John Clark is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 horn player and composer.

Biography

John Clark was born in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 and grew up in Rochester, New York

Rochester, New York

Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

. His father was William H. Clark, a professor of German and dean of education at the University of Rochester

University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...

, and his mother was Margaret Garmey. He and his four brothers graduated from Brighton High School in Rochester. In 1966 he received a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Rochester, where he also studied horn with Verne Reynolds at the Eastman School of Music

Eastman School of Music

The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...

. From 1967 until 1971 he played in the United States Coast Guard Band

United States Coast Guard Band

The United States Coast Guard Band is the premier military band of the United States Coast Guard based in New London, Connecticut.The current director is Commander Kenneth W. Megan.- History :...

. On 13 September 1967 he married Nancy Puls; they have two children. Clark received an M.M. degree (with honors) from the New England Conservatory of Music

New England Conservatory of Music

The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent school of music in the United States.The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of...

 in 1973. He studied composition and improvisation with Jaki Byard

Jaki Byard

Jaki Byard was an American jazz pianist and composer who also played trumpet and saxophone, among several other instruments. He was noteworthy for his eclectic style, incorporating everything from ragtime and stride to free jazz...

, Ran Blake

Ran Blake

Ran Blake is an American pianist and composer from Springfield, Massachusetts. In a career that spans five decades, Blake has created a unique niche in improvised music as an artist and educator...

, and George Russell; and horn with James Stagliano, Thomas Newell, and Paul Ingraham. In 1991 he received a patent for the "hornette," an instrument with the same range as a French Horn but with a forward-facing bell for greater projection. He taught at the State University of New York at Purchase

State University of New York at Purchase

Purchase College, State University of New York, is a public four-year college located in Purchase, New York, United States. It is one of 13 comprehensive colleges in the State University of New York system...

 from 2001 until 2008. He is now on faculty at Manhattan School of Music.

Performance work

As one of only a handful of horn players proficient in non-classical genres, Clark has performed or recorded with a wide variety of musicians. These include Glen Velez

Glen Velez

Glen Velez is an American percussionist, vocalist, and composer, specializing in frame drums from around the world. He is largely responsible for the increasing popularity of frame drums in the United States and around the world....

, Jerome Harris, Anthony Jackson, Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...

, B. B. King

B. B. King

Riley B. King , known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter.Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at No.3 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. According to Edward M...

, Oliver Lake

Oliver Lake

Oliver Lake is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer and poet. He is known mainly on alto saxophone but also performs on soprano saxophone and flute....

, Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

, McCoy Tyner

McCoy Tyner

McCoy Tyner is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career.-Early life:...

, Sting, Lew Soloff

Lew Soloff

Lew Soloff is a jazz trumpeter, composer and actor. He studied trumpet at the Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. He is likely best known for his work with Blood, Sweat & Tears from 1968 to 1973...

, David Taylor, Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

, Akiko Yano

Akiko Yano

is a Japanese pop and jazz musician and singer. She was born as Akiko Suzuki in Tokyo and raised in Aomori, Aomori, and later began her singing career in the mid-1970s...

, Leroy Jenkins, Gerry Mulligan

Gerry Mulligan

Gerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also...

, Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes

Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. was an American songwriter, musician, singer and actor. Hayes was one of the creative influences behind the southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwriter and as a record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the...

, Mike Richmond

Mike Richmond (musician)

Mike Richmond is an American jazz bassist.Richmond played guitar as a youth but picked up bass during high school. He attended Temple University and taught and played locally in the late 1960s...

, Howard Johnson

Howard Johnson (jazz musician)

Howard Lewis Johnson in Montgomery, Alabama, is an American jazz musician known mainly for his work on tuba and baritone saxophone, although he also plays the bass clarinet, trumpet and other reed instruments....

, Carla Bley

Carla Bley

Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...

, Grachan Moncur

Grachan Moncur III

Grachan Moncur III is an American jazz trombonist who has mostly played free jazz, as well as being a prolific composer. He is the son of jazz bassist Grachan Moncur II and the nephew of jazz saxophonist Al Cooper.-Biography:...

, Ashford and Simpson, the Brooklyn Philharmonic

Brooklyn Philharmonic

The Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, commonly known as the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is an American orchestra based in the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City...

, Pat Metheny

Pat Metheny

Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and '80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects...

, Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

, Dave Grusin

Dave Grusin

David Grusin is an American composer, arranger and pianist. Grusin has composed many scores for feature films and television, and has won numerous awards for his soundtrack and record work, including an Academy award and 12 Grammys...

, John Scofield

John Scofield

John Scofield , often referred to as "Sco," is an American jazz guitarist and composer, who has played and collaborated with Miles Davis, Dave Liebman, Joe Henderson, Charles Mingus, Joey Defrancesco, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Pat Martino, Mavis Staples, Phil Lesh, Billy Cobham,...

, Spyro Gyra

Spyro Gyra

Spyro Gyra is an American jazz fusion band that was originally formed in the mid-1970s in Buffalo, New York, USA. With over 25 albums released and 10 million copies sold, they are among the most prolific as well as commercially successful groups of the genre...

, Diana Ross

Diana Ross

Diana Ernestine Earle Ross is an American singer, record producer, and actress. Ross was lead singer of the Motown group The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that included successful ventures into film and Broadway...

, Carly Simon

Carly Simon

Carly Elisabeth Simon is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and children's author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records, and has since been the recipient of two Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for her work...

, LL Cool J

LL Cool J

James Todd Smith , better known as LL Cool J , is an American rapper, entrepreneur, and actor...

, Gil Evans

Gil Evans

Gil Evans was a jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader, active in the United States...

 and the Gil Evans Orchestra, Joe Lovano

Joe Lovano

Joseph Salvatore "Joe" Lovano is a post bop jazz saxophonist, alto clarinetist, flautist, and drummer. Since the late 1980s, Lovano has been one of the world's premiere tenor saxophone players, earning a Grammy award and several nods on Down Beat magazine's critics' and readers' polls...

, Jaco Pastorius

Jaco Pastorius

John Francis Anthony Pastorius III , known as Jaco Pastorius, was an American jazz musician and composer widely acknowledged as a virtuoso electric bass player....

, Paquito D'Rivera

Paquito D'Rivera

Paquito D'Rivera is a Cuban alto saxophonist, clarinetist and soprano saxophonist. The winner of multiple Grammys and other awards, D'Rivera has lived in the United States since the early 1980s. He has worked in a variety of contexts, but is perhaps best known for playing Latin...

, Jim Hall

Jim Hall (musician)

James Stanley Hall is an American jazz guitarist.-Biography:Educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s...

, Rachel Z

Rachel Z

Rachel Carmel Nicolazzo better known as Rachel Z, is a jazz pianist. She attended the Berklee College of Music Summer School and Manhattan School of Music pre-college, where she launched the quintet, Nardis, whilst studying with Joanne Brackeen and Richie Beirach in NYC. Later Rachel Z graduated...

, Jimmy Heath

Jimmy Heath

James Edward Heath , nicknamed Little Bird, is an American jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger. He is the brother of bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert Heath.-Biography:...

, Johnny Griffin

Johnny Griffin

John Arnold Griffin III was an American bop and hard bop tenor saxophonist.- Early life and career :Griffin studied music at DuSable High School in Chicago under Walter Dyett, starting out on clarinet before moving on to oboe and then alto sax...

, Toots Thielemans

Toots Thielemans

Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans , known as Toots Thielemans, is a Belgian jazz musician well known for his guitar and harmonica playing as well as his whistling. Thielemans is credited as one of the greatest harmonica players of the 20th century...

, John Faddis, Gary Bartz

Gary Bartz

Gary Bartz is an American alto and soprano saxophonist and clarinetist.Bartz graduated from the Baltimore City College high school and The Juilliard School...

, Billy Joel

Billy Joel

William Martin "Billy" Joel is an American musician and pianist, singer-songwriter, and classical composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, according to...

, the Fugees, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Trans-Siberian Orchestra is an American progressive metal band founded in 1993 by producer, composer, and lyricist Paul O'Neill, who brought together Jon Oliva and Al Pitrelli and keyboardist and co-producer Robert Kinkel to form the core of the creative team. Since then, TSO sold nearly 8...

, the Turtle Island String Quartet, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra

Jazz at Lincoln Center

Jazz at Lincoln Center is part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. JALC's performing arts complex, Frederick P. Rose Hall, is located at West 60th Street and Broadway in New York City, slightly south of the main Lincoln Center campus and directly adjacent to Columbus Circle. Frederick P....

, Speculum Musicae

Speculum Musicae

Speculum Musicae is an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in New York City in 1971 and is particularly noted for its performances of the music of Elliott Carter...

, the Aspen Wind Quintet, and the Paul Winter Consort

Paul Winter Consort

The Paul Winter Consort is an American musical group, led by soprano saxophonist Paul Winter. Founded in 1967, the group mixes elements of jazz, classical music, world music, and the sounds of animals and nature. They are often classified as new age music or "ecological jazz", and their unique...

. He has performed as a studio musician for many films, including Mission to Mars

Mission to Mars

Mission to Mars is a 2000 science fiction film directed by Brian De Palma from an original screenplay written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas, and Graham Yost. The film's story details a fictional portrayal of a manned Mars exploration mission gone awry in the year 2020...

, Fargo

Fargo (film)

Fargo is a 1996 American dark comedy-crime film produced, directed and written by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Frances McDormand as a pregnant police chief who investigates a series of homicides, William H...

, and Pocahontas

Pocahontas

Pocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a network of tributary tribal nations in Tidewater Virginia...

.

Clark plays the Conn-Selmer

Conn-Selmer

Conn-Selmer, Inc. is a manufacturer and distributor of concert band, marching band, and orchestral instruments. It is a subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments and was formed after Steinway bought musical instrument manufacturers The Selmer Company and C.G. Conn.-Founding:In the late 1800s,...

 12D and 8D French Horns and uses the AMT (Applied Microphone Technology) microphone systems.

Awards

• 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1982 - Down Beat
  Down Beat
  Down Beat is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond" to indicate its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois...
  
  Critics' Poll winner
• 1986 - National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
  National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
  The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., known variously as The Recording Academy or NARAS, is a U.S. organization of musicians, producers, recording engineers and other recording professionals dedicated to improving the quality of life and cultural condition for music and its...
  
   Award for Most Valuable Player in Recording Field.
• 1989 - "Bud & Bird" by Gil Evans & the Monday Night Orchestra won the Grammy for "Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band" - John wrote two numbers and played on the album

As leader

• 1980 - Song of Light (Hidden Meaning Music HMM 001)
• 1981 - Faces (ECM Records 1-1176)
• 1992 - Il Suono (CMP CD 59)
• 1997 - I Will (Postcards Records
  Postcards Records
  Postcards Records was an American jazz record label active during the 1990s, an imprint of Arkadia Jazz.-Discography:...
  
   CD 1016)
• 2003 - Confluence (Hidden Meaning Music HMM 002)

As sideman

With Leroy Jenkins

• Mixed Quintet
  Mixed Quintet
  Mixed Quintet is an album by American jazz violinist Leroy Jenkins recorded in 1979 for the Italian Black Saint label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Dean McFarlane awarded the album 2½ stars stating "Exploring the jazz language and improvisation in such an oblique manner, the recording bares...
  
  (Black Saint, 1979)

With Joe Lovano

Joe Lovano

Joseph Salvatore "Joe" Lovano is a post bop jazz saxophonist, alto clarinetist, flautist, and drummer. Since the late 1980s, Lovano has been one of the world's premiere tenor saxophone players, earning a Grammy award and several nods on Down Beat magazine's critics' and readers' polls...

• Rush Hour
  Rush Hour (Joe Lovano album)
  Rush Hour is an album by the American jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano featuring an orchestra arranged and conducted by Gunther Schuller recorded in 1994 and released on the Blue Note label.-Reception:...
  
  (Blue Note, 1994)

External links

• Bio page at Jazz.com Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians
• Bio page at AMT
• Hornette patent information
• Review of "I Will" by Carlo Wolf in JAZZIZ, September 1997 V.1, N.9
• SUNY Purchase biography
• Conn-Selmer - musical instrument maker
• Hidden Meaning Music - John Clark's label