Jorge Roeder is a Peruvian bass player and composer. He has performed and collaborated with many jazz artists including
Gary Burton
Gary Burton (born January 23, 1943) is an American jazz vibraphonist, composer, and educator. Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. This approach caused him to be he ...
,
Nels Cline
Nels Courtney Cline (born January 4, 1956) is an American guitarist and composer. He has been the guitarist for the band Wilco since 2004.
In the 1980s he played jazz, often in collaboration with his twin brother Alex, a percussionist. He has w ...
and
John Zorn. As part of the
Julian Lage
Julian Lage ( ; born December 25, 1987) is an American guitarist and composer.
Career
A child prodigy, Lage was the subject of the 1996 short documentary film ''Jules at Eight''. At 12, he performed at the 2000 Grammy Awards. Three years later ...
Group, he received a 2010
Grammy nomination for
Best Contemporary Jazz Album, for ''Sounding Point''.
In 2020, Roeder released his first solo album, ''El Suelo Mío''.
Early life
Roeder was born in Lima, Peru and at 14 took cello and electric bass lessons. At 16, he went to Russia to further his study of the cello for a few months. At 18, he took up the double bass. In 2001, he was appointed assistant principal bassist for the Lima Philharmonic and Opera orchestras.
As a fixture on the local rock scene, his first professional recording job was as bassist for the Lima heavy metal band, Ni Voz ni Voto, on their self-titled debut album released in 2000.
Roeder met trumpeter/educator Gabriel Alegría, and performed with him at the 2002 IAJE Conference. There he was noticed by Ken Schaphorst, chair of jazz studies at Boston's New England Conservatory, and was invited to audition for the school.
In 2002, Roeder was given a scholarship to the
New England Conservatory of Music
The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The conservatory is located on H ...
to study jazz. Upon completion of his degree in 2005, he stayed in Boston two more years, before he moved to
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, New York and took gigs in the city's jazz scene.
Musical collaborations
In New York, Roeder got together with both guitarist Julian Lage and pianist
Shai Maestro
Shai Maestro (born February 5, 1987) is an Israeli jazz pianist.
Biography
Shai Maestro began playing classical piano aged five and graduated from the Thelma Yellin High School of Performing Arts in Givataim, Israel. After winning the National ...
, and began long-standing recording and performing relationships with both.
Roeder's style of playing gelled in that group context. "When we’re about to do a set we all get together backstage. Julian will say something like ‘Let’s keep the idea of patience in our heads, and hold it as much as you can.’ And we'll really try to keep that concept in mind. We’re playing the same music, but it comes out different every time with the help of one word," he told the ''
Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
''.
In 2005, Roeder's first jazz recording was on the ''Before The Storm'' album from
Dan Tepfer.
The following year, he appeared on trombonist Michael Dessen's ''Lineal'' album,
and then again he played with Tepfer on ''Oxygen'', released in 2009.
In 2010, Roeder was nominated for a Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy, as a bandmember of the Julian Lage Group and his work on the group's ''Sounding Point''.
Over the years, Roeder played with various bandleaders including
trombonist
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...
Ryan Keberle, vocalist
Thana Alexa
Thana Alexa (born Thana Alexa Pavelić; born March 19, 1987) is an American jazz vocalist, composer, arranger and producer.
Biography Early life
Alexa's interest in music began at age three when she disappeared from a birthday party and was dis ...
,
vibraphonist
The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist,' ...
Gary Burton
Gary Burton (born January 23, 1943) is an American jazz vibraphonist, composer, and educator. Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. This approach caused him to be he ...
, guitarist
Nels Cline
Nels Courtney Cline (born January 4, 1956) is an American guitarist and composer. He has been the guitarist for the band Wilco since 2004.
In the 1980s he played jazz, often in collaboration with his twin brother Alex, a percussionist. He has w ...
, saxophonist
John Zorn,
vocalist
Sofia Rei
Sofia Eugenia Koutsovitis, known professionally as Sofia Rei, is an Argentinian vocalist, songwriter, producer, and educator. A classically trained mezzo-soprano, Rei's influences include South American folk styles, jazz, pop, new classical and ...
,
pianist and
accordionist
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...
Carmen Staaf, guitarist
Brad Shepik, saxophonist Dan Blake, vocalist Ulita Knaus, among others.
Recognition
Roeder won the
International Society of Bassists The International Society of Bassists (ISB) is a 501(C)(3) not-for-profit organization for anybody who enjoys the double bass. The society was founded in 1967 by Gary Karr as the International Institute for String Bass (IISB). After a two-year hiat ...
Jazz Competition in 2007, and reached the semi-finals of the Thelonious Monk Jazz Bass Competition in 2009.
Solo career
In July 2020, Roeder released his debut solo album, ''El Suelo Mío'', a collection that ''Bass Musician'' magazine called "thirteen tracks of unadulterated upright bass at its finest."
A recording of solely bass music, the album reflects his Peruvian background, and was self-produced.
“''El Suelo Mío'' can be interpreted as ‘the floor of mine’ or ‘the ground of mine’, which I attribute to references to the role of the bass in music. The bass is usually regarded as the foundation of any musical rendition, and the way I see music is and has always been through the lens of the bass part. So when I present this body of work, it comes from the roots, the ‘ground’ of the music that is a part of me."
On the United States’ Presidential election day on 3 November 2020, Roeder performed in the live streaming ''Deep Tones for Peace 2020'', a public Facebook group formed by bassists
Mark Dresser
Mark Dresser (born September 26, 1952) is an American double bass player and composer.
Career
Dresser was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. In the 1970s, he was a member of Black Music Infinity led by Stanley Crouch and performed ...
and
William Parker the previous August with the mission for all bass players "to musically send healing vibrations to be felt worldwide." Membership is over 2,000 international bass players.
Discography
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roeder, Jorge
1980 births
Living people
Peruvian musicians