Mark Helias 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...

 double bass

Double bass

The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

 player and 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...

 born in New Brunswick

New Brunswick, New Jersey

New Brunswick is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, USA. It is the county seat and the home of Rutgers University. The city is located on the Northeast Corridor rail line, southwest of Manhattan, on the southern bank of the Raritan River. At the 2010 United States Census, the population of...

, New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

.

He did not begin playing the double bass until the age of 20, graduating from Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

's School of Music with a Masters degree in 1976. He has also studied at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College

Sarah Lawrence College

Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...

, The New School

The New School

The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...

, and SIM (School for Improvised Music).

Helias has performed with a wide variety of musicians, including Ray Anderson

Ray Anderson (musician)

Ray Anderson is an independent jazz trombone and trumpet player. Anderson is a boisterous trombonist who is masterful at multiphonics. Trained by the Chicago Symphony trombonists, he is regarded as pushing the limits of the instrument. He is a contemporary and colleague of trombonist/composer...

, Gerry Hemingway

Gerry Hemingway

Gerry Hemingway is an American jazz composer and percussionist.He has performed with Ernst Reijseger, Anthony Davis, Earl Howard, Leo Smith, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, Ray Anderson, Mark Helias, Reggie Workman, Michael Moore, Oliver Lake, Marilyn Crispell, Christy Doran, John Wolf Brennan, Don...

, Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...

, Dewey Redman

Dewey Redman

Dewey Redman was an American jazz saxophonist, known for performing free jazz as a bandleader, and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett....

, Barry Altschul

Barry Altschul

Barry Altschul is a free jazz drummer who gained fame in the late 1960s with the pianists Paul Bley and Chick Corea.-Biography:...

, Anthony Davis

Anthony Davis (composer)

Anthony Davis, better known as Tony Davis , is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.-Biography:...

, Don Cherry

Don Cherry (jazz)

Donald Eugene Cherry was an innovative African-American jazz cornetist whose career began with a long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. He went on to live in many parts of the world and work with a wide variety of musicians.-Biography:Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and...

, Ed Blackwell

Ed Blackwell

Ed Blackwell was an American jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for his extensive work with Ornette Coleman....

, Carlos Ward

Carlos Ward

Carlos Ward is a jazz alto saxophonist and flautist. He is best known as a sideman.His first instrument was the clarinet at age 13 when he lived in Seattle, Washington...

, Nana Vasconcelos

Naná Vasconcelos

Naná Vasconcelos is a Brazilian Latin jazz percussionist, vocalist and berimbau player, most notable for his works with Pat Metheny, Don Cherry, Egberto Gismonti, and Gato Barbieri....

, Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor

Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...

, Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams is an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the Free jazz medium. Abrams compresses both contemporary and traditional ideas into lean, elegant pieces.- Biography :Abrams attended DuSable High School in Chicago...

, 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....

, Julius Hemphill

Julius Hemphill

Julius Arthur Hemphill was a jazz composer and saxophone player. He performed mainly on alto saxophone; less often soprano and tenor saxophones and flute.-Biography:...

, Marilyn Crispell

Marilyn Crispell

Marilyn Crispell is an American jazz pianist and composer.-Biography:Crispell studied classical piano and composition at the New England Conservatory of Music. She has been a resident of Woodstock, NY since 1977 when she came to study and teach at Karl Berger's Creative Music Studio...

, Arthur Blythe

Arthur Blythe

Arthur Blythe is an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer. His stylistic voice has a distinct vibrato and he plays within the post-bop subgenre of jazz.- Biography :...

, Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln

Anna Marie Wooldridge , better known by her stage name Abbey Lincoln, was a jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actress. Lincoln was unusual in that she wrote and performed her own compositions, expanding the expectations of jazz audiences.-Biography:Born in Chicago, Illinois, she was one of many...

, Marcel Khalife

Marcel Khalife

Marcel Khalife is a Lebanese composer, singer and oud player. From 1970 to 1975, he taught at the conservatory in Beirut. In 1976, he created Al Mayadeen Ensemble and became famous all over the world for songs like Ummi , Rita w'al-Bunduqiya and Jawaz al-Safar , based on Mahmoud Darwish's...

, Simon Nabatov

Simon Nabatov

Simon Nabatov is a jazz pianist.He began playing at three and his first composition was at six. He began his professional career in Rome in 1979 and later attended the Juilliard School. In 1984 Keyboard Magazine named him Best Pianist. In 1989 he left New York City, where he had settled, for Cologne...

, Don Byron

Don Byron

Don Byron is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. He primarily plays clarinet, but has also used bass clarinet and saxophones....

, Marty Ehrlich

Marty Ehrlich

Marty Ehrlich is a multi-instrumentalist and is considered one of the leading figures in experimental or avant-garde jazz....

, Mark Dresser

Mark Dresser

Mark Dresser is an American double bass player and composer.-Biography:He has performed and recorded with many of the luminaries of "new" jazz composition and improvisation. For ten years he performed with the Anthony Braxton Quartet, as well as diverse groups led by Ray Anderson, Tim Berne,...

, Ellery Eskelin

Ellery Eskelin

Ellery Eskelin American tenor saxophonist. Born in Wichita, Kansas, raised in Baltimore, Maryland from the age of two. His parents, Rodd Keith and Bobbie Lee, were also musicians. Rodd Keith died in 1974 in Los Angeles, California and became a cult figure after his death in the little known...

, Slickaphonics, Mose Allison

Mose Allison

Mose John Allison, Jr. is an American jazz blues pianist and singer.-Biography:...

, and J.B. Horns

The J.B.'s

The J.B.'s were James Brown's band during the first half of the 1970s. On record the J.B.'s were sometimes billed under various alternate names such as The James Brown Soul Train, Maceo and the Macks, A.A.B.B., The First Family and The Last Word...

. Mr. Helias has been leading the archetypal improvising trio Open Loose since 1996. The group, comprising Helias on bass, Tony Malaby on tenor saxophone and Tom Rainey on drums, has recorded six cds.

As leader

• Strange Unison (Radio Legs 2008)
• Atomic Clock (Radio Legs 2006)
• Verbs of Will (Radio Legs 2004)
• New School (Enja Records 2002)
• Come Ahead Back (Koch Records Jazz 1998)
• Fictionary (GM Recordings 1998)
• Loopin’ The Cool (Enja Records
  Enja Records
  Enja Records is a German jazz record label based in Munich, Germany. It was founded by jazz enthusiasts Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber in 1971....
  
   1995)
• Attack The Future (Enja Records 1992)
• Desert Blue (Enja Records 1989)
• The Current Set (Enja Records 1987)
• Split Image (Enja Records 1984)

As Sideman

With Marilyn Crispell

Marilyn Crispell

Marilyn Crispell is an American jazz pianist and composer.-Biography:Crispell studied classical piano and composition at the New England Conservatory of Music. She has been a resident of Woodstock, NY since 1977 when she came to study and teach at Karl Berger's Creative Music Studio...

• Storyteller
  Storyteller (Marilyn Crispell album)
  Storyteller is an album by pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Mark Helias, and drummer Paul Motian recorded in 2003 and released on the ECM label.-Reception:...
  
  (ECM, 2003)

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)

With Dewey Redman

Dewey Redman

Dewey Redman was an American jazz saxophonist, known for performing free jazz as a bandleader, and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett....

• Musics
  Musics
  Musics is an album by American jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman featuring performances recorded in 1978 for the Galaxy label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album 4½ stars stating "This is one of tenor-saxophonist Dewey Redman's more accessible sessions.....
  
  (Galaxy, 1978)
• Soundsigns
  Soundsigns
  Soundsigns is an album by American jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman featuring performances recorded in 1978 for the Galaxy label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album 3 stars stating "Recorded at the same sessions that resulted in Musics, this LP is actually more...
  
  (Galaxy, 1978)
• The Struggle Continues
  The Struggle Continues (Dewey Redman album)
  The Struggle Continues is an album by American jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman featuring performances recorded in 1982 for the ECM label.-Reception:...
  
  (ECM, 1982)

Recognition/Awards

2010 American Composers Orchestra Reading Commission,
2007 Chamber Music America Grant for New Works,
2006 Distinguished Alumnus Award ­Livingston College,
2000 Arts International Travel Grant, 
1996 Arts International Travel Grant, 
1995 Arts International Travel Grant,
1995 NEA Grant in Jazz Composition,
1994 NYFA Grant In Music Composition,
1993 Arts International Travel Grant, 
1991 Meet The Composer/Readers Digest Commission, 
1991 NEA Grant in Jazz Performance, 
1990 NEA Grant in Jazz Composition, 
1990 Arts International Travel Grant,
1989 NEA Grant in Jazz Composition, 
1988 NYFA Grant in Music Composition,
1985 NEA Grant in Jazz Composition,
1984 NEA Grant in Jazz Performance,
1981 CAPS Grant in Music Composition,

External links

• Mark Helias official site