Bobby Previte: Drummer, Composer, Bandleader
The base of his music is jazz, but Bobby Previte composes and plays in the musical hemispheres. He attended the University of Buffalo earning a B.A. (1973) in music.
Previte hit the jazz scene in New York in 1979, soon hooking up with many musicians including John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, and Elliott Sharp. He has played at music festivals in London, Paris, Istanbul, Rio, Tokyo, Sydney, Copenhagen and Rome.
Bobby has received many grants including two from the New York Foundation for the Arts and three from the National Endowment for the Arts, all for composition. Previte has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony five times. Jazziz Magazine dubbed him as one of “150 Who Moved Jazz.”
Previte was born July 16, 1959 In Naigrara Fall, NY. While still a kid he thought there was a unique night sound.
Previte told Clare O’Shea, writing for UBToday in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue that “Every time I write something, I’m inspired by that,” and he said “You can’t get out of your own skin.” He spoke of the roar that Niagara Falls made, which could be heard at night, located thirty blocks away from his childhood home.
By 2004 he had at least two dozen albums of his own to his credit and had been a contributer to about 60 other releases. He’s been in many rock and jazz bands: The Coalition of the Willing, Elliot Sharp’s Carbon, Wayne Horvitz’s President, his own fusionist quartet, which sometimes featured the two guitarists rumbling it out and others.
A quote from Peter Watrous explains.
“Looping and fierce metallic melodies snarled away at each other, only to smooth out into a country-styled riff, then into rock powerchords.” Watrous heard the guitar battle at a concert at the Knitting Factory in NY.
The Penguin Musician’s Guide says: “Bobby Previte is in many ways the archetypal 21st Century Jazz Musician: open-eared, adventurous, uncategorizable, technically flawless.”
Other interesting facts:
He is included in the Oxford “Dictionary of Jazz,”
The Penguin “Jazz, the Rough Guide”
“Jazz, The First Century,”
Oxford’s “History of Jazz,”
Schimer’s “Jazz-The Essential Album Guide”,
the “All Music Guide to Jazz,”
Francis Davis has written about Previte in “Bebop and Nothingness”
and Stuart Nicholson in “Jazz-The Modern Resurgence.”
My favorite compostion so far is The Ministry Of Truth.
Listen to Previte at:
http://www.rhapsody.com/bobbyprevite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Previte
Selected Discography
1985: Bump the Renaissance
1986: Dull Bang, Gushing Sound, Human Shriek
1987: Pushing the Envelope
1988: Claude’s Late Morning
1989: On Fire with Michel Camilo
1990: Empty Suits
1991: Music of the Moscow Circus-Moscow Circus on Stage
1991: Weather Clear Track Fast
1993: Hue and Cry
1994: Slay the Suitors
1996: Too Close to the Pole
1996: Ponga - Ponga
1997: My Man in Sydney
1998: Remixes (Ponga album)|Remixes - Ponga
1998: Dangerous Rip
1998: Latin for travellers
1999: Psychological - Ponga
1999: In the Grass
2002: Just Add Water
2002: The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró
2003: Counterclockwise
2004: Latitude - Groundtruther
2005: Longitude (album)|Longitude - Groundtruther
2006: Bobby Previte - Jamie Saft - Skerik - Live in Japan 2003 (Word Public - DVD)
2006: The Coalition of the Willing
References
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/
“The Separation”
by Karl Gehrke, Minnesota Public Radio
February 2, 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Previte
http://www.bobbyprevite.com/
UBT
Being Bobby Previte
By Clare O’Shea
Spring/summer, 2004
http://www.buffalo.edu/UBT/UBT-archives/26_ubtss04/alumni_profiles/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE5D71030F937A35751C1A96E948260
Review/Rock; Bobby Previte Leads A fusionist Quartet
The New York Times
By PETER WATROUS
Published: December 4, 1988
http://www.indiejazz.com/page.aspx?page=product_details&ProductID=1063
Charlie Hunter/Bobby Previte/DJ Logic
“Longitude” 2005