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The Session Player
MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2007
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Roger Lebow
PASADENA SYMPHONY CELLIST
Justo
Almario
JAZZ CLARINETIST
Lindsey Nelson
MODERATOR
at McKinley
School Auditorium
325 South Oak Knoll Ave.
Pasadena, California 91101
ARTIST BIOS
Roger
Lebow
CELLIST
A member of the Pasadena Symphony for 20 years!
 Cellist
Roger Lebow has been a member of the Pasadena Symphony for [gasp!] 20
years. Besides his unchallenged status as the largest, and often
hairiest, cellist in the band, he is a familiar figure throughout Los
Angeles’s musical landscape. He was for a decade Principal Cellist of
the late LA Mozart Orchestra, though these days you’ll most often run
into him in recital, with his chamber group Xtet (now in its 20th
season), with LA Opera and other local groups, or browsing through
Vroman’s Book Store, where he is a threat to buy something in almost
any section, as long as it doesn’t have an embossed cover. RL was also
the 4th cellist from the right, in the back near the cimbasso and
string basses, on the soundtrack of your favorite movie.
Lebow is also on the faculty at Pomona College, Chapman University,
and the Claremont Graduate University, and for many summers taught at
the Henry Mancini Institute at UCLA. Formerly at Occidental College,
he has also been on the guest faculty of CalArts, UC Irvine, and UC
Bjoerling; and in his dotage regards teaching and other musical
intervention as an increasingly central and fulfilling part of his
life.
RL has appeared as soloist in such arcana as Heitor Villa-Lobos’s
Fantasia and the Cello Concerto by Arthur Honegger (as well as
standard repertoire by The Usual Dead White Suspects). He gave the
première, with the LA Mozart Orchestra, of a new concerto by Byron
Adams, which he commissioned. A new-music advocate of too many years’
standing, he’s also commissioned solos by Leo Smit, Donald Davis, John
Steinmetz, Leon Milo, Jean-Pierre Tibi, and David Ocker, and
participated in dozens of chamber music premières. He has recorded
with Xtet on the Delos and New World labels, and has made several
audiophile recordings for the Water Lily Acoustics label. As is
curiously so often the case with avant-gardistes, RL is also an ardent
player, on baroque cello and viola da gamba, of early music.
In years past RL was the founding cellist of the Armadillo String
Quartet and the Clarion Trio, and he spent several waterlogged years
swaddled in Gore-Tex® in Seattle with the Philadelphia String Quartet.
He has appeared as soloist and chamber player at the Oregon Bach
Festival and Cabrillo Music Festival. Other memorable and printable
encounters include string quartet performances on a rafting trip
through the Grand Canyon, his college rock group opening for the
Jefferson Airplane in 1967, and participating in an
original-pharmacology performance of Terry Riley’s In C led by the
composer.
Lebow has been a renegade classical music announcer on NPR stations in
Santa Monica and Seattle, and still entertains radio dreams. The
author of one good poem (and a number of sphincter-clenchingly bad
ones), he toils over a hot Macintosh writing program notes and album
liner notes (or whatever the hell they’re called these days).
Lebow has done hundreds of films, including Titanic, Seabiscuit, The
Matrix, some of the Jurassic Park films, A Beautiful Mind and
Spiderman. I've also played for many recording artists, including
Prince (the artist formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known As
Prince but now known as Prince again), Kim Carnes, Electric Light
Orchestra, Harry Connick Jr., Neil Diamond, Chris Isaak and Alanis
Morrisette.
He dwells in a small cottage in Sierra Madre with librarian Wendy
Schorr (who clandestinely brings home books with embossed covers for
him). Their son Theo is a tenor studying voice at Mannes College of
Music in New York City.
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Justo Almario
JAZZ CLARINETIST
“One of the top 10 Latin Jazz Saxophonists of our time”
—Beat Magazine
 A
native of Colombia, reedman, clinician, composer and arranger, Justo
Almario has fused Latin, Afro-Cuban, South American, Funk and Jazz
genres into his own humble offering. Mr. Almario studied at the
prestigious Berklee School of Music before a stint with Mongo
Santamaria as the band's musical director.
Justo has also performed with Patrice Rushen's Grammy Awards
Orchestra, Freddie Hubbard, Roy Ayers, George Duke, Tito Puente,
Machito, Dave Grusin, Ndugu Chancler, Alex Acuna, Abraham Laboriel,
TOLU, Donald Vega, Harold Land Jr. Al Mckibbon, Master P, Bebe Winans,
Queen Latifah, Charles Mingus, Chaka Kahn, Linda Rondstadt, Herb
Alpert, Bobby Shew, John Heard, Lorca Hart, Billy Higgins and "Jose
Rizo's Jazz on the Latin Side All-Stars". Always in demand, Justo's
complete list of credits is simply too extensive to mention.
John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Bach, Bartok
and Debussy are among Justo's primary influences. After evolving from
child protégé to virtuoso, Almario taught at the Henry Mancini
Institute and has mentored inner city youth during workshops at the
World Stage.
A multi-instrumentalist of the highest caliber, Mr. Almario has
mastered the soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and flute. Justo
thoroughly engages his listeners with rhythmic, call and response
interludes. Although he is extremely appreciative, this modest wind
wizard frequently deflects any accolades, opting instead, to thank
folks for merely showing up and sharing. This is paramount to a keenly
sensitive artist who warmly connects with his audience on so many
levels.
In 1992, while joining the ranks of Cedar Walkton, Terrence Blanchard
and Joe Lovano, Almario was an integral part of the Newport Jazz
Festival Tour, produced by George Wein. Two years later, four of the
recordings that Justo was featured on, earned Grammy nominations while
Andrae Crouch's "Mercy", and Cachao's "Master Sessions, Vol. 1", were
actual Grammy winners.
Mr. Almario was featured on " Let's Get Loud", a Jennifer Lopez DVD.
He also appeared on "Ahora Si', a CD by Israel "Cachao" Lopez that
garnered two Grammys. No stranger to Hollywood, Justo was heard on the
soundtrack of the Oscar-winning film, "Sideways". In addition, Mr.
Almario will be featured on the upcoming Andy Garcia movie, "The Lost
City" and on the soon-to-be-released "Romance and Cigarettes",
produced by John Turturo and starring Susan Sarandon and James
Gandolfini.
Justo's ongoing involvement with Jose Rizo has proven to be very
rewarding. This sizzling band recorded, "Jazz on the Latin Side
All-Stars, Volumes 1 and 2" and "The Last Bullfighter". He has also
played on and produced TOLU's Grammy-nominated CD, "El Bongo de Van
Gogh". Justo's latest CD, "Love Thy Neighbor", features his quartet
playing original compositions as well as rare standards.
A man for all seasons, Justo was the featured soloist with the Los
Angeles Master Chorale at the Walt Disney Hall's, season opener. He
also performed at a Christmas concert, "Celebrar", at the same venue.
Justo cut his teeth, living in New York, before traveling widely
throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Throughout
Japan, Almario was a big band guest soloist in such cities as Tokyo,
Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka.
Finally, Justo's stellar career was recently celebrated during a
segment of "World Stage Stories", a comprehensive oral history series
that chronicles the evolution of jazz.
What's next for this pied piper with boundless horizons? No one is
really sure but one thing is clear - Mr. Almario's music will continue
to heal and inspire. A devoted family man, Justo's spiritual path
nurtures both his creative journey and his warm compassion as a human
being.
Discography
Four of the recordings Justo performed on in 1994 were nominated for
Grammy's:
Andrae Crouch's Mercy (Grammy winner)
Cachao's Master Sessions Vol. 1 (Grammy winner)
Helen Baylor's The Live Experience
and Placido Domingo's A Mi Alma Latina
Justo solo albums include:
Interlude, Forever Friends
Plumbline
Family Time, Heritage
Count Me In
Justo Amario & Abraham Laboriel
Love Thy Neighbor
His most recent productions include:
Love Thy Neighbor - Produced and arranged by Justo Almario
Rumbero's Poetry , co-produced with Alex Acuna Soul Song, a duet
project with Brazilian pianist Marchos Ariel.
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