Steve Masakowski

Steve Masakowski
Background information
Birth name	Stephen Alphonse Masakowski
Born	(1951-09-02) September 2, 1951 New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Genres	Jazz, jazz fusion, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian
Occupation(s)	Musician, educator
Instruments	Guitar, keytar
Years active	1970s–present
Labels	Blue Note
Associated acts	David Liebman, Bobby McFerrin, Astral Project, Rick Margitza
Website	www.stevemasakowski.com

Steve Masakowski (born September 2, 1954) is jazz guitarist, educator, and inventor. He is known for his work with the contemporary jazz groups Mars, Astral Project, Los Tres Amigos, Nova NOLA, and the Masakowski (MAZ) Family band.

He invented the guitar-based keytar and the switch pick and has designed three, custom-built seven-string guitars. He developed an approach to playing the guitar by using his pick design, allowing him to switch seamlessly from finger picking to flat picking.

Masakowski has performed, recorded, and learned from New Orleans musicians Alvin 'Red' Tyler, Ellis Marsalis, Jr., Earl Turbinton, Jr., Willie Tee, and James Black. He has performed with Bobby McFerrin, Nicholas Payton, Allen Toussaint, and Dianne Reeves.

As a recording artist, Masakowski has released nine CDs, including two on Blue Note, appeared with Astral Project on nine albums, and served as a sideman with Johnny Adams, Mose Allison, Harold Battiste, Dr. John, Alvin 'Red' Tyler, and Johnny Vidacovich.

Since 1987, Masakowski has been an active member of, and composer for, the New Orleans jazz group Astral Project. He has twice been voted 'Best Guitarist' and included as a member of Astral Project in the 'Best Contemporary Jazz Group' three times by Gambit and Offbeat magazines in their annual reader's polls. He has published lessons in Guitar Player magazine and wrote the book Jazz Ear Training – Learning to Hear Your Way Through Music for Mel Bay Publications. He has also been recognized by Down Beat magazine as 'Guitar Talent Deserving Wider Recognition.'^[1]

Masakowski has participated in numerous jazz concerts and workshops at major universities including the University of Chicago, Indiana University, and Princeton University. He is currently on the faculty at the University of New Orleans, where he teaches Jazz Studies.

Biography

Early life

Stephen Alphonse Masakowski was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 2, 1954.^[2] He became interested in music at the age of 14, when he took up the bass guitar in order to play in a rock band he co-founded called Truth, based on Cream. In high school, having become attracted to composing, he also started to play guitar to learn harmony. At age 17, and having been exposed to the album Spaces by Larry Coryell, he began taking guitar lessons. His teacher introduced him to the music of Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, and Lenny Breau.

Masakowski worked primarily as a bass guitarist into his mid-20s, playing with a variety of acts. At the same time, he started getting called for gigs as a guitarist instead of a pianist. "I started developing more of a pianistic approach to comping, so people felt comfortable having me sub for a piano player".^[3]

Education

In 1974, Masakowski went to the Berklee School of Music (now Berklee College of Music), studying jazz theory, arranging, and composing. After obtaining a professional diploma in a year and a half, he returned to New Orleans, taking with him his then girlfriend, jazz guitarist Emily Remler. Masakowski and Remler founded a group called Fourplay (not to be confused with the later jazz group of the same name), which played around the city featuring mostly original and guitar-based music. From 1976 to 1978, he studied classical composition and orchestration with Bert Braud, a teacher at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts who also taught Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick, Jr., Branford Marsalis, and Wynton Marsalis.

Groups

In the early 1980s, Masakowski also played regularly with local musicians such as Earl Turbinton, Jr., Alvin 'Red' Tyler, and Willie Tee. With Singleton and drummer Johnny Vidacovich, he accompanied visiting musicians such as Randy Brecker, Tom Harrell, Art Baron, and David Liebman. He formed an instant friendship with Liebman, who played on the first Mars album (Mars, 1983) and continues to use him on his concerts in New Orleans.

In 1981, Masakowski founded the group Mars with Larry Sieberth (keyboards and synthesizer), James Singleton (bass), and James Black (drums). The band played a mixture of jazz and electronic music, sometimes combined with visual art created by the visual artist Jon Graubarth. Mars played at every Jazz Fest through 1990 and also at Snug Harbor.

Also at Tyler's, between 1982 and 1985, at the suggestion of the club owner Fred Laredo, Masakowski formed a successful duet collaboration with the pianist Ellis Marsalis, Jr. He told the News Orleans Times-Picayune about that duet: 'Ellis and I tend not to think of structured roles of each instrument. We always tried to take a more holistic approach to the way we played together. I tend not to think in terms of playing guitar. I think more in a compositional sense.'^[4]

Masakowski also played with the Afro-Cuban jazz-fusion band Caliente, with the leader, Mark Sanders (percussion), Hector Gallardo (percussion), James Singleton (bass), Ricky Sebastian (drums), and such saxophone players as Earl Turbinton, Jr., Tony Dagradi, and Rick Margitza. He feels that Caliente taught him a great deal about Cuban music and 'really helped me to develop a rhythmic style of playing.'^[5]

In 1987, Masakowski joined the leading New Orleans modern-jazz group Astral Project, which had already been in existence for nine years and is still working at present. He effectively replaced the percussionist Mark Sanders, who left in 1986. The other members of the group are Tony Dagradi (soprano and alto saxophones), James Singleton (bass), and Johnny Vidacovich (drums). David Torkanowsky, the original keyboardist, dropped out in 2001, leaving him as the sole chordal member of the rhythm section.

Becoming a bandleader

In 1991, as a member of Rick Margitza's group, Masakowski played at the Mount Fuji Jazz Festival in Japan. Margitza remarked: 'I do remember Steve sounding great, and feeling proud and happy that I was able to introduce him to a wider audience, especially since he had given me so much musically.'^[6] A sponsor of the festival, Blue Note had encouraged its artists to play there, and Masakowski worked with Rachelle Ferrell and in a group jam session. He was then approached by Bruce Lundvall, owner of Blue Note, and the manager Eric Kressman. The ensuing deal led to making two critically acclaimed albums for Blue Note: What It Was (recorded 1993, released 1994) and Direct AXEcess (recorded 1994, released 1995). The New Orleans guitarist, banjoist, and historian Danny Barker wrote the liner notes for the album What It Was. When Barker passed away in 1994, he bequeathed his acoustic guitar to Masakowski, who paid tribute to Barker on Hoagy Carmichael's 'New Orleans' on the album Direct AXEcess.

Because he was teaching full-time, Masakowski found it difficult to book his own tours to follow up on the albums, so he gained more exposure by touring with the jazz singer Dianne Reeves in the United States and Europe for about three years, starting in 1994.

The Steve Masakowski Trio's Live at Snug Harbor (recorded 1997, released 1998), with Bill Huntington (bass) and Johnny Vidacovich or Jason Marsalis (drums), also attracted critical attention. The Chicago critic Howard Reich wrote of the album: 'guitar aficionados know who's the Crescent City player to hear, and some of his most spontaneous work has been captured on Live at Snug Harbor...Masakowski produces guitar lines of considerable fluidity and originality on this session, recorded in New Orleans' top jazz club. The performance attests to the guitarist's musicianship and creativity, with not a note wasted in the name of ostentation, grandiosity, or virtuoso display.'^[7]

(For Joe) (2000) is another trio recording, this time made in the studio with Bill Huntington and Johnny Vidacovich. As its name suggests, the album is a tribute to one of Masakowski's main influences, Joe Pass, punning on Pass's album For Django and including two of Masakowski's punning tunes, 'Pass Presence' and 'I'll Pass.'

What It Was had contained one track that in effect constituted the first recording of the Cuban-based group Masakowski formed called Los Tres Amigos, with James Singleton (bass) and Hector Gallardo (bongos). The trio has continued a sporadic existence to the present, and made an album, Moon and Sand, in 2001 (released 2002). David Lasocki commented, 'Friends the three of them may be, but in this relationship Steve takes the lead. He produced and mixed the album, took the lion's share of the solos, chose the repertoire, and above all, played his heart out. He has never been in such a consistently inspired mode on any recording.'^[8]

Masakowski's most recent album, Things I Like (recorded 2012, released 2013), features Rex Gregory (alto sax), Peter Harris (bass), and Julian Garcia (drums). This piano-less quartet explores some of Steve's more recent compositions as well as standards by Thelonious Monk and Billy Strayhorn.

Teaching

Masakowski began teaching the guitar, at first privately, then around 1980 at the University of New Orleans at the request of Charles Blancq, developing his first jazz guitar ensemble. Around 1984, he switched to serving as an adjunct instructor at Loyola University New Orleans, also teaching a variety of courses, including jazz improvisation, theory, and combo; his students included the jazz drummer Brian Blade, Jon Cowherd, and Matt Lemmler.

In 1988, Masakowski was part of the residency program at Virginia Commonwealth University, directed by Ellis Marsalis, Jr., who was quoted as saying: 'I think Steve is better than all those people making all that money up in New York. Plus, he's a good teacher. There are a lot of guitar players around here, and they know about Larry Coryell and they know about Pat Metheny. They don't know about Steve. When they see Steve come in and he blows 'em out the window, and he's accessible to them, it gives them a shot in the arm.'^[9]

Two years later, Masakowski was hired by Marsalis as a part-time instructor for the new jazz program he was heading at the University of New Orleans. In 1991, he became a full-time faculty member. After the retirement of Ellis Marsalis, Jr., and a short tenure by Terence Blanchard, he became Chair of Jazz Studies and director of the jazz program in 2004.

Inventions

Masakowski playing his keytar above a seven-string guitar

Masakowski's switch pick

In 1978 Masakowski invented an instrument he called the keytar. His keytar was a guitar-like instrument that had seven rows of keys instead of strings: one key at each fret location. This pre-MIDI controller was hard-wired to a Moog polyphonic synthesizer. One advantage of such an instrument was that it allowed you to play more than one note in a row of keys at the same time: the equivalent on the guitar of playing multiple simultaneous notes on one string. Masakowski's song 'Stepping Stone' was composed on the keytar, which allowed for the cluster-type chord voicings. The keytar 'opened up a whole new realm of possibilities, sonically.'^[10] For the duration of the Mars era, his rig included a Gretsch seven-string guitar, with the keytar fastened to the top. He chose not to pursue a patent for the keytar, opting to concentrate on a revised prototype of the instrument that failed for lack of funding.

In 1987, Masakowski came up with another innovation, to aid him in switching from fingers to plectrum. 'I invented something I call a switch-pick, which is a sort of thumb pick...[made] in such a way that if I slide it up my finger, the support part doesn't come in contact with my thumb, so it feels like a normal pick. And then if I want to use it as a thumb pick, I just slide it up my finger, and I can play finger style with the thumb pick using all five fingers.'^[11] He told an interviewer, 'The pick is more efficient and has a better sound on fast lines where I need swing drive, but certain ideas, like fast diatonic-fourth runs, are easier to play fingerstyle.'^[12]

Inspired by a visit to New Orleans by the renowned 7-string guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, Masakowski began to explore the 7-string guitar, first finding an early Gretsch, and later designing his own models, which have the expanded range of a normal guitar and bass guitar combined. His custom-designed guitars were crafted by luthiers Jimmy Foster and Salvador Giardina.

Recording studio

In 1982, Masakowski founded the Composers Recording Studio, with the harpist Patrice Fisher, guitarist Jimmy Robinson, and violinist Denise Villere. He often acted as recording engineer and sometimes as producer. The studio lasted about ten years and recorded such local musicians as Harry Connick, Jr., Tony Dagradi, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, pianist James Drew, and Ellis Marsalis, Jr.

Family

Masakowski Family performing

In 1982, Masakowski married the German pianist Ulrike Antonie Sprenger. The couple have two children, both of whom have become professional musicians: Alexandra (Sasha Masakowski) (b. 1986) and Martin (Tino) (b. 1990). They have also been honored with compositions by Masakowski: "Alexandra" (on What It Was) and "Tino's Blues" (on What It Was and (For Joe)).

Since 2007, the Masakowski family have been playing gigs together, including as the basis of the group Nova NOLA, which fuses New Orleans and Brazilian music. The group's CD Wetland celebrates both Masakowski's of Brazilian music and the rebirth of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Awards and honors

• 10 best guitarists list, Wavelength magazine (1991)
• Big Easy Award, Astral Project (1993, 1994, 2000)
• Best Guitarist (1994–1998, 2002) OffBeat magazine
• Best Contemporary Jazz Group (1994–2002), Astral Project, OffBeat magazine
• Keeping the Music Alive Award, Danny Barker Estate (2003)
• Global Excellence Award, Summers Multicultural Institute (2005)
• Germaine Bazzle Award for Music Education and Performance (2014)

Discography

As leader

With Astral Project

As sideman

References