Jasun Martz
Encyclopedia
Jasun Martz is an American
record producer
, composer
, musician
, fine artist, creative director
and sculptor who has worked on several international hit records. He has recorded with Michael Jackson
, toured with Frank Zappa
and helped arrange the hit "We Built This City
" by Starship
.
Martz has lived in New York
since 1997, and Los Angeles
and London
before that. He is also a painter
and sculptor. He has created and exhibited "raw expressionist" paintings and papier-mâché
sculpture inspired by the subway passengers he encounters in each city. He collaborated with French modern master Jean Dubuffet
(the founder of art brut
) on Martz's avant-garde/contemporary classical symphony entitled The Pillory.
; New York University
; California State University, Northridge; Art Center College of Design and graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara
with a Bachelors degree in the arts.
He has recorded and toured with numerous celebrated entertainers, including performing on Michael Jackson's Dangerous and Bad albums. He played keyboards and synthesizers on the quadruple platinum #1 hit "Black or White" from Jackson's Dangerous album. It was later included on HIStory
, Number Ones and three video/DVD
s. He is the featured harmonica soloist on "Streetwalker", a Bad
outtake which later appeared as a bonus track on the 2001 Special Edition reissue, and as the flip-side to the UK hit "Cry". He has recorded and toured with Frank Zappa
, the Japanese progressive rock group The Far East Family Band, and helped arrange Starship's #1 hit, We Built This City
with Grammy award-winning producer Bill Bottrell
. Bottrell has said Martz "brought an immediacy and a rock & roll fire" to the Michael Jackson recordings.
In an interview in the New York Times in 2005, Martz said his music is sometimes very wild and not for the faint of heart. He composed and produced a contemporary classical symphony
(his second) for the 115-member The Intercontinental Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Choir. The Pillory/The Battle is a 2 CD set released in 2005 and 2007 and features 2½ hours of Martz's music. Searching for musical inspiration, Martz climbed to the refugio on Ecuador's Mount Cotopaxi–the world’s tallest active volcano. When he descended the very steep slope, he tripped and began a tumble. Martz has said he then had an epiphany for the symphony. The music explores the Charles Darwin
theory of evolution on the earth 200 million years into the future. It was reported in the New York Times that Mr. Martz said “after the tumble, a wild idea came to me of what the symphony should be.”
Martz conducted a 40-piece orchestra, the Neoteric Orchestra, in his first avant-garde symphony The Pillory. The CD features members of Frank Zappa
's band Ruth Underwood
, Eddie Jobson
, has received hundreds of international reviews and has often been called a contemporary masterpiece. Billboard Magazine reviewed The Pillory as a "Top Album Pick" and it was featured in Canadian director Francois Miron
’s film Resolving Power (2001, FilmGrafix Studios, Montreal).
Martz has also composed for film, television and advertising.
Martz is also an internationally known New York based Creative Director in the beauty and fashion industries. He has created advertising campaigns for major brands such as Max Factor
, Guess
, Revlon
, Procter & Gamble
, Redken
, Neutrogena
, Rembrandt and many others.
Also an inventor, Martz is the creator and owner of many trademarks, copyrights and patents. He was most recently awarded a United States patent for his invention of a sponge storage and disinfecting device.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
record producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
, fine artist, creative director
Creative Director
A creative director is a position often found within the graphic design, film, music, fashion, advertising, media or entertainment industries, but may be useful in other creative organizations such as web development and software development firms as well....
and sculptor who has worked on several international hit records. He has recorded with Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
, toured with Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
and helped arrange the hit "We Built This City
We Built This City
"We Built This City" is the title of a song written by Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, and Peter Wolf, and originally recorded by the American pop rock group Starship and released as its debut single on August 1, 1985....
" by Starship
Starship
A starship or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for traveling between the stars, as opposed to a vehicle designed for orbital spaceflight or interplanetary travel....
.
Martz has lived in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
since 1997, and Los Angeles
Los 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...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
before that. He is also a painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and sculptor. He has created and exhibited "raw expressionist" paintings and papier-mâché
Papier-mâché
Papier-mâché , alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste....
sculpture inspired by the subway passengers he encounters in each city. He collaborated with French modern master Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...
(the founder of art brut
Outsider Art
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...
) on Martz's avant-garde/contemporary classical symphony entitled The Pillory.
Biography
Martz began his music career at an early age, signing his first professional recording and publishing contract at the age of 15. Martz studied at the University of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
; New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
; California State University, Northridge; Art Center College of Design and graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
with a Bachelors degree in the arts.
He has recorded and toured with numerous celebrated entertainers, including performing on Michael Jackson's Dangerous and Bad albums. He played keyboards and synthesizers on the quadruple platinum #1 hit "Black or White" from Jackson's Dangerous album. It was later included on HIStory
HIStory
HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is the ninth studio album by American songwriter and recording artist Michael Jackson, released on June 16, 1995 by Epic Records. The majority of the album's tracks were written and produced by Jackson...
, Number Ones and three video/DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s. He is the featured harmonica soloist on "Streetwalker", a Bad
Bad (album)
Bad is the seventh studio album by American songwriter and recording artist Michael Jackson. The album was released on August 31, 1987 by Epic/CBS Records, nearly five years after Jackson's previous studio album, Thriller, which went on to become the world's best-selling album...
outtake which later appeared as a bonus track on the 2001 Special Edition reissue, and as the flip-side to the UK hit "Cry". He has recorded and toured with Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
, the Japanese progressive rock group The Far East Family Band, and helped arrange Starship's #1 hit, We Built This City
We Built This City
"We Built This City" is the title of a song written by Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, and Peter Wolf, and originally recorded by the American pop rock group Starship and released as its debut single on August 1, 1985....
with Grammy award-winning producer Bill Bottrell
Bill Bottrell
Bill Bottrell is an American record producer, songwriter and musician, probably best known for his Grammy Award-winning collaborations with Michael Jackson, E.L.O. and Sheryl Crow.- Biography :...
. Bottrell has said Martz "brought an immediacy and a rock & roll fire" to the Michael Jackson recordings.
In an interview in the New York Times in 2005, Martz said his music is sometimes very wild and not for the faint of heart. He composed and produced a contemporary classical symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
(his second) for the 115-member The Intercontinental Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Choir. The Pillory/The Battle is a 2 CD set released in 2005 and 2007 and features 2½ hours of Martz's music. Searching for musical inspiration, Martz climbed to the refugio on Ecuador's Mount Cotopaxi–the world’s tallest active volcano. When he descended the very steep slope, he tripped and began a tumble. Martz has said he then had an epiphany for the symphony. The music explores the Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
theory of evolution on the earth 200 million years into the future. It was reported in the New York Times that Mr. Martz said “after the tumble, a wild idea came to me of what the symphony should be.”
Martz conducted a 40-piece orchestra, the Neoteric Orchestra, in his first avant-garde symphony The Pillory. The CD features members of Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
's band Ruth Underwood
Ruth Underwood
Ruth Underwood is a retired professional musician, best known for playing xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and other percussion instruments in Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention from 1967 to 1977....
, Eddie Jobson
Eddie Jobson
Edwin "Eddie" Jobson is an English keyboardist and violinist noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K., and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zappa's band in 1976-77...
, has received hundreds of international reviews and has often been called a contemporary masterpiece. Billboard Magazine reviewed The Pillory as a "Top Album Pick" and it was featured in Canadian director Francois Miron
François Miron
François Miron is a French-Canadian experimental filmmaker.Miron was born in Montreal in 1962. He obtained a BFA from Concordia University in 1987 and an MFA from The School of The Art Institute Of Chicago in 1990....
’s film Resolving Power (2001, FilmGrafix Studios, Montreal).
Martz has also composed for film, television and advertising.
Martz is also an internationally known New York based Creative Director in the beauty and fashion industries. He has created advertising campaigns for major brands such as Max Factor
Max Factor
Max Factor & Company is a cosmetics company, founded during 1909 by Maksymilian Faktorowicz , Max Factor, a Polish-Jewish cosmetician. Max Factor & Company was a related, two-family, multi-generational international cosmetics company before its sale in 1973 for $500 million dollars...
, Guess
Guess
The word guess commonly refers to a conjecture or estimation. To "guess" is to make a prediction without sufficient information or knowledge.Guess may also refer to:*Guess , an American name-brand clothing line...
, Revlon
Revlon
Revlon is an American cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care company founded in 1932.-History:Revlon was founded in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name...
, Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....
, Redken
Redken
Redken is an American hair care brand owned by L'Oréal Group under the Professional Products division.The company was founded in 1960 by hairdresser/chemist Jheri Redding and actress/model Paula Kent, thus the name, "Red-ken."...
, Neutrogena
Neutrogena
Neutrogena is an American brand of premium-priced skin care, hair care and cosmetics, that is headquartered at Los Angeles, California. According to product advertising at their website, Neutrogena products are distributed in more than 70 countries....
, Rembrandt and many others.
Also an inventor, Martz is the creator and owner of many trademarks, copyrights and patents. He was most recently awarded a United States patent for his invention of a sponge storage and disinfecting device.
Exhibition history
- Love Thy Neighbor (group) Kenise Barnes Fine Art Gallery, Larchmont, New York, August - September 2011
- Harlem Art Project (group) Saatchi & Saatchi, New York City, New York December, 2003
- In Dim Light (solo) A five year retrospective SPA, New York City, New York October 2002
- Oblivious (solo) Gallery @ 135, New York City, New York March 13 - April 1, 2001
- Under the Asphalt (solo) Siberia Gallery, New York City, New York July 21 - August 20, 2000
- Faces in the Dark (solo) Sash Gallery, Glen Ridge, New Jersey, September 7 - October 30, 1999
- About Face (group) Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, California July 10 - September 1, 1996
- Under (solo) LCA/LA Galleries, Los Angeles, California 1994
- Underground (solo) LAM Gallery, London, England 1986
Discography
- The Arts, the Intercontinental Philharmonic Orchestra, "The Victory Fanfare" (Under The Asphalt, 2011) composer, conductor, producer
- The Intercontinental Philharmonic Orchestra. "Young" (The Seol Won Foundation, 2011), composer, conductor, producer
- The Arts (featuring Jasun Martz), "light" (Under The Asphalt, 2010) composer, producer, grand piano
- Sue Reed "Whose Hat Covers That Sundial?" (Under The Asphalt, 2007) producer, mellotron, drums, bass
- The Sin Circle (Under The Asphalt, 2007) producer, composer, musician
- Jasun Martz with The Intercontinental Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Choir "The Pillory/The Battle" (Under The Asphalt, 2007, 2005) producer, composer, musician
- Jasun Martz with The Neoteric Orchestra "The Pillory" (Under The Asphalt, 2007) producer, composer, musician
- The Sin Circle "Freedom", "Alive and Lubricated" motion picture and soundtrack CD (Attack Filmworks, Canada, 2005) producer, composer, musician
- Michael Jackson "Number Ones" (Sony/Columbia, 2003) keyboards and synthesizers
- The Sin Circle "Freedom" (Attack Records, 2001) producer, composer, musician
- Michael Jackson "Bad" "Streetwalker" (Special edition, Sony/Columbia, 2001) featured solo harmonica
- Michael Jackson "Cry" "Streetwalker" (Special edition 12"/CD, Sony UK, 2001) featured solo harmonica
- Michael Jackson "Dangerous remastered" (Sony/Columbia, 2001) keyboards and synthesizers
- Michael Jackson "Greatest Hits" (Sony/Columbia, 2001) keyboards and synthesizer
- Michael Jackson "The Short Films/DVD" (Sony/Columbia, 2001) keyboards and synthesizer
- Michael Jackson "Video Greatest Hits- History/DVD" (Sony/Columbia, 2001) keyboards and synthesizer
- The Sin Circle "Everyone's an Idiot" (Sin Circle, 1999) producer, composer, musician
- Michael Jackson "HIStory" (Sony/Columbia, 1995) keyboards and synthesizer
- Beck "A Western Harvest Field by Moonlight (Fingerpaint, 1994) art director
- Jasun Martz "The Pillory" (Ad Perpetuam Memoriam, 1994) producer, composer, musician
- Michael Jackson "Dangerous" (Sony/Columbia, 1991) keyboards and synthesizer
- Michael Jackson "Dangerous" Video (director: John Landis, 1991) implemental percussion, vocals
- Del Rubio Triplets "Three gals, Three Guitars" (Cabazon, 1988) art director
- The Starship "We Built This City On Rock and Roll" (RCA, 1985) co-arranger
- The Results (1984) bass, vocals
- Bone Cabal (Mystic Records, 1983) producer
- Jasun Martz/Eddie Jobson/John Luttrelle "in light, in dark in between"- The American Music Compilation (EurockEurockEurock is a worldwide music promotion company founded by Archie Patterson in 1971. The name "Eurock" is short for "European Rock" although the scope of the company quickly expanded worldwide.There are over 2,700 bands profiled in Eurock's index....
, 1982) producer, composer, piano - Jasun "Won't let me go" (Neoteric Music, 1982) co-producer, composer, musician
- Jasun Martz and the Neoteric Orchestra "The Pillory" (Neoteric Music, 1981) producer, composer, musician
- The Far East Family Band "Live at the Troubadour" (RCA Victor Japan, 1979) keyboards, vocals, percussion
- Jasun Martz and the Neoteric Orchestra "The Pillory" (All Ears/ PBR International, 1978) producer, composer, musician
- Frank Zappa "Live in New York" (1977) synthesizer programmer, percussion & vocal overdubs
- American Zoo "Back street thoughts/What am I?"(Rena Records, 1968) drums, vocals
- American Zoo "Back street thoughts/What am I?"(Rena Records, 1968) drums, vocals
- American Zoo "Magdalena/Mr. Brotherhood?"(Rena Records, 1968) drums, vocals
- We the People "Who Am I?/Back Street Thoughts"(Rena Records, 1968) drums, vocals
- We the People "Feelings of my Emptiness/For no one to see"(Rena Records, 1967) drums, vocals
External links
- http://www.JasunMartz.com
- http://www.UnderTheAsphalt.com
- http://www.Jasun.info
- http://www.Facebook.com/JasunMartz
- http://www.Myspace.com/JasunMartz
- http://www.Twitter.com/JasunMartz