From: Berkeley, CA
I started teaching music in… 1974
I started teaching at the Conservatory in… 2019
My inspiration: Cecil Taylor, Roscoe Mitchell, Lamine Konte
Few people know that I… not sure what people know?
Education: Creative Music Studio ’77
I play and teach: Saxophone, Flute, Clarinet, Trumpet, Piano, Electric Bass, Drums, Percussion
My other artistic/musical endeavors: New York Hieroglyphics (leader/composer/sax/keys)
Sparkler (leader/composer/sax/keys/vocals)
Peter Apfelbaum/Marcus Rojas/Cyro Baptista Trio (sax/keys/percussion/flute)
Revelator with Bill Laswell (sax/keys/percussion/flute)
Bill Laswell & Method Of Defiance (sax/keys/percussion/flute)
Dafnis Prieto Quartet & Sextet (saxes/melodica/percussion)
Dafnis Prieto Big Band (saxes/melodica/percussion)
Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra (saxes)
CMS Legacy Ensemble (sax/flute)
Sana Nagano & Smashing Humans (sax)
Omar Sosa Afreecanos Quartet (saxes/flute/percussion)
MIchael McGinnis Quartet (organ/piano)
Peter Apfelbaum/Josh Jones Duo (keys/sax)
Alma Matters (Musical Director/keys/sax)
Kamikaze Ground Crew (composer/saxes/clarinet)
Creative Music Foundation (Artistic Director/Clinician)
Biography: Berkeley, California-born and based in New York City since 1998, saxophonist/pianist/drummer and composer Peter Apfelbaum is best known as leader of the genre-mashing big band, Hieroglyphics, which he formed while still in high school in 1977. The ensemble, which began to attract international attention in the 1980’s for its unique fusing of elements of world music with the aesthetics of the jazz avant-garde, received a Grammy nomination in 1991 for the album “Signs Of Life” (Antilles) and helped launch the careers of fellow Berkeleyans Joshua Redman, Benny Green, Craig Handy and Steven Bernstein, among others. The current version of the ensemble, now in its 43rd year and known as New York Hieroglyphics, released “It Is Written” in 2005 and toured an extended work, “Aural Histories” (commissioned by Chamber Music America), throughout the U.S. in 2008-2009.
An influential figure in new jazz for over three decades, Apfelbaum has worked with some of the leading figures in contemporary music, including the late Don Cherry (whose group, Multikulti, Apfelbaum was Musical Director of from 1989-1995), Cecil Taylor, Harry Belafonte, Omar Sosa, Bill Laswell and Phish. He has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and the National Swedish Radio Orchestra, among others. In 2013 he formed Sparkler, an electronica-based, vocal-driven sextet, which released its debut EP, “I Colored It In For You,” on Laswell’s MOD Technologies label in 2015 and premiered the commissioned work “The Ambidextrous Nature Of The Universe” at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2016.
He currently performs with Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra and Dafnis Prieto’s Sextet. In 2017, Apfelbaum was named an Artistic Director of Creative Music Foundation, an organization dedicated to offering workshops by improvising musicians from diverse backgrounds. CMJ New Music Report has called Apfelbaum “A visionary, galvanic composer like few others of his time.”