Itaal Shur
Encyclopedia
Itaal Shur is an American
composer, producer and musician. He has written songs for a number of musicians, including Maxwell
, Jewel
and Enrique Iglesias
, and has produced records for various artists, including Kronos Quartet
, The Scumfrog
and Lucy Woodward
. He was the founding member of the acid jazz
group Groove Collective
, and has released three solo albums.
One of Shur's most notable works is the song "Smooth
", which he co-wrote with Matchbox 20
's Rob Thomas
for Santana
's Grammy Award
winning album Supernatural. "Smooth" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100
in 1999, and won Shur and Thomas the 1999 Grammy Award for Song of the Year
.
, but was raised in Seattle and Cincinnati, Ohio
. His parents are Bonia Shur, a composer of Israeli music and director of Liturgic Arts at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, who had emigrated to the United States from Russia via Israel, and Fanchon Wechsler Shur, born in Chicago
, Illinois
, a former dancer and a choreographer. Shur attended middle school at The School for Creative and Performing Arts
(SCPA) in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School
in Cincinnati, and studied jazz and composition for a year at the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. In the early 1990s he joined a local art rock
band called Sleep Theater with Rob Hamrick and Chris Sherman (later known as Freekbass).
Shur move to New York City in 1992 where, in between doing odd jobs, he played in a Morocco
n band and performed at the Knitting Factory
, an avant-garde jazz
venue. Then he switched to acid jazz
and co-founded the acid jazz group Groove Collective
, featuring on their first two albums. Shur also began composing songs, and his first hit was "Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder)", which he co-wrote with Maxwell
for Maxwell's 1996 debut album, Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite
.
In the late 1990s Shur tried his hand at funk, techno and hip-hop, and released two solo albums under an alias Big Muff, which he took from the name of an old Electro-Harmonix
guitar distortion pedal, Big Muff
. "My Funny Valentine" from his first album, Music From the Aural Exciter was a minor hit in the United Kingdom in 1998. But the song that launched Shur's career was "Smooth
", which he co-wrote with Matchbox 20
's Rob Thomas
for Santana
's album Supernatural. When he heard that Santana needed a song for their new album, Shur composed the song over a weekend. Thomas, who sang the lead vocals with Santana, wrote the song's lyrics. Carlos Santana
's "samba-like guitar riff" on "Smooth" was "note-for-note" as Shur had written it. "Smooth" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100
in 1999, and won Shur and Thomas the 1999 Grammy Award for Song of the Year
. Supernatural also won a Grammy Award
in 1999 for best album.
Shur released another solo album, Milk & Honey – 10 Hits To Bliss in 2001, this time under his real name. He also produced a number of albums for various artists, including Kronos Quartet
, Hinda Hicks
, Mark Farina
, Lighthouse Family
, The Scumfrog
and Lucy Woodward
. Shur has since established his own artist development and production company.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer, producer and musician. He has written songs for a number of musicians, including Maxwell
Maxwell (musician)
Maxwell , is an American R&B, funk and neo soul musician. He played an important role in the development of the soul sub-genre, neo-soul.-Early life:...
, Jewel
Jewel (singer)
Jewel Kilcher , professionally known as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress and poet...
and Enrique Iglesias
Enrique Iglesias
Enrique Iglesias is a Spanish pop music singer, a son of singer Julio Iglesias.Enrique started his musical career on Mexican label Fonovisa...
, and has produced records for various artists, including Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, The Scumfrog
The Scumfrog
Jesse Houk is a DJ/remixer/producer/artist from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is better known by his pseudonym, The Scumfrog, under which he has remixed songs by artists as varied as Britney Spears, David Bowie, Dido, Enrique Iglesias, and J-Pop Superstar Utada Hikaru. His first release was a...
and Lucy Woodward
Lucy Woodward
Lucy Woodward is an American pop/jazz singer and composer.Woodward was born in England, and moved with her family to Amsterdam when she was three. At the age of five, her parents split up and she relocated to the Bronx with her mother...
. He was the founding member of the acid jazz
Acid jazz
Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, funk and hip-hop, particularly looped beats. It developed in the UK over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance: jazz-funk musicians such as Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd and Grant Green are...
group Groove Collective
Groove Collective
Groove Collective is a contemporary jazz group. In 2007 they were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year for the release People People Music Music on the Savoy Jazz label.-Style:Groove Collective was formed in 1990...
, and has released three solo albums.
One of Shur's most notable works is the song "Smooth
Smooth (song)
"Smooth" is a collaboration between latin rock band Santana and Rob Thomas of the rock group Matchbox Twenty. The song was written by Thomas and Itaal Shur, sung by Thomas, and won three Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.-Concept...
", which he co-wrote with Matchbox 20
Matchbox Twenty
Matchbox Twenty is an American rock band, formed in Orlando, Florida in 1995...
's Rob Thomas
Rob Thomas (musician)
Robert Kelly "Rob" Thomas is an American rock recording artist and songwriter. He is the primary songwriter and lead singer of the band Matchbox Twenty. Thomas also records and performs as a solo artist...
for Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
's Grammy Award
Grammy Award for Album of the Year
The Grammy Award for Album of the Year is the most prestigious award category at the Grammys. It has been awarded since 1959 and though it was originally presented to the artist alone, the award is now presented to the artist, the producer, the engineer and/or mixer and the mastering engineer...
winning album Supernatural. "Smooth" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
in 1999, and won Shur and Thomas the 1999 Grammy Award for Song of the Year
Grammy Award for Song of the Year
The Song of the Year is one of the four most prestigious awards in the Grammy Awards ceremony, if not in all of the American music industry. It has been awarded since 1959 and unlike the Record of the Year award, which goes to the performer and production team of a single song, Song of the Year...
.
Biography
Itaal Shur was born in Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, but was raised in Seattle and Cincinnati, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
. His parents are Bonia Shur, a composer of Israeli music and director of Liturgic Arts at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, who had emigrated to the United States from Russia via Israel, and Fanchon Wechsler Shur, born in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, a former dancer and a choreographer. Shur attended middle school at The School for Creative and Performing Arts
School for Creative and Performing Arts
The School for Creative and Performing Arts is a magnet arts school in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, and part of the Cincinnati Public Schools...
(SCPA) in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School
Walnut Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio)
Walnut Hills High School is a public college-preparatory high school in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. Operated by the Cincinnati Public Schools, it houses grades seven through twelve and maintains a culturally diverse student body. The school has been given an excellent rating by the Ohio...
in Cincinnati, and studied jazz and composition for a year at the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. In the early 1990s he joined a local art rock
Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...
band called Sleep Theater with Rob Hamrick and Chris Sherman (later known as Freekbass).
Shur move to New York City in 1992 where, in between doing odd jobs, he played in a Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
n band and performed at the Knitting Factory
Knitting Factory
The Knitting Factory is a music venue and concert house with locations in Brooklyn, Boise, Reno, and Spokane. The club originally specialized in jazz and experimental music and has expanded to showcasing all genres of music, performing arts and comedy....
, an avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which ...
venue. Then he switched to acid jazz
Acid jazz
Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, funk and hip-hop, particularly looped beats. It developed in the UK over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance: jazz-funk musicians such as Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd and Grant Green are...
and co-founded the acid jazz group Groove Collective
Groove Collective
Groove Collective is a contemporary jazz group. In 2007 they were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year for the release People People Music Music on the Savoy Jazz label.-Style:Groove Collective was formed in 1990...
, featuring on their first two albums. Shur also began composing songs, and his first hit was "Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder)", which he co-wrote with Maxwell
Maxwell (musician)
Maxwell , is an American R&B, funk and neo soul musician. He played an important role in the development of the soul sub-genre, neo-soul.-Early life:...
for Maxwell's 1996 debut album, Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite
Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite
Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite is the debut album of American recording artist Maxwell, released April 2, 1996 on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place during 1994 to 1995 at Electric Lady Studios, RPM, Sorcerer, and Chung King Studios in New York City and...
.
In the late 1990s Shur tried his hand at funk, techno and hip-hop, and released two solo albums under an alias Big Muff, which he took from the name of an old Electro-Harmonix
Electro-Harmonix
Electro-Harmonix is a New York-based company that makes high-end electronic audio processors. The company was founded by Mike Matthews in 1968. They are most famous for a series of popular guitar effects pedals introduced in the 1970s and 1990s....
guitar distortion pedal, Big Muff
Big Muff
The Big Muff is a fuzzbox produced in New York City by the Electro-Harmonix company, along with their Russian sister company Sovtek, primarily for use with the electric guitar...
. "My Funny Valentine" from his first album, Music From the Aural Exciter was a minor hit in the United Kingdom in 1998. But the song that launched Shur's career was "Smooth
Smooth (song)
"Smooth" is a collaboration between latin rock band Santana and Rob Thomas of the rock group Matchbox Twenty. The song was written by Thomas and Itaal Shur, sung by Thomas, and won three Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.-Concept...
", which he co-wrote with Matchbox 20
Matchbox Twenty
Matchbox Twenty is an American rock band, formed in Orlando, Florida in 1995...
's Rob Thomas
Rob Thomas (musician)
Robert Kelly "Rob" Thomas is an American rock recording artist and songwriter. He is the primary songwriter and lead singer of the band Matchbox Twenty. Thomas also records and performs as a solo artist...
for Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
's album Supernatural. When he heard that Santana needed a song for their new album, Shur composed the song over a weekend. Thomas, who sang the lead vocals with Santana, wrote the song's lyrics. Carlos Santana
Carlos Santana
Carlos Augusto Alves Santana is a Mexican rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion...
's "samba-like guitar riff" on "Smooth" was "note-for-note" as Shur had written it. "Smooth" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
in 1999, and won Shur and Thomas the 1999 Grammy Award for Song of the Year
Grammy Award for Song of the Year
The Song of the Year is one of the four most prestigious awards in the Grammy Awards ceremony, if not in all of the American music industry. It has been awarded since 1959 and unlike the Record of the Year award, which goes to the performer and production team of a single song, Song of the Year...
. Supernatural also won a Grammy Award
Grammy Award for Album of the Year
The Grammy Award for Album of the Year is the most prestigious award category at the Grammys. It has been awarded since 1959 and though it was originally presented to the artist alone, the award is now presented to the artist, the producer, the engineer and/or mixer and the mastering engineer...
in 1999 for best album.
Shur released another solo album, Milk & Honey – 10 Hits To Bliss in 2001, this time under his real name. He also produced a number of albums for various artists, including Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, Hinda Hicks
Hinda Hicks
Hinda Hicks is a Tunisian born singer, with British nationality having moved to West Sussex as a child.-Introduction:Hicks originally sang with an R&B band called the Fabulous Fug Band and at one time sent a demo of her vocals alongside Aretha Franklin's "Giving Him Something He Can Feel" to Phil...
, Mark Farina
Mark Farina
Mark Farina is a disc jockey and musician, known for his Chicago house, acid jazz and downtempo works. Notable releases include Mood and the Mushroom Jazz series , and recently known also from house compilations El Divinio...
, Lighthouse Family
Lighthouse Family
Lighthouse Family are a British musical duo that rose to prominence in the mid-1990s and remained active until the early 2000s. Vocalist Tunde Baiyewu and keyboardist Paul Tucker formed the act in 1993 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK after meeting while studying at university...
, The Scumfrog
The Scumfrog
Jesse Houk is a DJ/remixer/producer/artist from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is better known by his pseudonym, The Scumfrog, under which he has remixed songs by artists as varied as Britney Spears, David Bowie, Dido, Enrique Iglesias, and J-Pop Superstar Utada Hikaru. His first release was a...
and Lucy Woodward
Lucy Woodward
Lucy Woodward is an American pop/jazz singer and composer.Woodward was born in England, and moved with her family to Amsterdam when she was three. At the age of five, her parents split up and she relocated to the Bronx with her mother...
. Shur has since established his own artist development and production company.
Solo discography
- Music From the Aural Exciter (1998, Snapt Records) – released under the alias Big Muff
- Aurally Exciting Remixes (2000, Razor & Tie) – released under the alias Big Muff
- Milk & Honey – 10 Hits to Bliss (2001, Wave Music)