Jay Berliner
Encyclopedia
Jay Berliner is an American guitarist
and multi-instrumentalist. Starting with his first television experience at age 7 on NBC
’s The Children’s Hour with sister Eve, his career has spanned the globe: from the Metropolitan Opera
house (the “old” Metropolitan Opera House in midtown Manhattan), where he was house guitarist and mandolinist; to Kenya
’s 1963 Independence Day celebration as accompanist for Harry Belafonte
and Miriam Makeba
; touring Japan
as a banjo soloist; performances at The White House; and more recently, playing onstage at the Metropolitan Opera
(in the “new” house at Lincoln Center) with Barbara Cook
, Audra McDonald
, Josh Groban
, and Elaine Strich, recorded live on DRG Records, Inc.
Recordings under his own name include Bananas Are Not Created Equal, Romantic Guitars, Erotic Guitars, three classical albums for Nippon-Columbia, and three classical albums for Spanish Music Center Records. Jay also can be heard on Romantic Sea of Tranquility under the pseudonym "Chris Valentino."
For almost 50 years, Jay has been an active studio musician, logging more than 13,000 recording sessions for records, commercials, motion pictures, etc., earning him seven NARAS Most Valuable Player awards as well as the NARAS MVP Virtuoso Award in 1986. He has played on albums by Charles Mingus
(including The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
) and Ron Carter
, George Benson
’s White Rabbit, Stephane Grappeli’s Uptown Dance, Deodato’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, Milt Jackson
’s Sunflower, and many other Creed Taylor
recordings. Jay has recorded with numerous singers including Frank Sinatra
, Perry Como
, Jerry Vale
, Astrud Gilberto
, Sammy Davis, Jr.
, Sergio Franchi
, Rupert Holmes
, Frankie Valli
, Debby Boone
, Andrea Bocelli
, Russell Watson
, Harry Connick, Jr.
, Bernadette Peters
, Kristen Chenowith, Blossom Dearie
, and LaTanya Hall.
He played on Van Morrison
's 1968 album, Astral Weeks
, and on November 7 and 8, 2008 joined with Morrison to play Astral Weeks in its entirety at the Hollywood Bowl
in Los Angeles, California
. A vinyl LP
and CD from these concerts entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl
were released in February 2009.
Jay is an original member of Rob Fisher
's Coffee Club Orchestra on Garrison Keillor
’s American Radio Company and later at City Center’s ENCORES series. Jay is also an original member of the Guys All-Star Shoe Band on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. He was the guitarist for Harry Belafonte
in the early to mid 1960s, playing in venues all over the world. Jay has performed in concert with William Warfield
and Earl Wild
at the old Lewisohn Stadium
, at Town Hall with Andre Velis, and with Charles Bressler
, playing the American premier performance of songs for tenor
and guitar
by William Walton
and Benjamin Britten
.
Jay is currently playing banjo
, mandolin
, and baritone ukulele
onstage in the hit Broadway show Chicago
at the Ambassador Theatre
.
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...
and multi-instrumentalist. Starting with his first television experience at age 7 on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
’s The Children’s Hour with sister Eve, his career has spanned the globe: from the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
house (the “old” Metropolitan Opera House in midtown Manhattan), where he was house guitarist and mandolinist; to Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
’s 1963 Independence Day celebration as accompanist for Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte
Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...
and Miriam Makeba
Miriam Makeba
Miriam Makeba , nicknamed Mama Africa, was a Grammy Award winning South African singer and civil rights activist....
; touring Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
as a banjo soloist; performances at The White House; and more recently, playing onstage at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
(in the “new” house at Lincoln Center) with Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook is an American singer and actress who first came to prominence in the 1950s after starring in the original Broadway musicals Candide and The Music Man among others, winning a Tony Award for the latter...
, Audra McDonald
Audra McDonald
Audra Ann McDonald is an American actress and singer. She currently stars in the ABC television drama Private Practice as Dr. Naomi Bennett. She has appeared on the stage in both musicals and dramas, such as Ragtime and A Raisin in the Sun...
, Josh Groban
Josh Groban
Joshua Winslow "Josh" Groban is an American singer-songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer. His four solo albums have been certified at least multi-platinum, and in 2007, he was charted as the number-one best selling artist in the United States with over 21 million records in that country...
, and Elaine Strich, recorded live on DRG Records, Inc.
Recordings under his own name include Bananas Are Not Created Equal, Romantic Guitars, Erotic Guitars, three classical albums for Nippon-Columbia, and three classical albums for Spanish Music Center Records. Jay also can be heard on Romantic Sea of Tranquility under the pseudonym "Chris Valentino."
For almost 50 years, Jay has been an active studio musician, logging more than 13,000 recording sessions for records, commercials, motion pictures, etc., earning him seven NARAS Most Valuable Player awards as well as the NARAS MVP Virtuoso Award in 1986. He has played on albums by Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
(including The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
-Personnel:Musicians*Charles Mingus – bass, piano, composer*Jerome Richardson – soprano and baritone saxophone, flute*Charlie Mariano – alto saxophone*Dick Hafer – tenor saxophone, flute*Rolf Ericson – trumpet...
) and Ron Carter
Ron Carter
Ron Carter is an American jazz double-bassist. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on that...
, George Benson
George Benson
George Benson is a ten Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist....
’s White Rabbit, Stephane Grappeli’s Uptown Dance, Deodato’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, Milt Jackson
Milt Jackson
Milton "Bags" Jackson was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms...
’s Sunflower, and many other Creed Taylor
Creed Taylor
Creed Taylor is an American record producer, best known for his work with CTI Records, which he founded in 1968. Taylor’s career also included work at Bethlehem Records, ABC-Paramount, Verve, and A&M Records...
recordings. Jay has recorded with numerous singers including Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Perry Como
Perry Como
Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr...
, Jerry Vale
Jerry Vale
Jerry Vale is an American singer.-Career:In high school, in order to make some money, he took a job shining shoes in a barbershop in New York City. He sang while he shined shoes, and his boss liked the sound so well that he paid for music lessons for the boy...
, Astrud Gilberto
Astrud Gilberto
Astrud Gilberto is a Brazilian samba and bossa nova singer. She is well known for the Grammy Award-winning song "The Girl from Ipanema".-Biography:...
, Sammy Davis, Jr.
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr. was an American entertainer and was also known for his impersonations of actors and other celebrities....
, Sergio Franchi
Sergio Franchi
Sergio Franchi was an Italian tenor.Franchi was born in Cremona, Italy. His father wanted him to become an electrical engineer, so he studied both music and engineering simultaneously. The family moved to South Africa in 1952, where Sergio worked part-time as a draftsman, while continuing to study...
, Rupert Holmes
Rupert Holmes
Rupert Holmes is an American-British composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape " and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980...
, Frankie Valli
Frankie Valli
Frankie Valli is an American musician, most famous as frontman of The Four Seasons. He is well-known for his unusually powerful falsetto singing voice...
, Debby Boone
Debby Boone
Deborah Anne Boone is an American singer and stage actress. She is best known for her 1977 hit, "You Light Up My Life," which spent a then record ten weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and led to her winning the Grammy Award for Best New Artist the following year...
, Andrea Bocelli
Andrea Bocelli
Andrea Bocelli, is an Italian tenor, multi-instrumentalist and classical crossover artist. Born with poor eyesight, he became blind at the age of twelve following a soccer accident....
, Russell Watson
Russell Watson
Russell Watson is an English tenor who has released singles and albums of both operatic-style and pop songs. The self-styled "People's Tenor" had been singing since he was a child, and became known after performing at a working men's club...
, Harry Connick, Jr.
Harry Connick, Jr.
Joseph Harry Fowler Connick, Jr. is an American singer, big-band leader/conductor, pianist, actor, and composer. He has sold over 25 million albums worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with...
, Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings...
, Kristen Chenowith, Blossom Dearie
Blossom Dearie
Blossom Dearie was an American jazz singer and pianist, often performing in the bebop genre and remembered for her girlish voice.-Early career:...
, and LaTanya Hall.
He played on Van Morrison
Van Morrison
Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...
's 1968 album, Astral Weeks
Astral Weeks
Astral Weeks is the second solo album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in November 1968 on Warner Bros. Records. It was Morrison's first album after Warner Bros. had been able to free him from his contract with Bang Records...
, and on November 7 and 8, 2008 joined with Morrison to play Astral Weeks in its entirety at the Hollywood Bowl
Hollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances...
in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. A vinyl LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
and CD from these concerts entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is the fifth live album recorded by Northern Irish singer/songwriter Van Morrison, and released in the US on February 24, 2009 and on February 9, 2009 in the UK...
were released in February 2009.
Jay is an original member of Rob Fisher
Rob Fisher
Rob Fisher was a British keyboardist and songwriter from Cheltenham, England, who achieved chart success as a member of Naked Eyes, and later Climie Fisher...
's Coffee Club Orchestra on Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio...
’s American Radio Company and later at City Center’s ENCORES series. Jay is also an original member of the Guys All-Star Shoe Band on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. He was the guitarist for Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte
Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...
in the early to mid 1960s, playing in venues all over the world. Jay has performed in concert with William Warfield
William Warfield
William Caesar Warfield , was an American concert bass-baritone singer and actor.-Early life and career:Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas and grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was called to serve as pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. He gave his recital debut in New York's Town...
and Earl Wild
Earl Wild
Royland Earl Wild was an American pianist widely recognized as a leading virtuoso of his generation. Harold C. Schonberg called him a "super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class". He was known as well for his transcriptions of classical music and jazz...
at the old Lewisohn Stadium
Lewisohn Stadium
Lewisohn Stadium was an amphitheater and athletic facility built on the campus of the City College of New York. It opened in 1915 and was demolished in 1973.-History:...
, at Town Hall with Andre Velis, and with Charles Bressler
Charles Bressler
Charles Bressler was an American tenor.He was born in Kingston, Pennsylvania and studied at Juilliard. He became a founding member of the New York Pro Musica, with which he toured from 1953-1963...
, playing the American premier performance of songs for tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
and guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
by William Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
and Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
.
Jay is currently playing banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
, mandolin
Mandolin
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
, and baritone ukulele
Ukulele
The ukulele, ; from ; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings....
onstage in the hit Broadway show Chicago
Chicago (musical)
Chicago is a musical set in Prohibition-era Chicago. The music is by John Kander with lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal"...
at the Ambassador Theatre
Ambassador Theatre
Ambassador Theatre can refer to:* Ambassador Theatre * Ambassador Theatre * Ambassador Theatre * Ambassadors Theatre...
.
External links
- Discography
- Pictures of albums by Harry Belafonte featuring Jay Berliner
- [ Jay Berliner at Allmusic]
- Tim Page, "Van Morrison, Re-Exploring The Mystery of His Astral Vision", The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Nov. 10, 2008, p. C01