Try to imagine a hybrid musical species bred of hip-hop, jazz and Latin music. Pour in equal elements of each, and that's what you get from clarinetist, composer and arranger Don Byron's most recent release with his band, Music for Six Musicians.
For more than a decade, clarinetist Byron has made a name for himself in the jazz world by bending every genre from classical to R&B, salsa to hip-hop. This weekend, he returns to his Latin and Afro-Caribbean roots with his longtime band at the Outpost Performance Space.
An asthmatic child growing up in '60s Bronx, Byron overcame his indoor seclusion by exploring music instead. His parents, who were both musicians, exposed him to a wide variety of recordings. Later, he formalized his education by studying classical clarinet with legendary saxophone and clarinet teacher Joe Allard and arranged salsa numbers for high school bands on the side. He later studied in the New England Conservatory of Music and performed with Latin and jazz ensembles.
Since his groundbreaking 1992 debut recording, Tuskegee Experiments, he has devoted entire albums to different genres, including Eastern European klezmer music and a funk project with rapper Biz Markie. During a tenure as artistic director of Jazz at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, he produced one of his most popular albums, Bug Music, a collection of songs written to accompany or inspired by cartoons from the 1940s.
Byron has collaborated with a rich palette of artists, including the Duke Ellington Orchestra, rock band Living Colour, Mandy Patinkin and Carole King.
At his current post as Artist in Residence at Symphony Space in New York City, Byron created Contrasting Brilliance: The Music of Henry Mancini and Sly Stone. He has also worked with young music students and developed programs, including the planned April 2002 Sugar Hill Revisited, a tribute to the New Jersey-based record label that produced pioneering rappers the Sugar Hill Gang. The Sugar Hill Gang was responsible for 1979's "Rappers' Delight," the first rap song to break into pop radio.
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With his current band, Byron released You Are #6: More Music for Six Musicians, Oct. 23, on the legendary Blue Note label. Trumpet player James Zollar, bassist Leo Traversa, percussionist Milton Cardona, pianist Edsel Gomez and drummer Ben Wittman join Byron on the album. It features nine originals, as well as a tune by Henry Mancini, the calypso standard "Shake 'Em Up," during which Byron's father Don Sr. jumps in on bass, and a remix of Byron's song "Belmondo's Lip" by DJ Spooky. The record is the group's follow-up to 1995's Music for Six Musicians.
Byron and company will hit the stage at Outpost Performance Space, 210 Yale Blvd. SE, Saturday at 8 p.m.
