Solos – The Jazz Sessions – Steven Bernstein

Steven Bernstein is a trumpeter/slide trumpeter, bandleader, arranger, and composer who lives outside of musical convention."I'm one of the few trumpet players who understands different styles of music inside and outside of jazz. In my date book you'll see Lou Reed, Sex Mob, Sam Rivers, Levon Helm, and Trey Anastasio" "Growing up in Berkeley was the most amazing thing. Listen to the musicians who went to my high school: Josh Redman, Peter Apfelbaum, Lenny Pickett, Craig Handy, Benny Green. The guy who ran the jazz program, Phil Hardymon, was incredible; he starting teaching kids to improvise in fourth grade. My English teacher had fallen in love with Lester Young in the '40s, and she would play Lester Young or Coltrane for us at the start of class every day." In this intimate set of SOLO performances Bernstein dedicates spontaneously improvised pieces to a variety of culture makers including Lenny Bruce, Sly Stone, Marianne Faithful and Leonard Cohen.