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Karlton E Hester

Karlton E. Hester, Ph.D. (composer/flutist/saxophonist), began his career as a composer and recording artist in Los Angeles where he worked as a studio musician and music educator. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center and is currently Director of "Jazz" Studies at the University of California in Santa Cruz. As performer on both flute and saxophone, he is music director of the Fillmore Jazz Preservation Big Band and Hesterian Musicism. Hester is currently music director of Hesterian Musicism, founding director of the Fillmore Jazz Preservation Big Band in San Francisco and served as the Herbert Gussman Director of Jazz Studies at Cornell University from 1991-2001. His formal study included Harry Nelsova and Paul Renzi on flute, Joe Henderson and John Handy in "jazz" improvisation, composition with Bruce Saylor and Robert Starrer, as well as studies with Frank Chase and Bill Tremble on saxophone.

Hester specializes in premeditated, spontaneous and electro-acoustic composition. His compositions span a wide range; from numerous solo cycles for various woodwinds to chamber configurations, music videos and electro-acoustic symphonic works written in an eclectic array of styles. He has been the recipient of composer fellowships, grants and commissions from the National Endowment of the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New England Council of the Arts, Arts International, ASCAP, the William Grant Still Foundation, a Postdoctoral fellowship from the Mellon Foundation, amongst others.. His albums and DVDs include 21st-Century Musicism; The Divine Particle Vision, The Fillmore Jazz Preservation Big Band (featuring John Handy and Denise Perrier); Harmonious Soul Scenes 2000; Musicism for the Sake of Love; Hesterian Liberation; Reconstructive Musicism; Karlton Hester and the Contemporary Jazz Art Movement; Hesterian Musicism; Dances Purely for the Sake of Love; Musicism for Your Imagination, Sacred Musicism, and others.


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5
Album Review

Karlton E Hester: Quantum Elders Ballet

Read "Quantum Elders Ballet" reviewed by Mackenzie Horne


Scholar and multi-instrumentalist Karlton Hester returns to follow up 2015's Trans-Cultural Music (Hesteria Records & Publishing) with Quantum Elders Ball, an artistic commentary on the interconnected relationship between the dimensions, the self and art. Not only does the album serve as a fresh approach to concepts established in Trans-Cultural Musicism but for those who have followed Hester's career, it is an elaboration on his original concept of “musicism," the idea that innovative forms of art can be created and executed ...

5
Album Review

Karlton E Hester: Trans-Cultural Musicism

Read "Trans-Cultural Musicism" reviewed by Mackenzie Horne


Multi-instrumentalist Karlton Hester creates an exploratory spacescape with his 2015 release Trans-Cultural Musicism. Alternating between dark and light, angst and release, ancient and modern, earthbound and extra-terrestrial, Hester transports listeners to a Stanley Kubrick-esque world molded by Hesterian Musicism, a talented ensemble of high-caliber musicians from around the globe. Trans-Cultural Musiciam is a creation that designed to take on new meaning as listeners mature in their relationships with the physical and spiritual worlds around them. By Hester's own ...

126
Album Review

Karlton Hester: Musicism for Your Imagination: Alive at Barnes Hall

Read "Musicism for Your Imagination: Alive at Barnes Hall" reviewed by Robert Spencer


Karlton Hester is an assistant professor of music at Cornell University, where this disc was recorded. He is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist with a particularly affinity for the flute, although he is equally at home on the tenor sax (as well as the soprano, which he plays less often, and the synthesizer, which he plies like a mad acid-rock keyboardist - see the synthesizer workout “Equipoise"). “Musicism" is a term he coined for the interaction of dance, poetry, music, and presumably ...

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