“We all grow up with inherited genes 
and inherited sensibilities, and 
they run very, very deep.” 
—John Lithgow 
 

To recap: it turns out that my estranged mother, who left us when I was a baby, was a singer. Although…

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“The only thing new in the world
is the history you do not know.” 
—Harry S. Truman
 

Since Lela’s last Irish goodbye, I’d grown up, moved out, finished high school in Michigan, graduated from college in Massachusetts, lived…

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“It’s good to know where you come from. 
It makes you what you are today. 
It’s DNA. It’s in your blood.” 
—Alexander McQueen 
 

In 1984 I was at boarding school in Michigan when my father called from Arizona to…

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“You've taken your first step into a larger world.” 
—Obi-Wan Kenobi 

 

When I was first starting out, my mentor Art Farmer told me what it really takes to persevere in this business. “Do you like to travel?” he…

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Since childhood I’ve been haunted by three recurring dreams: the clown, the flying dream, and the shadow man.

THE CLOWN

I know, I know.  

Coulrophobia is is such a cliché.  

But this one’s a bonafide nightmare.  

…Read more

If Interlochen was an artist colony, Berklee was a star factory.  

By the late 1980s, Berklee College of Music had established itself as a global center for music education, attracting talented students from all around the world. From its…

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Remember the song “Fame?” 

Not the groovy David Bowie ear worm. The other one: 

Fame! I’m gonna live forever 
I’m gonna learn how to fly 
High! I feel it coming together 
People will see me and…

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Dmitri Matheny Group JAZZ NOIR
Michigan Tour Diary — Day 13
April 23 Bloomfield Hills

Today we visited Cranbrook, a private, PK–12 college prep school
in tony Bloomfield Hills just outside Detroit.

The Cranbrook Schools comprise a co-ed elementary school…

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Dmitri Matheny Group JAZZ NOIR
Michigan Tour Diary — Day 11
April 19-21 Kalamazoo, Potterville, Traverse City, Hillsdale

On Saturday Sassy and I checked into the 'Billy Hart Suite' at the home of Tom and Renata Knific in Kalamazoo,
a…

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Dmitri Matheny Group JAZZ NOIR
Michigan Tour Diary — Day 8
April 18 Interlochen

Today I returned to Interlochen Arts Academy for the first time in 30 years.

When I first came to Interlochen as a high school student in…

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Dmitri Matheny Group JAZZ NOIR
Michigan Tour Diary — Day 7
April 17 Berkley and Ann Arbor

Returning to Southern Michigan after our adventures in the Great White North,
today I led a workshop at Berkley High School and played…

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Dmitri Matheny Group JAZZ NOIR
Michigan Tour Diary — Day 2
April 11 Traverse City, MI

After a four-hour flight to Detroit and a four-hour drive north through mist and fog,
dodging deer along the way, we've arrived in Traverse…

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Sassy prepares for the Michigan Incursion.

We're putting together a jazz residency in Michigan next spring, with concerts in Detroit, Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo, and workshops at colleges and high schools throughout the state. These will be my first Michigan appearances since attending Interlochen Arts…Read more

Our Michigan Residency in April 2014 is coming together nicely!

March 14, 1984

Senior Recital

Interlochen Arts Academy

Interlochen, Michigan

 

March 14, 1999

Dmitri Matheny, Darrell Grant, Bill Douglass

Florio Street Concerts

Oakland, California

 

March 14, 2005

Music of…

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Hard to believe my high school senior recital was 29 years ago this week. So long ago that I still had a third eye ("i"). John Redmer on bass, a very talented young man, now gone but not forgotten. And…Read more

Here are two photos of yours truly performing with the Interlochen Arts Academy jazz ensemble, taken nearly 30 years apart.

The top image is from our final "stud orch" concert at Interlochen's Corson Auditorium in Fall 1984. The bottom…Read more

Interlochen Arts Academy is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month and next with a spring series of performances and events across the country. I'm honored to be among the Academy alumni who will appear as guest soloists, along with such…Read more

But how can one express the wonder of Interlochen? No one can truly translate it for others. I can only say that in a world which deals so much, for expedience's sake, in tinsel and material values, there is… Read more

Toward the end of high school, I left home to attend a private boarding school in Michigan called Interlochen Arts Academy.

Interlochen was for me a magical place, populated by individualists, social misfits, and eccentrics — kids who,…Read more