Dann Zinn

Like the old violinist giving a curbside recital in Manhattan, Dann Zinn knows how you get to Carnegie Hall. He can also give you directions to Zellerbach Hall, Herbst Theater, or even the Village Vanguard, venues accessed by the same exacting route. As a jazz educator who has mentored dozens of young musicians distinguishing themselves as top-shelf professional players, the Alameda-based Zinn is a guru with a mantra: practice, practice, practice.
“My job is to get them to take it as seriously as brain surgery, practicing like their lives depend on it,” says Zinn. “I love practicing myself. It’s one of the best parts of being a musician. I try to get them to see that it’s not a chore. We’re lucky to be able to do it. Digging for something new is what jazz is all about.”
While he’s on faculty at Cal State East Bay, U.C. Berkeley and the Jazzschool in Berkeley, Zinn works most of his magic one-on-one at his home studio. Many of his students are talented musicians who are destined to make a living in another field, but he specializes in helping highly gifted high schoolers reach their potential, which often means scoring a full scholarship to a top institution like Boston’s Berklee College of Music, the Manhattan School of Music or the Univer-sity of Southern California. Sometimes tears are shed in the process.
“One of my students just got a full scholar-ship to USC, which is worth something like $200,000,” Zinn says. “In his junior year he said he’s quitting. He was crying at lessons and just really frustrated. He hit bottom, but he stuck with it and figured it out. Last year he was in the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars. I’m sure his mom is glad that all those lessons paid off.”
Zinn didn’t aspire to a career as an educator, but he has found working with young musicians almost as gratifying as pursuing his own music. The Hayward native makes a point of not pushing any particular style. You can’t argue with the results. His former students include Oakland tenor saxophonist Dayna Stephens, who earned a full scholarship to Berklee and the Thelonious Monk Institute and is now a thriving New York player whose debut CD received glowing reviews. Another Berkeley tenor saxophonist, Hitomi Oba, now based in Los Angeles, released a CD featuring her encounter with saxophone legend Ernie Watts.
And Santa Cruz tenor saxophonist Jesse Scheinin attended Berklee on a full scholarship and is honing a highly personal sound he describes as “Sigur Ros meets Wayne Shorter.” Scheinin heard about Zinn from another brilliant Santa Cruz saxophonist, Remy Le Boeuf, whose full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music paved the way for his emergence as an important new voice on the New York scene.
“I had heard about Dann from all of my friends in the SFJAZZ High School All-Star Band who told me I absolutely had to study with him,” Le Boeuf writes in an e-mail. “I remember after our first lesson, he gave me hours of things to practice, and this set a standard that I was happy to strive toward during my years of study with him. Dann was always very Zen in our lessons; he only said what was necessary and most of his comments were made as questions that I had to answer for myself.”
Not surprisingly, Zinn is also a highly regarded player who has developed a striking sound of his own shaped by his synthesis of seemingly polar influences. For many years he tried to model his sound on Norwegian tenor saxophonist Jan Garbarek, who plays unadorned, folk-like themes with cool, blue-flame intensity. Best known for his work on ECM, Garbarek recorded albums such as Belonging and My Song as part of pianist Keith Jarrett’s great 1970s European quartet.
Zinn’s music often combines Garbarek’s crystalline sound with a handful of East Bay grease, a la tenor saxophonist Lenny Pickett, a Tower of Power alumnus who’s now music director for the Saturday Night Live Band. It’s an approach that Zinn’s been working on for about a decade.
“It’s a concept where I take folk melodies, but harmonized like Bartok,” Zinn says. “I try to make the music accessible through the melodies, but the harmonies are kind of weird and I like messing with the textures.”
While he took saxophone lessons as a teenager, Zinn did some of his most intensive studying in the audience at the North Beach club Keystone Korner in the 1970s, soaking up sets by tenor sax titan Dexter Gorden, trumpeter Woody Shaw and altoist Phil Woods.
“That’s how you learn,” Zinn says. “Later on I took a few lessons with most of the great players in the area — Joe Henderson, Mel Martin, Larry Schneider. It was cool, but in many cases they weren’t teachers. I remember asking Schneider, how do you do this? ‘I don’t know.’ Well, how do you do this? ‘I don’t know.’ Really, you can’t tell me?”
While his own music might sound mysterious and perplex his collaborators, Zinn has spent his life off stage demystifying jazz for his students, showing by exa - Oakland Magazine

Like the old violinist giving a curbside recital in Manhattan, Dann Zinn knows how you get to Carnegie Hall. He can also give you directions to Zellerbach Hall, Herbst Theater, or even the Village Vanguard, venues accessed by the same exacting route. As a jazz educator who has mentored dozens of young musicians distinguishing themselves as top-shelf professional players, the Alameda-based Zinn is a guru with a mantra: practice, practice, practice.
“My job is to get them to take it as seriously as brain surgery, practicing like their lives depend on it,” says Zinn. “I love practicing myself. It’s one of the best parts of being a musician. I try to get them to see that it’s not a chore. We’re lucky to be able to do it. Digging for something new is what jazz is all about.”
While he’s on faculty at Cal State East Bay, U.C. Berkeley and the Jazzschool in Berkeley, Zinn works most of his magic one-on-one at his home studio. Many of his students are talented musicians who are destined to make a living in another field, but he specializes in helping highly gifted high schoolers reach their potential, which often means scoring a full scholarship to a top institution like Boston’s Berklee College of Music, the Manhattan School of Music or the Univer-sity of Southern California. Sometimes tears are shed in the process.
“One of my students just got a full scholar-ship to USC, which is worth something like $200,000,” Zinn says. “In his junior year he said he’s quitting. He was crying at lessons and just really frustrated. He hit bottom, but he stuck with it and figured it out. Last year he was in the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars. I’m sure his mom is glad that all those lessons paid off.”
Zinn didn’t aspire to a career as an educator, but he has found working with young musicians almost as gratifying as pursuing his own music. The Hayward native makes a point of not pushing any particular style. You can’t argue with the results. His former students include Oakland tenor saxophonist Dayna Stephens, who earned a full scholarship to Berklee and the Thelonious Monk Institute and is now a thriving New York player whose debut CD received glowing reviews. Another Berkeley tenor saxophonist, Hitomi Oba, now based in Los Angeles, released a CD featuring her encounter with saxophone legend Ernie Watts.
And Santa Cruz tenor saxophonist Jesse Scheinin attended Berklee on a full scholarship and is honing a highly personal sound he describes as “Sigur Ros meets Wayne Shorter.” Scheinin heard about Zinn from another brilliant Santa Cruz saxophonist, Remy Le Boeuf, whose full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music paved the way for his emergence as an important new voice on the New York scene.
“I had heard about Dann from all of my friends in the SFJAZZ High School All-Star Band who told me I absolutely had to study with him,” Le Boeuf writes in an e-mail. “I remember after our first lesson, he gave me hours of things to practice, and this set a standard that I was happy to strive toward during my years of study with him. Dann was always very Zen in our lessons; he only said what was necessary and most of his comments were made as questions that I had to answer for myself.”
Not surprisingly, Zinn is also a highly regarded player who has developed a striking sound of his own shaped by his synthesis of seemingly polar influences. For many years he tried to model his sound on Norwegian tenor saxophonist Jan Garbarek, who plays unadorned, folk-like themes with cool, blue-flame intensity. Best known for his work on ECM, Garbarek recorded albums such as Belonging and My Song as part of pianist Keith Jarrett’s great 1970s European quartet.
Zinn’s music often combines Garbarek’s crystalline sound with a handful of East Bay grease, a la tenor saxophonist Lenny Pickett, a Tower of Power alumnus who’s now music director for the Saturday Night Live Band. It’s an approach that Zinn’s been working on for about a decade.
“It’s a concept where I take folk melodies, but harmonized like Bartok,” Zinn says. “I try to make the music accessible through the melodies, but the harmonies are kind of weird and I like messing with the textures.”
While he took saxophone lessons as a teenager, Zinn did some of his most intensive studying in the audience at the North Beach club Keystone Korner in the 1970s, soaking up sets by tenor sax titan Dexter Gorden, trumpeter Woody Shaw and altoist Phil Woods.
“That’s how you learn,” Zinn says. “Later on I took a few lessons with most of the great players in the area — Joe Henderson, Mel Martin, Larry Schneider. It was cool, but in many cases they weren’t teachers. I remember asking Schneider, how do you do this? ‘I don’t know.’ Well, how do you do this? ‘I don’t know.’ Really, you can’t tell me?”
While his own music might sound mysterious and perplex his collaborators, Zinn has spent his life off stage demystifying jazz for his students, showing by exa - Oakland Magazine

The very first song here, Live and Learn, tells a lot of what you need to know about Dann Zinn and Grace's Song. A straight-ahead intro leads into angular chops from saxist Zinn as the improv section commences, leaning into a gentle breeze with obtuse assurance. Then pianist Taylor Eigsti, up to this point a member of the rhythm section in left-hand root chords, starts reining in the tempo with his right hand, laying down a simple but signal melody line like glazed tile in a garden before taking up Zinn's trail in a mutated Evansy sparkle-light. Dann re-enters to muscle up the progression and wind down the melody, and then Western Skies erupts in a prefatory solo akin to John Klemmer's old sax-n-effects experiments. Zinn proceeds to toss off the outboard hardware and get down to business, only to keep re-inserting the pedal distortions as contrast. Works well, and Song finds itself becoming a mixture of modes anchored to a straight ahead spirit.

The emphasis is of course on saxophone and piano, but Alan Hall's skinswork moves all around the frontline pair, harmonic and decorative, a constant atmosphere of energetics and ornamentalia, leaving bassist John Shifflett as the true foundation rhythm section, something even Hall plays against. Zinn goes CTI nuts in his leads many times, which is what you come to the CD for, but there are a number of surprises, as in the title cut shuffling in with a surprisingly Turrentine-ish tone and remaining balladic until Shifflet injects a lyrical Mark Eganesque solo, Eigsti then veering into Joe Sample territory. That's when Zinn begins to cut the theme up, yanking the affair into a Saturday Night Live ambiance not all that far, again, from Klemmer's early book.

Sting's The King of Pain, a 9-minute workout perfectly suited to all the instruments, brings the tone down even further, originally a spare lament that, in its simplicity, widely opens doors to interpretations kicked off by Zinn in a Braxton-by-way-of-Garbarek fashion while Eigsti suddenly darkens the background. The players, though, choose not to stray too far from the baseline and thus produce a compellingly moody elemental landscape waxing rhapsodic only at the close, and then only in fevered pronunciamento reflective of the song's title. Bounce factor and abstract layerings walk back in for the next couple songs until closing the entire disc with a reading of one of the most recorded songs on planet Earth, Stardust, blending Klemmer with Tom Scott or Rusty Bryant. In all, then, Grace's Song is a deft balance of straight jazz boasting a generous inflection of fusiony outside chops with contemplative reflections working to pull the calendar back to the 50s, 60s, and 70s while pointing to musos who would run all that past the pale (Colemen, Osby, etc.).
- FAME Review

The very first song here, Live and Learn, tells a lot of what you need to know about Dann Zinn and Grace's Song. A straight-ahead intro leads into angular chops from saxist Zinn as the improv section commences, leaning into a gentle breeze with obtuse assurance. Then pianist Taylor Eigsti, up to this point a member of the rhythm section in left-hand root chords, starts reining in the tempo with his right hand, laying down a simple but signal melody line like glazed tile in a garden before taking up Zinn's trail in a mutated Evansy sparkle-light. Dann re-enters to muscle up the progression and wind down the melody, and then Western Skies erupts in a prefatory solo akin to John Klemmer's old sax-n-effects experiments. Zinn proceeds to toss off the outboard hardware and get down to business, only to keep re-inserting the pedal distortions as contrast. Works well, and Song finds itself becoming a mixture of modes anchored to a straight ahead spirit.

The emphasis is of course on saxophone and piano, but Alan Hall's skinswork moves all around the frontline pair, harmonic and decorative, a constant atmosphere of energetics and ornamentalia, leaving bassist John Shifflett as the true foundation rhythm section, something even Hall plays against. Zinn goes CTI nuts in his leads many times, which is what you come to the CD for, but there are a number of surprises, as in the title cut shuffling in with a surprisingly Turrentine-ish tone and remaining balladic until Shifflet injects a lyrical Mark Eganesque solo, Eigsti then veering into Joe Sample territory. That's when Zinn begins to cut the theme up, yanking the affair into a Saturday Night Live ambiance not all that far, again, from Klemmer's early book.

Sting's The King of Pain, a 9-minute workout perfectly suited to all the instruments, brings the tone down even further, originally a spare lament that, in its simplicity, widely opens doors to interpretations kicked off by Zinn in a Braxton-by-way-of-Garbarek fashion while Eigsti suddenly darkens the background. The players, though, choose not to stray too far from the baseline and thus produce a compellingly moody elemental landscape waxing rhapsodic only at the close, and then only in fevered pronunciamento reflective of the song's title. Bounce factor and abstract layerings walk back in for the next couple songs until closing the entire disc with a reading of one of the most recorded songs on planet Earth, Stardust, blending Klemmer with Tom Scott or Rusty Bryant. In all, then, Grace's Song is a deft balance of straight jazz boasting a generous inflection of fusiony outside chops with contemplative reflections working to pull the calendar back to the 50s, 60s, and 70s while pointing to musos who would run all that past the pale (Colemen, Osby, etc.).
- FAME Review

From saxophonist Dann Zinn’s first solo on his swinging original composition “Live and Learn,” you can get a good idea of what’s coming on Grace’s Song, the new album from The Dann Zinn 4. And what’s coming is some solid straight-ahead jazz with a just a little twist here and a bigger twist there to spice things up. He, together with pianist Taylor Eigsti, lead you down what you think are familiar paths until you turn the corner and find them exploring new territory. They draw you in, and you can’t help but follow. Beautiful melodies, intense solos: turns out it’s a journey well worth taking.

Six of the album’s eight tracks are Zinn originals. The title song is the highlight of the album. It begins as a tender ballad with a melody that with an added lyric could make the pop charts and then morphs into what could pass for a bluesy anthem. There is a nice little bass solo from John Shifflet leading to some elegant work from Eigsti before Zinn takes over on the tenor. Running almost six and a half minutes, it’s the kind of song you’ll want to hear again and again.

In “Western Skies,” Zinn manages to coax some really interesting sounds from his sax right from the outset, and they got even more interesting as the piece moves on. “Red Rover” gives Shifflet some time with drummer Alan Hall, and has some impressionistic piano work as well. In “Corazon,” they build up to a climactic moment and then sort of peter out as if in exhaustion, a device Zinn seems to use a few times on the album.

The two cover songs are a sweet arrangement of Sting’s “King of Pain” and the old standby “Stardust.” This last one, Zinn explains is for his dad. But no need for explanation, as you can never have too many “Stardusts.” “King of Pain,” it turns out, makes for some very nice improvisation.

According to his bio, after the success of his first two albums, Zinn began to experiment with adding a piano to his band. The result is Grace’s Song; the experiment is an unqualified success.
- Blogcritics Music

From saxophonist Dann Zinn’s first solo on his swinging original composition “Live and Learn,” you can get a good idea of what’s coming on Grace’s Song, the new album from The Dann Zinn 4. And what’s coming is some solid straight-ahead jazz with a just a little twist here and a bigger twist there to spice things up. He, together with pianist Taylor Eigsti, lead you down what you think are familiar paths until you turn the corner and find them exploring new territory. They draw you in, and you can’t help but follow. Beautiful melodies, intense solos: turns out it’s a journey well worth taking.

Six of the album’s eight tracks are Zinn originals. The title song is the highlight of the album. It begins as a tender ballad with a melody that with an added lyric could make the pop charts and then morphs into what could pass for a bluesy anthem. There is a nice little bass solo from John Shifflet leading to some elegant work from Eigsti before Zinn takes over on the tenor. Running almost six and a half minutes, it’s the kind of song you’ll want to hear again and again.

In “Western Skies,” Zinn manages to coax some really interesting sounds from his sax right from the outset, and they got even more interesting as the piece moves on. “Red Rover” gives Shifflet some time with drummer Alan Hall, and has some impressionistic piano work as well. In “Corazon,” they build up to a climactic moment and then sort of peter out as if in exhaustion, a device Zinn seems to use a few times on the album.

The two cover songs are a sweet arrangement of Sting’s “King of Pain” and the old standby “Stardust.” This last one, Zinn explains is for his dad. But no need for explanation, as you can never have too many “Stardusts.” “King of Pain,” it turns out, makes for some very nice improvisation.

According to his bio, after the success of his first two albums, Zinn began to experiment with adding a piano to his band. The result is Grace’s Song; the experiment is an unqualified success.
- Blogcritics Music

Dann Zinn is a man of many talents. Widely recognized as one of the more impressive saxophonist/flutist musicians in the field of jazz, he reigns in the San Francisco and East Bay region as a first rate performer, both as a soloist and as an ensemble musician, and also wears the badge of composer/arranger… his marriage of academia and performance explains why his compositions and arrangements are so potent….
For (Grace’s Song) Zinn performs with his carefully selected Dann Zinn 4, comprised of Dann on tenor sax, Taylor Eigsti, piano, John Shifflett, bass, and Alan Hall on drums…The pieces range from catchy complex compositions performed by some of the most highly skilled musicians around to soothing slow and moody songs like the very special Hoagy Carmichael duet of sax and piano - Stardust - an arrangement that comes closer to the title's meaning than any other version you'll hear …But the entire recording is like that: it demands and deserves our attention. - Amazon

Dann Zinn is a man of many talents. Widely recognized as one of the more impressive saxophonist/flutist musicians in the field of jazz, he reigns in the San Francisco and East Bay region as a first rate performer, both as a soloist and as an ensemble musician, and also wears the badge of composer/arranger… his marriage of academia and performance explains why his compositions and arrangements are so potent….
For (Grace’s Song) Zinn performs with his carefully selected Dann Zinn 4, comprised of Dann on tenor sax, Taylor Eigsti, piano, John Shifflett, bass, and Alan Hall on drums…The pieces range from catchy complex compositions performed by some of the most highly skilled musicians around to soothing slow and moody songs like the very special Hoagy Carmichael duet of sax and piano - Stardust - an arrangement that comes closer to the title's meaning than any other version you'll hear …But the entire recording is like that: it demands and deserves our attention. - Amazon

Tenor saxophonist Dann Zinn has what I’d call a very human sound – it’s personal, articulated, and you can almost imagine what his speaking or singing voice might sound like just from listening to his horn.

The Director of Jazz Studies at California State University East Bay also sometimes reminds me of Ernie Watts at times – maybe it’s that West Coast air.

For this disc, the third under his own name (he has been a sideman on countless other albums), he has Taylor Eigsti on piano, John Shifflett on bass and Alan Hall on drums.


Dann Zinn

The opener, Live And Learn, has a strong and lyrical tune and is a fine introduction to Zinn’s sound. For Western Skies he puts his horn through a harmoniser and becomes an electric horn section – the track has a fusion edge as a result, like a modern Eddie Harris. Even at speed, Zinn is articulate and keeps his tone characterful – not an easy thing to achieve.

The title track has a gospel feel to it – perhaps it’s the word “Grace” that gives it a natural link to the “Amazing” song. It features a precisely nuanced and also almost-vocal solo from Shifflett. Eigsti and Hall are equally tasty players and the whole thing has fine recording sound.

Al the tunes are Zinn originals apart from his reworking of Sting’s King Of Pain (a good choice and a blessed relief from Fragile) and Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust - there isn’t a weak track.

A lovely album, full of life-giving energy, then, its “street date” as the Americans call it, is early next month, but you can buy it now on cdbaby – just go to www.dannzinn.com and click on the button.


- The Jazz Breakfast

Tenor saxophonist Dann Zinn has what I’d call a very human sound – it’s personal, articulated, and you can almost imagine what his speaking or singing voice might sound like just from listening to his horn.

The Director of Jazz Studies at California State University East Bay also sometimes reminds me of Ernie Watts at times – maybe it’s that West Coast air.

For this disc, the third under his own name (he has been a sideman on countless other albums), he has Taylor Eigsti on piano, John Shifflett on bass and Alan Hall on drums.


Dann Zinn

The opener, Live And Learn, has a strong and lyrical tune and is a fine introduction to Zinn’s sound. For Western Skies he puts his horn through a harmoniser and becomes an electric horn section – the track has a fusion edge as a result, like a modern Eddie Harris. Even at speed, Zinn is articulate and keeps his tone characterful – not an easy thing to achieve.

The title track has a gospel feel to it – perhaps it’s the word “Grace” that gives it a natural link to the “Amazing” song. It features a precisely nuanced and also almost-vocal solo from Shifflett. Eigsti and Hall are equally tasty players and the whole thing has fine recording sound.

Al the tunes are Zinn originals apart from his reworking of Sting’s King Of Pain (a good choice and a blessed relief from Fragile) and Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust - there isn’t a weak track.

A lovely album, full of life-giving energy, then, its “street date” as the Americans call it, is early next month, but you can buy it now on cdbaby – just go to www.dannzinn.com and click on the button.


- The Jazz Breakfast