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Steve Lehman
Described as “a state-of-the-art musical thinker” and a "dazzling saxophonist,” by The New York Times, Steve Lehman (b. New York City, 1978) is a composer, performer, educator, and scholar who works across a broad spectrum of experimental musical idioms. Lehman’s pieces for large orchestra and chamber ensembles have been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), So Percussion, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, the JACK Quartet, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the Talea Ensemble. His recent recording, Mise en Abîme (Pi, 2014) was called the #1 Jazz Album of the year by NPR Music and The Los Angeles Times. And his previous recording, Travail, Transformation & Flow (Pi, 2009), was chosen as the #1 Jazz Album of the year by The New York Times.
The recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award, Lehman is an alto saxophonist who has performed and recorded nationally and internationally with his own ensembles and with those led by Anthony Braxton, Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, Meshell Ndegeocello, and High Priest of Anti-Pop Consortium, among many others. His recent electro-acoustic music has focused on the development of computer-driven models for improvisation, based in the Max/MSP programming environment. Lehman’s work has been favorably reviewed in Artforum, Downbeat Magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Wire, and on National Public Radio, the BBC, and SWR.
As a Fulbright scholar in France during the 2002-2003 academic year, Lehman began researching the reception of African-American experimental composers working in France during the 1970s. His article in the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation, “I Love You with an Asterisk: African-American Experimental Composers and the French Jazz Press, 1970-1980,” is based on his Fulbright research. More recently, Lehman has published writings and presented lectures on a wide range of topics, including jazz pedagogy, rhythm cognition, and European notions of American experimentalism. His current scholarship, including a forthcoming contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music, examines the overlapping histories of spectral composition and jazz improvisation.
Lehman received his B.A. (2000) and M.A. in Composition (2002) from Wesleyan University where he studied under Anthony Braxton, Jay Hoggard, and Alvin Lucier, while concurrently working with Jackie McLean at the Hartt School of Music. He received his doctorate with distinction in Music Composition from Columbia University (2012), where his principal teachers included Tristan Murail and George Lewis.
Lehman has taught undergraduate courses at Wesleyan University, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, New School University, and Columbia University, and has presented lectures at Amherst College, UC Berkeley, The Berklee School of Music, The Banff Centre, The Royal Academy of Music in London, and IRCAM in Paris, where he was a 2011 research fellow.
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Steve Lehman & Orchestre National de Jazz: Ex Machina
by Mark Corroto
Does Ex Machina settle the long-standing debate about whether saxophonist Steve Lehman is human or a replicant. Lehman and his approach to music may remind one of Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner (1982) a movie adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick; Deckard was tasked with hunting and destroying humanoid replicants i.e. robots. The film never answers the question viewers might have as to whether Deckard is actually a replicant himself. ...
read moreSteve Lehman: Ex Machina
by Karl Ackermann
When native New Yorker Steve Lehman releases an album, the odds are it will turn up at the top of year-end polls. If the composer & saxophonist has a formula for success, a listener would be unlikely to discern a methodology across his previous sixteen leader releases. What sets Lehman apart is a hunger for knowledge and risk. With advanced degrees which culminated in a doctorate from Columbia University, he is a researcher, scholar, and Professor of Music at The ...
read moreTroy Dostert's Best Releases of 2022
by Troy Dostert
Did 2022 represent a return to “normal" in the jazz world? Perhaps, although it might be more valuable to keep our eyes focused on the shifting trajectories and stylistic heterodoxies that make this music as unpredictable and surprising as ever. Releases from Steve Lehman and Eve Risser were especially noteworthy, involving pan-continental strivings that are always welcome in avant-garde jazz. But so too was the work of chameleonic Tyshawn Sorey, whose eagerness to delve into classic jazz repertoire was one ...
read moreSteve Lehman & Sélébéyone: Xaybu: The Unseen
by Karl Ackermann
Alto saxophonist Steve Lehman debuted his Sélébéyone project in 2016 with a self-titled release on the Pi Recordings label. It was nothing short of revolutionary; an amalgamation of jazz improvisation and globalized hip-hop, it was an intrepid declaration. Originally a septet, Sélébéyone returns as a quintet on Xaybu: The Unseen. The five current members are from the original formation, with bassist Drew Gress and pianist Carlos Homs absent from the sophomore outing. Lehman is a renaissance artist; composer, ...
read moreLiberty Ellman: Last Desert
by Jerome Wilson
Guitarist Liberty Ellman has been doing valuable work in recent years as a sideman for musicians such as Henry Threadgill, Stephan Crump and Myra Melford. Once in a while he also puts out his own music as a leader. Inspired by a marathon race that takes place in Antarctica, the music on this disc is a constantly moving bundle of sounds with some resemblance to Threadgill's recent work in its use of tuba and its overall jangling ensemble ...
read moreLiberty Ellman: Last Desert
by Mark Corroto
Guitarist Liberty Ellman doesn't release many albums as a leader. Last Desert is only his fifth in more than twenty years, and fourth for Pi Recordings, following 2015's Radiate. But that doesn't mean he isn't a busy artist. He can be heard with JD Allen, Jason Robinson, Myra Melford's Snowy Egret, Stephan Crump's Rosetta Trio and, of course, Henry Threadgill's Zooid. He also produces music, mixes and masters recordings. Those last three crafts may explain why his recordings as a ...
read moreSteve Lehman Trio, Craig Taborn: The People I Love
by Alberto Bazzurro
Il timbro asprigno, acidulo, e l'incedere di preferenza incalzante, spigoloso, dell'alto di Steve Lehman (i cui principali modelli, dichiarati, sono com'è noto Jackie McLean e Anthony Braxton) attraversa pressoché a senso unico questo nuovo lavoro del quarantunenne sassofonista newyorchese, determinandone climi e disegno complessivo, il tutto confezionato con la complicità del suo trio abituale (nonché ormai decennale) rinforzato per l'occasione dal pianoforte di Craig Taborn (sodale e amico di Lehman a sua volta da un buon decennio) con la volontà ...
read moreInterview | Steve Lehman
Source:
Ars Nova Workshop
On Friday, March 11, Ars Nova Workshop’s three-day Composer Portrait: Fieldwork series begins. Following interviews with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and pianist Vijay Iyer earlier this week, today we share a conversation with saxophonist Steve Lehman. Lehman’s 2009 recording Travail, Transformation, and Flow was praised for creating a dialogue between spectral harmony and jazz—the daring work rightfully earned a spot on numerous critical year-end lists, including the top position in New York Times’ Best Jazz Albums category – and proved the ...
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The Jazz Session #105: Steve Lehman
Source:
Michael Ricci
Saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman makes use of spectral harmony on his album Travail, Transformation and Flow (Pi Recordings, 2009). The result is a carefully crafted and emotionally engaging exploration of the physics of sound, played by a group of musicians who are seeking new ways to make improvised music. In this interview, Lehman offers a crash course in spectral harmony; discusses his compositional style and why he chose the particular musicians on the album; and talks about the influence ...
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Steve Lehman Live in New Haven and Remembering James P. Johnson
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See! Hear! by Richard Kamins
Hard to believe it's been 7 years since Steve Lehman graduated from Wesleyan but not surprising when one sees how busy he's been. The alto saxophonist and and composer has studied with Jackie McLean, Anthony Braxton, Jay Hoggard, Ron Kuivila and George Lewis, has taught in Paris and is currently working on a Ph.D (as well as teaching) at Columbia University in New York City.He leads his own ensembles and has recorded for CIMP, Clean Feed, and Pi ...
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Steve Lehman Octet's 'Travail, Transformation, and Flow'
Source:
Michael Ricci
Call what saxophonist Steve Lehman does a variation on “math-jazz," with apologies to the time signature-hopping sub-genre that rose out of the mid-'90s indie rock scene.
Though nothing from this album will ever be confused with Don Caballero, Lehman makes the seemingly counterintuitive choice to introduce computer analysis into jazz in the hopes of greater exploring of spectral harmony between instruments.
What this involves is a whole lot of mind-scrambling physics and deep thought concerning frequency relationships and microtonal overtones, ...
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Finding an Asymmetrical Pulse with a Jagged Rhythm
Source:
Michael Ricci
One misperception about jazz, insidious enough to be shared by many of its proponents, is that the music adheres to a rigid code. But like any language, jazz accommodates mutation; it’s subject to the whims of usage. That doesn’t mean the music must respond to every new signal, but it does mean there’s still a place for substantive innovation. Steve Lehman, a studiously intense alto saxophonist and composer, brought these issues to the fore at Le Poisson Rouge on Monday ...
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AAJ Celebrates Steve Lehman's New Release with Two Reviews and a Free Download
Source:
Fully Altered Media
Alto saxophonist Steve Lehman's Travail, Transformation, and Flow is his most fully-realized album to date. AAJ is celebrating the June 9, 2009 release of his new octet album with two reviews and a free downloadable MP3 track from the album: Read Mark F. Turner's insightful review, up at AAJ today;
Download “Echoes," the opening track on Travail, Transformation, and Flow, also available via Lehman's Musician Profile, Take Five Interview and the CD review pages;
You can also read Troy Collins' ...
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Steve Lehman Quintet CD Release Celebration on January 12, 2008
Source:
All About Jazz
Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to announce the CD release celebration of On Meaning (Pi Recordings), the highly anticipated new recording from Steve Lehman's critically acclaimed quintet. Widely regarded as one of today's bracingly original young composers, Lehman combines groove-oriented musical content with highly contrapuntal, asymmetrical, and non-repetitive structural devices. Imagining his music in this way, Lehman creates elaborate formal works that remain rooted in the physicality of live performance and the visceral nature of urban rhythm.
STEVE LEHMAN QUINTET ...
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Chris Jentsch (Mon) Steve Lehman QNT (Tue) Soul of the Blues (Wed) Gnu Vox (Thurs) Ben Allison QT (Fri) & More This Week at Cornelia Street Cafe
Source:
Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services
CORNELIA STREET CAFE 29 Cornelia Street, NYC, New York212-989-9319 between West 4th and Bleecker Sts, Greenwich Village 1 Subway to Sheridan Square; A, C, E, B, D, V, F to West 4th St. This Week At Cornelia Street Cafe Mon Jan 22 8:30PM 21 CENTURY SCHIZOID MUSIC PRESENTS: CHRIS JENTSCH (Chris Jentsch, guitar and compositions;John Mettam, drums;Chris Lightcap, bass;Dan Willis, reeds) SET 1 30 Minutes for Guitar, Drums, and Tape ...
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Instrument: Saxophone, alto
Management: J. Chriss & Co.
