Who is JEREMY STEIG?
In his entire career as an improvisational flutist Steig has challenged the boundaries of conventional categories in music. In his first album Flute Fever (Columbia Records 1963) Steig established himself as one of the most important voices in contemporary music, setting new standards in the performance and appreciation of the flute as an improvisational instrument.

Steig studied flute with Paige Brook of the New York Philharmonic. He went on to study at the High School of Music and Art in New York. Paige encouraged Steig to play "jazz" while providing him with classical tools. Emerging as a leader of the first jazz-rock band, "Jeremy and the Satyrs," followed by the release of What's New (Verve 1969) with the legendary Bill Evans proved Steig's versatility as a young musician.

Steig has played and recorded with a wide variety of musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Jim Hall, Big Joe Williams, Junior Wells, Eddie Gomez, Art Blakey, Paul Bley, Joe Chambers, Jan Hammer, Johnny Winter and Tommy Bolin. The Beastie Boys have shaped their hit Sure Shot around Steig’s flute.

The recent CD Pterodactyl presents music performed by a band of flutes and bottles, all of which are played by Jeremy. The idea of creating a solo band came to him some 20 years ago. Since then, he has perfected the technique of tonguing over the tops of empty bottles to create unique percussive sounds. He also engineered this CD himself, which resulted in unique editing and mixing that feature the surprising tones and funky rhythms that can be created by using bottles as wind drums. Intervals between tunes are cut relatively short to provide the listener with a 45-minute journey through a land of flutes.

The title "Pterodactyl" was inspired by an incident from about five years ago. A young jazz-schooled pianist told Jeremy that he was a dying breed. He wrote the tune “Pterodactyl,” imagining an ancient creature that became extinct coming back and flying freely over modern windmills.
Jeremy believes that flutes can play any section of the band. Pterodactyl is dedicated to all the young flute players who are doing exciting things with the instrument. This is his contribution to the world of flute music.


HIGHLIGHTS
1969 Grammy Nomination What’s New

Jazz Forum (The Magazine of the International Jazz Federation)
Top People Poll
1978 World No.1 Flutist
1980 World No.1 Flutist
1982 World No.1 Flutist

DOWNBEAT
Critics Poll
1978 No. 3 Flutist

Jazz & Pop
Best International Artists
1970 Best Pop Flutist
1971 Best Pop Flutist

ASIFA EAST Animation Awards
1986 Best Film The Amazing Bone
1987 Second Prize Baby Oysters


DISCOGRAPHY (Album Cover Images & Detailed Discography)
1963 Flute Fever CBS SONY
Denny Zeitlin, Ben Tucker, Ben Riley

1968 Jeremy & The Satyrs Reprise
Warren Bernhardt, Adrian Guillery, Donald MacDonald, Eddie Gomez

1969 Legwork Solid State
Don Alias, Sam Brown, Eddie Gomez

1969 This Is Jeremy Steig Solid State
Warren Bernhardt, Donald MacDonald, Glen Moore

1969 Jazz Wave Ltd., On Tour Blue Note
Kenny Burrell, Freddie Hubbard, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis Orchestra, Jimmy McGriff

1970 Wayfaring Stranger Blue Note
Eddie Gomez, Don Alias, Sam Brown

1970 Energy Capitol
Jan Hammer, Eddie Gomez, Gene Perla, Don Alias

1972 Fusion (Something Else) Groove
Jan Hammer, Gene Perla, Eddie Gomez, Don Alias

1974 Monium Columbia
Eddie Gomez, Ray Mantilla, Marty Morrell

1974 Flute Summit Atlantic
James Moody, Sahib Shibab, Chris Hinze, Joachim Kuhn, John Lee,
Aldo Romano, Ivanir Mandrake do Nascimento

1975 Temple of Birth Columbia
Johnny Winter, Richie Beirach, Anthony Jackson

1976 Leaving Trio
Richie Beirach

1976 Outlaws [live] Enja
Eddie Gomez

1977 Firefly CTI
Steve Gadd, Ray Mantilla

1978 Lend Me Your Ears CMP
Eddie Gomez, Joe Chambers

1978 Music for Flute & Double-Bass CMP
Eddie Gomez

1980 Rain Forest CMP
Eddie Gomez, Mike Nock, Steve Gadd, Jack DeJohnette, Ray Baretto,
Karl Ratzer, Nana Vasconcelos

1992 Jigsaw Triloka
Joe Chambers

2002 What's New at F 3361*Black
Eddie Gomez, Jimmy Cobb, Stefan Karlsson

2003 JAM
Eddie Gomez

2004 IMPROVISED
Vic Juris

2005 Flute on the Edge
Vic Juris, Cameron Brown, Anthony Pinciotti

2007 Pterodactyl
Jeremy Steig (Solo album)

2008 Howlin' for Judy Blue Note
Jeremy Steig, Eddie Gomez, Don Alias


FLUTE
Jazz Meets the Folk Song (1964) The Paul Winter Sextet Columbia
Scavenger (1968) Nat Adderley
Something Else Agai (1968) Richie Havens Verve Forecast
What's New (1969) Bill Evans Verve
Beverly Glenn-Copeland (1969) GRT
Kathy Smith (1969) Stormy Forest
Still Alive and Well (1973) Johnny Winter Columbia
Nick Holmes (1973) Just Sunshine
Feeling the Space (1973) Yoko Ono Plastic Band & Something Different ARI
Mama Kuku (1974) Association P.C.
Unfinished Masterpiece (1975) Eddie Palmieri Coco
Hank Crawford's Back (1976) Hank Crawford
Melting Pots (1976) Susie Monick ARI
Tico Rico (1976) Hank Crawford KUDU
The Fox (1977) Urbie Green CTI
Turn This Mutha Out (1977) Idris Muhammad KUDU
Crawl Space (1977) Art Farmer CTI
Towering Toccata (1977) Lalo Schifrin CTI
Boogie to the Top (1978) Idris Muhammad KUDU
Mantilla (1978) Ray Mantilla Produced by Jeremy Steig InnerCity
Hip Address (1980) David Earle Johnson CMP
Route Two (1981) David Earle Johnson, John Abercrombie, Dan Wall Landslide
Taking Off poetry & jazz (1981) Barry Wallenstein AK•BA
Tom Lellis (1981) Tom Lellis InnerCity
Richard P. Havens, 1983 (1983) Richie Havens Verve Forecast
To Be So Far Away (1984) Rodolfo Alchourron with Southern Exposure T.T. Records
Illumination (1989) Walter Davis, Jr.
Best of Art Farmer (1990) Art Farmer
Brooklyn Blues (1990) Danny Gottlieb
Next Future (1992) Eddie Gomez
Best of Verve Bill Evans (1995)
From the Archives, Vol. 1 (1996) Tommy Bolin
Complete Bill Evans on Verve (1997) Bill Evans
Dedication (1997) Eddie Gomez King Records
From the Archives, Vol. 2 (1998) Tommy Bolin
Uptown Music (1998) Eddie Gomez King Records
Southern Exposure (2003) Tom Lellis Adventure Music



JEREMY STEIG as an artist
Jeremy was born on September 23, 1942 in Greenwich Village, New York. His father William Steig was a famous cartoonist and his mother Liza was the head of the Art Department at Lesley College. It is not surprising that Jeremy inherited a talent for art from his parents.

The first show was in Woodstock where he showed his oil pastels followed by another entitled Flute and Fantasy in White Plains. Both shows featured the artist's talent as a musician in the openings where he welcomed the guests with his flute performance. He painted murals in all of his three apartments in Manhattan, one of which was shown in the film Jeremy by Joel Friedman in 1969. The film was featured in CBS-TV Camera Three. He also had one-man shows in Israel, Tokyo and recently finished his second exhibit in the West Village, New York.

Jeremy dips his bamboo pens in ink and brushes watercolor filling a blank piece of paper with vigorous lines and vivid colors. In Japan where he is known as a jazz flutist, black ink line drawings are catching on among his fans. His themes cover jazz, humor, love, cats, a little eroticism and with his improvisational drawing skills Jeremy keeps creating his own unique world of fun.

In 2004, he had an art show in Yokohama, where he also performed in Yokohama Jazz Promenade, Japan's biggest jazz festival. Since then, he has shown his art works both in the U.S. and Japan every year.


Conversation with Koichiro Tokumochi--July. 2006
J: Sorry for not writing sooner. Two good friends died in the same month and I found it hard to use the e-mail.
I've just gotten back from Bern, Switzerland. It is a wonderful place. There is a beautiful turquoise river surrounding the city. It moves very fast and people jump in with life preservers on and float down the river to the next town. Everything is old. The city looks the same as it did in old paintings. The best thing about Bern I did not appreciate until I got home: the clean air.

K: Sounds like you had a great trip. I visited Bern twenty years ago and visited an art museum. I stayed at a youth hostel where I became friends with a student from the Netherlands. The museum was open until 9 p.m. only on Wednesdays. We went there after dinner and talked about art. That is my memory of the city. The museum is famous for its collection of Paul Klee. He is one of my favorite artists. I saw his paintings and etching prints there.

J: I went to the new Paul Klee Museum while I was there. It was a beautiful modern building and his works were great. He even invented some of his own tools. Some of his stuff was political. There was a piece called The Emperor. It was very funny and deep at the same time. I now feel like I need to do some drawings with an anti-war theme myself.

K: I read about the new museum in a Japanese magazine. Renzo Piano designed the building. I sometimes look at art books of Klee and it feels as if his works were playing music. Don't you feel that way? And some of his works are certainly political.
9/11 told us many things. I am not an American, but it gave me an opportunity to think about peace and what I can do as an artist. As you mentioned, many countries are going crazy; even the earth itself. My hometown in Japan is not safe because it is close to North Korea, for example.
I've recently been to Kyoto to see an exhibition of Tsuguharu Fujita. He was active in Paris. I was very much impressed by his works. He painted women, cats, children and war.

J: I once saw a large book of Fujita's works. I love his paintings.

K: He used very thin drawing brushes called menso-fude to paint women.

J: Yesterday I bought two very fine brushes. What a coincidence! I draw more with lines than shadows. Maybe that is why I love Japanese art so much.

K: I often see art books of Fujita, Ben Shahn and Klee. They have something in common in the way they use lines.

J: I wish I could get more depth in my work, but it hasn't happened yet.

K: I'm looking for something new in my works, too but it is hard to find. I found something new in the ten drawings you sent me before. You used to leave no empty space in your drawings, but you left some in your new works. In Japanese, we call such a space "ma." "Ma" has no color or line, but it represents a meaning.

Conversation--Feb. 2006

Koichiro: Your drawings have many elements and it�s fun to solve the mysteries. Lines, colors, stories, humor, deformation and eroticism. A drawer and his pet cat always show up in them, too. A great combination.
Frac (Jeremy�s cat) moves around here and there in the drawings creating a story, which adds a unique touch to his drawings.

Jeremy: The cat is very important. He's a counter-balance to whatever the main story is. A cat knows where to place himself so I have to put him in just the right place or it won't look right.

Koichiro: Your cat is a nice supporting actor. Nobody knows the hidden story in your drawings but him. Another repeated theme is a middle-aged man (yourself?) with a sensual woman. The man is usually looking at the woman�s nipples! Nipple fetish?

Jeremy: I like to draw women, at least bare breasted. I think I got into it from seeing Picasso. You focused in on the nipples but I must admit nipples are a great focal point. As far as the middle age man goes the man isn't me but the middle age part is. If the guy is holding a flute he might be me.

Koichiro: Talking about Picasso reminds me of The Beauty and the Beast. He painted many young ladies and middle-aged man in his paintings, especially in his etching works.

Jeremy: What I'm working on now is having different stories occupying the same space. Like different radio waves. People walking through other people not knowing the other is there. Cracks in the wall become wall people and laundry turns into faces. The rug talks to the chair. I draw music coming out of musical instruments because it does. That can be shown in a drawing. I want people to see different things at different times. I grew up with Mad Magazine. There were always hidden stories that you had to search for.

Koichiro: I understand what you mean. You are a man of imagination and I dare say that I'm a man of realism. I envy you for your ability to draw something from imagination. For me, it is not important what I draw as long as the lines are right. Jazz is very important to me because it invites me to draw. Talking about art with you this way enables me to appreciate your drawings more. They have so many tastes.
Recently I�ve noticed that you have two different ways of coloring. One is to fill a space with a brush and the other is to create a space with relatively fat lines (ribbons) in color. I think the latter is becoming one of the main characteristics of your drawings. Your lines are always flowing. You don�t structure your drawings much before starting to draw them. To me, it seems that once you draw a character then the next one is drawn as if it were a process of multiplication or a chain reaction.
I�ve found something similar to that about myself. As for my lines, I draw only a few lines first and they let me know which lines to draw next. I always start from the eye. If I can draw nice eyes I'm sure the drawing will be a good one.


KOICHIRO TOKUMOCHI
Formative artist. His �live� drawings of jazz musicians are either engraved as etchings or shaped into life-sized iron sculptures. He spent the whole week of Jazz Meets Art with Jeremy Steig and his group and made dozens of drawings of the musicians.

Tokumochi's inspiration can be traced back to 1989 at a jazz club in Greenwich Village, New York. He found himself drawing in rhythm with the music on paper napkins. Several years later he saw a friend make a chair using iron and he began working with it. Since then he has been turning his best free drawings into life-sized iron sculptures.

What is his identity as a Japanese artist? He was asked the same question by fellow artists when he was in the US. Such planeness as represented by ukiyo-e has haunted him throughout the 20 years of his artistic activities. In his �drawings in the air� the minimal lines sculpture a 3-dimensional presence. The challenge is how real the presence can be made.

�Live music and some alcohol inspire me to create lines,� says Tokumochi. His instantaneous drawings are celebration of both music and art.

1957 Born in Tottori City, Japan
1989 Solo Exhibition, Open House Gallery, NY
1991 Illustrations for jazz specialty magazine Swing Journal
1996 Group exhibition "BRIDGE" Bronx River Art Center & Gallery, Bronx, NY
1998 Panasonic Greenwich Village Jazz Festival Art Competition, NY