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Lee Ritenour & Dave Grusin

Presented by Scullers Jazz Club at Scullers Jazz Club

August 17-August 18, 2010

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Growing up in L.A. in the 60’s, Grammy award winning guitarist Lee Ritenour received a rich cross section of exposure to jazz, rock and Brazilian music. From one of his first sessions at 16 with the Mamas and Papas to accompanying Lena Horne and Tony Bennett at 18, his forty year eclectic and storied career is highlighted by a Grammy Award win for his 1986 collaboration with Dave Grusin, Harlequin; 17 Grammy nominations; numerous #1 spots in guitar polls and the prestigious “Alumnus of the Year” award from USC. He has recorded over 40 albums, with 35 chart songs, notably the Top 15 hit “Is It You,” which has become a contemporary jazz radio classic. In the 90s, Ritenour was a founding member of Fourplay, the most successful band in contemporary jazz, with keyboardist Bob James, bassist Nathan East and drummer Harvey Mason. The first Fourplay album in 1991 spent an unprecedented 33 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s contemporary jazz chart. Adding to this legacy is his latest CD Smoke ‘n’ Mirrors; the recently completed Grammy nominated recording Amparo, (a follow-up with Dave Grusin to their highly successful 2001 Grammy Award nominated contemporary classical crossover CD) and producer of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band’s latest CD Act Your Age (which is nominated for 3 Grammys. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ When legendary Grammy winning composer Henry Mancini died in 1994, he left behind an incredible legacy of film and television music whose jazzy and orchestral innovations inspired a whole generation of film scorers and jazz performers. Among his great friends and admirers was Dave Grusin, who drew upon the early Mancini influence to carve out his own Oscar-winning niche as one of the premier movie music writers of the past thirty years, as well as a prolific career as a contemporary jazz pianist. In the tradition of his popular recent tribute recordings The Gershwin Connection and Homage to Duke, Grusin reaches into Mancini’s vast, eclectic catalog for 'Two For The Road,' a definitive retrospective which rings brightly both as a memorial and celebration of the man and his music. Grusin planned for a career in academia when he moved to New York in 1959 and enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music, but he soon found himself touring behind Andy Williams, moving to Los Angeles in the process. In Williams’ band, he met drummer Larry Rosen, who became Grusin’s partner nearly two decades later in launching contemporary jazz mecca GRP Records. He launched his recording career in the mid-60’s with two jazz trio albums, Subways are For Sleeping and Piano, Strings and Moonlight, which drew upon the influences of Art Tatum, Bill Evans and Red Garland. Inspired by those like Mancini and Andre Previn, Grusin left his music director gig with The Andy Williams Show in 1964 and scored the Norman Lear/Bud Yorkin comedy Divorce American Style the following year. This marked the beginning of his career as a premier film composer, with over 30 scores to his credit. Among his Academy Award-nominated work over the years have been scores for Heaven Can Wait, The Champ, On Golden Pond, Tootsie (he co-wrote the Stephen Bishop hit, "It Might Be You"), The Milagro Beanfield War (which won the 1988 Oscar), Havana, The Fabulous Baker Boys and The Firm. Other well known films include The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Three Days of the Condor, The Goodbye Girl, And Justice For All, Reds, and Tequila Sunrise. In 1987, Grusin released Cinemagic, a compilation of new versions of his classic scores. Grusin also penned the theme songs for Lear-produced ‘70’s sitcoms Good Times and Maude, as well as the TV series Baretta and St. Elsewhere.. Launching GRP as a production company in the late ‘70s, Grusin and Rosen created what became one of the most popular labels of the New Adult Contemporary genre, with popular artists like The Rippingtons, Spyro Gyra, David Benoit, Lee Ritenour and Tom Scott. Grusin’s own hits for the label include Night-lines (1984), Harlequin (a duet album with Lee Ritenour in 1986), Sticks and Stones (a duet with brother Don in 1987), The Fabulous Baker Boys (a double Grammy winner in 1989), Migration (1989), and the tributes The Gershwin Connection (1991) and Homage to Duke (1993). He also participated in GRP all-star projects, Super Live, the NY/LA Dream Band and the three GRP All Star Big Band albums.