Collection: Art Lande

Art Lande grew up on Long Island, started piano at four, studied at Williams College, and in 1969 moved to San Francisco, where the Bay Area jazz scene in the early 1970s offered a different set of possibilities from New York. He played electric piano in a quintet with bassist Steve Swallow from 1970 to 1972, met Jan Garbarek through the ECM orbit, and in November 1973 the two recorded “Red Lanta” (ECM, 1974), a duo album of Lande’s own compositions for piano and Garbarek’s soprano saxophone, bass saxophone and flutes. The title is an anagram of “Art Lande.” Down Beat called it one of the finest albums ECM had yet released. Lande formed Rubisa Patrol in 1974 with trumpeter Mark Isham, bassist Bill Douglass and drummer Glenn Cronkhite, toured Europe extensively by van, and recorded three ECM and ECM-adjacent albums before the group ended in the early 1980s. He also recorded “Skylight” with Gary Peacock (ECM, 1981) and a trio session with Paul McCandless and David Samuels. He taught at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, then at a jazz school in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and in 1987 settled in Boulder, Colorado, where he taught at Naropa University and collaborated with Allen Ginsberg. He has appeared on over seventy albums and composed over two hundred and fifty songs.