeat) and said ‘the trio puts forth a compelling case that they are the ambassadors of the genre’s future’ (Saratogian). As glowing as the praise from critics was, fans reacted even more enthusiastically as the trio played to rapt audiences from Los Angeles to New Orleans to Philadelphia to Chicago to New York.