Bill Barner Skyrockets to #10 on the CMJ Jazz Chart

Bill Barner Skyrockets into the Top 10 This Week

His Third Week in Promotions

I was born in the Mississippi Delta in the middle of the 20th century.  My father, who bought me the clarinet that I still play today and taught me to play it, was a clarinet and alto sax player on an aircraft carrier during World War II.  After playing clarinet in elementary, junior high, and high schools in Miami and Northern California, as well as playing in the All Miami Youth Wind Ensemble and the Sacramento Youth Symphony, I attended the University of California at Davis, where I played clarinet in the university orchestra and alto sax in the jazz band. 

While at Davis I played avant-garde music with John Cage and with a free jazz group called Touch Acoustra.  Summers I played alto sax with Latino bands in the San Francisco Bay Area.   I studied clarinet at California State University, East Bay after earning my B.S. at UC Davis.  After college I played a variety of music in Columbus, Ohio.  It was in Columbus where I met guitarist Stan Smith and bassist Roger Hines who play on Ten Tunes.  We were members of Sanctuary, the award-winning jazz group that played nightclubs, radio, and TV, as well as appearing in concert with Michael Franks. In Sanctuary I played soprano and tenor sax and contributed compositions.  While based in Columbus I attended a clarinet master class conducted by Eddie Daniels and I went to the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY where I attended workshops led by jazz greats Lee Konitz, Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton, and Karl Berger.

Next, I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where I played clarinet and tenor sax in the Duke City Jazz Band.  For the last 25 year I’ve lived in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C. and played clarinet and sax all over the Mid-Atlantic region.  I played soprano and tenor sax in Extremities, a jazz fusion group that played original music and appeared with Mike Stern and with Mark Isham at the well known Bayou club in Washington.  Extremities played nightclubs and music festivals in the Washington, DC area and gave a concert at the Terrace Theater in the Kennedy Center.

Currently I play all over Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland with two jazz combos: Night and Day and Some Like It Hot, and I play the lead tenor sax part in the Difficult Run Jazz Band, a 17-piece big band that has performed at Blues Alley in Washington and elsewhere.  In addition I can be heard on two recordings by Tobin Mueller, A Bit of Light and Rain Bather--the JazzChicago.net number one album of the year in 2009.  Finally, I’ve created music for two modern dance companies.  I played Indian raga music on the tenor sax for two performance of the Tehreema Mitha Dance Company and I composed and recorded original music for the Kathy Harty Gray Dance Theatre.  Through the years, I’ve looked for opportunities to improvise in any setting I could--dixieland, bluegrass, klezmer, free jazz--and I’ve searched for musical influences from all over the world. While writing the ten tunes on this new CD, I was particularly thinking of music from Brazil, the Middle East, Africa, and Spain.