Dmitri Matheny was born in Nashville, Tennessee on Christmas Day, 1965. Listening
to his father's jazz records as he grew up, he remembers hearing Miles Davis' classic recording "Kind of Blue" and deciding that he wanted to play that kind of music. He
started playing trumpet at the age of nine. His family moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1978. Inspired by the tranquil beauty of the Sonoran Desert, the young musician spent hours every day playing his horn in the foothills and canyons. The Tucson Jazz Society, recognizing Matheny's burgeoning talent, financed his music studies at the local
university. He formed his own jazz quintet when he was 16.
In 1983, Matheny enrolled at the Interlochen (Michigan) Arts Academy, where he performed with Ramsey Lewis and was a featured soloist on National Public Radio. He won the first Interlochen Jazz Studies Award, a coveted honor which continues to this date. After graduation, he was offered scholarships by the finest music schools in the country, including North Texas State, the University of Miami, and Boston's Berklee College of Music. In 1984, Matheny joined the ranks of the Berklee jazz wunderkind, performing in top ranking ensembles alongside Antonio Hart, Donny McCaslin, Geoff Keezer, Warren Hill, Danilo Perez, Wolfgang Muthspiel, and Roy Hargrove.
In Berklee's archives, he discovered music from Boston's historic Jazz Workshop of the 1950s and '60s, including original manuscripts by Wayne Shorter, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Charles Mingus, and Horace Silver. With this repertoire and the encouragement of his teachers - Blakey alumni James Williams, Billy Pierce and Donald Brown - Matheny founded the New Voice Jazz Sextet, which was on the leading edge of Boston's hard bop revival for the next six years.
The young trumpeter was sought after professionally, sharing the stage with Motown and pop artists such as The Temptations, Fabian, and Martha Reeves, and jazz legend Sam Rivers. In 1988, the National Association for Advancement in the Arts honored Matheny with a National Music Award for his composition "The City at Night."
In the late 1980s, looking for a darker, more melancholy sound, Matheny turned
to the flugelhorn. "I knew I wanted to study with Art Farmer. Art's music was becoming like religion for me. I had about a hundred of his recordings... was enamored with his complete mastery of the flugelhorn, his beautiful tone and the effortless logic in his improvisation. So I started sending tapes and letters to him in Vienna, asking for advice. My lucky break came when the bass player in my band, Peter Herbert (who had previously been Art's bassist in Vienna), introduced me to Art at the Village Vanguard. To my great surprise, he took me as his student. Of course, these days when we get together, I don't play much. I mostly just listen!" A proud moment for Matheny was Farmer's praise after hearing his first album: "'Red Reflections' sounds so good, I wish I'd made it myself."
Graduating magna cum laude from Berklee in 1989, Matheny performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival and fell in love with the beauty of the West Coast. He moved to San Francisco where he garnered critical acclaim as a composer, educator, and leader of the SOMA Ensemble. Now he travels from his home base, playing in clubs and jazz festivals all over the United States and Europe.
