DAN BLOCK
Genres: Swing, Bop • United States

In today’s jazz scene it is a rare occurrence when a musician is truly versed in a myriad of styles, from the earliest New Orleans traditions to the modal jazz of the 1960s and 70s. Dan Block is one of those rare individuals fitting like a chameleon on a host of instruments into a host of musical genres. He persistently searches for connections in the history of the music and finds his style, and to quote one of his favorite authors Kurt Vonnegut, remains “unstuck in time”.  A native of St. Louis, Block took up the saxophone just short of his fourteenth birthday, trumpet soon after, and clarinet the following year. An indelible memory was hearing Eubie Blake at the St. Louis Ragtime Festival and being exposed to the music of John Coltrane for the first time all in the same week. Classical music and Great American Songbook standards were read more...