Art Lande
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Art Lande (born 1947 in New York City) is a jazz pianist, drummer, composer and educator.
He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1969. He made the first record of his own compositions in 1973 for ECM Records, in a duo with saxophonist/flutist Jan Garbarek. The record name, Red Lanta, was the first of several anagrams of his name that Lande used in his titles.
In 1976 he founded the jazz quartet Rubisa Patrol, with Mark Isham on trumpet, Bill Douglass on bass, and Glenn Cronkhite (later replaced by Kurt Wortmann) on drums. Rubisa Patrol played jazz standards, but also a lot of original music. They performed in the Bay Area and toured extensively in Europe by van. This group made two records for ECM: Rubisa Patrol (1976), Desert Marauders (1977) The band also released a third album titled The Story Of Ba-Ku (1978) on the 1750 Arch Street label.
For three years beginning in 1983 Lande was based in Switzerland where he taught in a jazz school in St. Gallen. In 1987 he moved to Boulder, Colorado to teach at Naropa University. Since then he has continued to reside in Boulder and has worked extensively with many locally-based musicians.
Lande has written many compositions, but is also known for his unusual and distinctive interpretations of popular and jazz standards. He has made several solo piano recordings devoted to such material, including The Eccentricities of Earl Dant (another anagram) in 1977, Art Lande: Hardball! (1987), Art Lande: Melissa Spins Away (1987), and Friday the Thirteenth, featuring 13 Thelonious Monk compositions, in 1996.
While always best known as a pianist, since the mid-1990's Lande has also played and recorded with several groups as a drummer.
