Spyro Gyra
Over the last 40+ years, Spyro Gyra show no sign of slowing down. Over the course of their career they have played over five thousand concerts, plus released over thirty albums, selling over ten million albums while also achieving one platinum and two gold albums.
Bandleader and saxophonist Jay Beckenstein and keys player Jeremy Wall set up the group in Buffalo in 1974. And before long they had got together a group of solid players formed of the musicians who regularly attended their jam sessions on the local club scene. One of them, Tom Schuman who played second keys, has remained loyal to the band to this day. Eventually the owner of the club, where the band played, urged them to come up with a band name. Recalling the name of some green algae he had encountered during his biology studies, Jay half-jokingly put forward the name Spirogyra. The owner misspelt it Spyro Gyra, and the name stuck.
In their earliest days, Spyro Gyra took their cues from Weather Report and Return to Forever – bands famed for their innovative approach to jazz and which later influenced the coining of jazz-fusion as a genre.
The first few years saw the group’s identity split into playing live acts and recording albums with an impressive range of guest musicians, including New York’s very best session players at that time. In 1983, Beckenstein made the decision to make the albums the work of the band members he shared the stage with night after night, only supplementing with occasional guests.
The 1980s brought about a number of personnel changes. Julio Fernandez became the group’s guitarist in 1984 and, except for a short hiatus at the end of that decade, has continued in that position. Bass guitarist Scott Ambush joined the band in 1991 followed by the drummer Bonny Bonaparte in 2006.
Morning Dance can most certainly be described as a breakthrough album. In 2014 Spyro Gyra chose to celebrate their 35th anniversary by embarking on a spectacular concert tour. The Rhinebeck Sessions (2013) is a CD well worth investing in, bringing back to life the band’s extraordinary gift for improvisation and creative co-working in real time. The complete recording was made in three days and was dubbed by critics as their best album since the early 1980s. Their long-awaited album Vinyl Tap is being released in 2019, which features re-arrangements of classic rock tracks.
“My hope is that our music has the same effect on the audience that it does on me,” says Beckenstein. “I’ve always felt that music, and particularly instrumental music, has this non-literal quality that lets people travel to a place where there are no words. Whether it’s touching their emotions or connecting them to something that reminds them of something much bigger than themselves, there’s this beauty in music that’s not connected to sentences. It’s very transportive. I would hope that when people hear our music or come to see us, they’re able to share that with us. That’s the truly glorious part of being a musician.”
