NMJF Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin. Courtesy/LPAC
LENSIC News:
SANTA FE — The Lensic presents 12-time Grammy-winning pianist and composer Dave Grusin and legendary guitarist Lee Ritenour in concert 7:30 p.m., April 23.
The event will be the first time these longtime collaborators have performed together in New Mexico. Tickets are $39 to $65 and on sale now at Lensic.org.
Grusin and Ritenour have recorded more than a dozen albums together, including On the Lin (1983), the Grammy-winning Harlequin (1986), Both World (2000), and the classical album Amparo (2008). Their partnership dates to the 1970s, when you could find the duo jamming on Tuesday nights at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles, with the likes of Al Jarreau, Joe Sample, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan in the audience. On Ritenour’s 2020 solo album, Dreamcatcher, he pays tribute to Grusin with the tune “DG”.
Dave Grusin—composer, pianist, arranger, and producer—is one of the most prolific American musicians of the past century. Since starting out in the late 1960s, he’s scored more than 75 films, including The Graduate, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Tootsie, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Firm, Havana, Heaven Can Wait, and On Golden Pond, and he has earned 12 Grammy Awards and multiple nominations. He has worked as an arranger and producer with Quincy Jones and Antônio Carlos Jobim, among others, and recorded both jazz fusion and contemporary classical music albums. In 1978, Grusin founded GRP Records with Larry Rosen with the mission of expanding the notions of jazz, issuing albums by artists like Earl Klugh, Dave Valentin, and Bernard Wright, as well as works by Lee Ritenour and Grusin himself. Their forward-thinking partnership had a monumental impact on the record industry, setting the standard for digital recording fidelity.
Lee Ritenour grew up in Los Angeles and began contributing to sessions while still in his teens. Nicknamed “Captain Fingers,” he was only 16 when he sat in with the Mamas and Papas, and just a few years later he was backing up Tony Bennett and Lena Horne.
The guitarist has racked up 17 Grammy nominations, won Guitar Player Magazine’s Best Studio Guitarist award twice, and amassed a list of credits that includes work with Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, B. B. King, Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Aretha Franklin, and Barbra Streisand.
Described as “an enfant terrible of ’70s fusion, a crossover star of the ’80s pop chart, an honorary exponent of Brazilian jazz, and the fingers behind ’90s supergroup Fourplay (with whom he recorded three albums),” Ritenour’s solo albums yielded the hit “Is It You” – an FM radio jazz standard – and his work with Kenny G and the Yellowjackets earned him a strong following among smooth jazz audiences. Currently in the works is a final reunion project with Fourplay.
Event Sponsors: Jack Kotz, Nicholas Potter Booksellers
Lensic Presents Season Sponsor: The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation
Lensic Presents Season Media Sponsors: Hutton Broadcasting, NM Experiences