Celebrated for his warm romantic tone, soaring lyricism and masterful technique, Dmitri Matheny has been hailed as "the first breakthrough flugelhornist since Chuck Mangione" (San Jose Mercury News), with an unforgettable sound "so cool it'll run a shiver through your martini" (Los Angeles Times). Dmitri Matheny has performed with jazz luminaries Larry Coryell, Nathan Davis, Amina Figarova, Darrell Grant, Larry Grenadier, John Handy, Red Holloway, Denise Jannah, James Moody, Tony Reedus, Max Roach, Sam Rivers, Bud Shank, Billy Taylor and Bobby Watson. A prolific recording artist, he has appeared on dozens of albums as a composer, arranger, producer and featured soloist, and has released eight recordings as a leader: Red Reflections (1995), Penumbra (1996), Starlight Café (1998), Santa's Got a Brand New Bag (2000), Nocturne (2005), The SnowCat (2006), Spiritu Sancto (2007) and Best of Dmitri Matheny (2008). Born in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised in Georgia and Arizona, Dmitri...
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Celebrated for his warm romantic tone, soaring lyricism and masterful technique, Dmitri Matheny has been hailed as "the first breakthrough flugelhornist since Chuck Mangione" (San Jose Mercury News), with an unforgettable sound "so cool it'll run a shiver through your martini" (Los Angeles Times). Dmitri Matheny has performed with jazz luminaries Larry Coryell, Nathan Davis, Amina Figarova, Darrell Grant, Larry Grenadier, John Handy, Red Holloway, Denise Jannah, James Moody, Tony Reedus, Max Roach, Sam Rivers, Bud Shank, Billy Taylor and Bobby Watson. A prolific recording artist, he has appeared on dozens of albums as a composer, arranger, producer and featured soloist, and has released eight recordings as a leader: Red Reflections (1995), Penumbra (1996), Starlight Café (1998), Santa's Got a Brand New Bag (2000), Nocturne (2005), The SnowCat (2006), Spiritu Sancto (2007) and Best of Dmitri Matheny (2008). Born in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised in Georgia and Arizona, Dmitri Matheny was first introduced to jazz audiences in the 1980s as the protégé of flugelhorn legend Art Farmer. Although he is an honors graduate of Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music and Michigan's Interlochen Arts Academy, it is Farmer—and the ten years of private tutelage and mentoring he received from the late jazz master—that Matheny acknowledges as his true education in jazz. While still a college student, Matheny earned a reputation in Boston as a creative and reliable session musician. He performed frequently with the True Colors Big Band (co-led by Rob Scheps and Ken Schaphorst), with his own New Voice Jazz Sextet, and with various professional mariachi and salsa bands, pit orchestras, and with touring pop and Motown acts such as the Temptations, Martha Reeves, Fabian, Bobby Rydell and Frankie Avalon. In 1989, Matheny graduated magna cum laude from Berklee, and relocated to San Francisco. Matheny began touring internationally in the 1990s. He has traveled to 17 countries, has performed for festival and concert audiences around the globe, and has garnered a legion of fans along the way. Among the honors he has received: Matheny was named "Best New Artist" in the JazzIz International Readers Poll and "Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition" in the Down Beat International Critics Poll. Although best known as a flugelhorn player, Dmitri Matheny is also a "skilled composer who can take listeners on a journey and keep them engaged with his embroidery" (Palm Springs Desert Sun). His published compostions span the jazz, popular, symphonic, choral, chamber and world music genres. Matheny's most ambitious creation to date is Spiritu Sancto (the "New Millennium Mass"), a monumental sacred work scored for chorus, organ, percussion, brass quintet, jazz ensemble and gospel soloist. Commissioned by Ted W. Hall for St. Dominic's Church in San Francisco, the composition received its world premiere at midnight on the dawn of the new millennium. Matheny has received premieres and commissions from Meet the Composer, the Manhattan New Music Project, the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers, the Bay Area Jazz Composers Orchestra and 20th Century Forum. His film scoring and soundtrack credits include the PBS documentary Mary, Paradox & Grace (1996), the industrial short film Greenhorn Creek (1997), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art production Voices & Images of California Art (1997), the RKO Pictures feature film Shade (2003), and the Cannes Film Festival premiere of "Stanley's Girlfriend," a short film from the horror anthology, Trapped Ashes (2006). A dedicated arts advocate, published writer, and sought-after public speaker, Dmitri Matheny is passionate about music education. He has held teaching faculty and arts management positions with the Jazzschool (Berkeley, CA), Boston Center for the Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Monarch Records. He has served as Director of Education for SFJAZZ: the San Francisco Jazz Organization, as Assistant Education Director for the Thelonious Monk Institute Jazz Colony at Jazz Aspen Snowmass, and as Artist-In-Residence for the Young Musicians Program of the University of California, Berkeley.
