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All Music Guide:
Since 1971, when multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia gave up painting to pursue music full time, he has worked internationally as a composer, bandleader, and performer in jazz and other creative musics. Golia draws influences from jazz, world music, and contemporary classical music, and has performed in Europe, Japan, and North America in a multitude of ensembles. He plays 20 different woodwinds (as well as some ethnic aerophones), has placed many times in the Downbeat critic's poll on various instruments, and in 1990 won the Jazz Times' Talent Deserving Wider Recognition award for his bass saxophone playing. Golia is also involved in other arts and media besides jazz and improvised music: he has composed for ballet, modern dance works, theater, video, and films such as Serpent's Lair and Blood and Concrete. Golia's label, Nine Winds Records (formed in 1977), focuses on releasing music from North America's West Coast.
Wikipedia:
Vinny Golia (b. The Bronx, New York City, New York, March 1, 1946) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in woodwind instruments. He performs in the genres of contemporary music, jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation.
Golia lives in Los Angeles, California and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. He has performed throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Japan. In 1982 he founded the 37-piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble to perform his compositions.
Golia has performed and/or recorded with many notable musicians, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
Golia also founded the jazz record label Nine Winds in 1977.
Instruments [edit]
Golia performs on a wide array of instruments, including variants of the flute, English horn, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon and tarogato.
Ensembles [edit]
Golia has a formed a number of ensembles that showcase both his style of composition and improvisation. These groups range from the his Large Ensemble to a variety of mixed quintets, saxophone quartets, duos, sextets and arrangements for jazz and classical orchestras. Most recently, Golia has performed and toured with his sextet which features some of the new voices in the Los Angeles free-improv scene. The group, composed of Gavin Templeton (alto sax), Daniel Rosenboom (trumpet), Andrew Lessman (drums) and Jon Armstrong (bass), has given performances at many of the premiere U.S. new music venues and festivals including Angel City Jazz Festival at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, the Outsound New Music Summit in San Francisco, and The Stone (music space) in New York.
