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Ernie Watts

Ernie Watts

Sunday Night Jazz Showcase

Program #113 (March 20 at 8:00PM)

Two-time Grammy Award winner Ernie Watts is one of the most versatile and prolific saxophone players in music. It has been more than fifty-five years since he first picked up a saxophone, and from age sixteen on he has been playing professionally, initially while still attending school. Watts has been featured on over 500 recordings by artists ranging from Cannonball Adderley to Frank Zappa, always exhibiting his unforgettable trademark sound.

In March of 2014, Watts received the prestigious Frankfurt Music Prize at the Frankfurt MusikMesse. Founded in 1980, the Frankfurt Music Prize is presented annually. Recipients include classical and non-classical musicians. Of the 32 current winners, only 6 have been jazz musicians. Per the Frankfurt Music Prize Foundation, Watts was "selected for his strikingly melodic saxophone style and his original tone language, with which he has already enriched several generations of musicians." Previous jazz honorees include Chick Corea, Paquito D'Rivera, and John McLaughlin.

Watts started playing saxophone at age 13 in Wilmington, Delaware. He went with a friend to their junior high school music department, and found himself carrying home an instrument too. His discipline combined with natural talent began to shape his life.

He won a scholarship to the Wilmington Music School where he studied classical music and technique, and was a featured soloist with the Delaware Symphony by age 16. But his neighbor heard him practicing, and started lending him jazz records. He started to learn jazz by ear, often falling asleep at night listening to a stack of Coltrane records. Although he enrolled briefly at West Chester University in music education, he soon won a Downbeat Scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, renowned for jazz.

When Gene Quill quit Buddy Rich's Big Band in Boston, trombonist Phil Wilson (a professor at Berklee), was asked to recommend a student as temporary replacement. A young Ernie Watts was referred, and left Berklee for that important spot. The "student temporary" stayed with Rich from 1966-1968 and toured the world, also recording two albums with the band-Big Swing Face and The New One.

Next, Watts moved to Los Angeles and began working in the big bands of Gerald Wilson and Oliver Nelson. With the Nelson band, Watts visited West Africa on a two-month U.S. State Department tour in 1969. It was also with Oliver Nelson that Watts recorded with the legendary Thelonious Monk on Monk's Blues for Columbia.

During the 1970s and '80s, Watts was immersed in the busy production scene of Los Angeles. His signature sound was heard on countless TV shows and movie scores, almost all the early West Coast Motown sessions, and with pop stars such as Marvin Gaye, Earth Wind and Fire, Steely Dan, and Aretha Franklin. He was also a member of the band for the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for 20 years, until Carson's retirement in 1991.

In 1983, the film composer Michel Colombier wrote an orchestral piece titled "Nightbird" for Watts. At the work's inaugural performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, iconic jazz bassist Charlie Haden came backstage to introduce himself. The meeting led to Watts performing with Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and to tours with Pat Metheny's Special Quartet which included Haden.

Watts' touring with Metheny's group in the late 1980s was a turning point for him. Haden's critically-acclaimed Quartet West was formed soon after, and Watts was a charter member, touring and recording with it for twenty-five years until Haden's death in 2014. Watts' work for the audiophile Japanese label JVC Music and, later, his growing catalog of original music for Flying Dolphin continue to express his joy in the power of jazz.

His four recordings for JVC Music include some of his favorite players, such as Jack DeJohnette, Arturo Sandoval, Kenny Barron, Mulgrew Miller, Eddie Gomez, Jimmy Cobb and Reggie Workman, and both jazz classics and original music by Watts. After starting Flying Dolphin, he also recorded duet CDs Blue Topaz and Pa Chuly with acclaimed German pianist (and member of his European quartet) Christof Saenger for Laika Records.

Watts' eclectic mix of career activities has included work with vocalist Kurt Elling on Dedicated To You, recorded live at Lincoln Center, which won Elling his first Grammy Award, and concerts with the WDR Big Band Cologne in Germany, the Croatian Radio Televsion Jazz Orchestra in Zagreb and the National Radio Band of Slovenia, which played two of his compositions arranged for Watts by the celebrated Michael Abene. He has performed in Jazz at the Kennedy Center, with the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra in Los Angeles, and has toured major cities in India with Dr. Subramaniam.

A typical year finds him touring Europe with his own European Ernie Watts Quartet in spring and fall, and performing at summer festivals throughout North America and Europe. One of his latest projects in 2015 is with the Sligo Jazz Project and Festival in Ireland, a week-long workshop with jazz students with two festival concerts as well. He is also Guest of Honor at the 2015 Telluride Jazz Festival in Colorado, playing with his US Ernie Watts Quartet.

He gives back to the music by conducting clinics and master classes, both on the student and professional level, and soon will release his first educational video A Melodic Approach to Improvisation. Watts has also compiled a collection of orchestral arrangements for guest soloist appearances with symphonies, most recently with the National Symphony of Costa Rica.

Paul Hitchcock earned his Masters in Communications from Morehead State University and Bachelors in Radio-TV/Psychology from Georgetown College. A veteran broadcaster for more than 40 years and an avid fan of blues, jazz and American roots music. Hitchcock has been with WMKY since 1986 and was named General Manager in 2003. He currently hosts "Muddy Bottom Blues" (Fri., 8pm-9pm), "Nothin' But The Blues" (Sat., 8pm-12am), "Sunday Night Jazz Showcase" and "Live From The Jazz Lounge" (Sun., 8pm-9pm) and "The Golden Age of Radio" (Sun., 2pm-3pm). He also serves as producer for "A Time For Tales" and "The Reader's Notebook."