BIOGRAPHY:

"Channeling Chet":

Vancouver-born trumpeter, singer and songwriter Leif Arntzen has delivered a real gem with "Channeling Chet," his concert performance and recorded tribute to the legendary singer trumpeter Chet Baker.

The product of a highly musical family, Arntzen was exposed to a unique combination of musical influences at a young age, including his clarinetist father's Dixieland jazz, his brothers' rock and roll, and the wide-open harmonies and ethereal melodies of the folk music of his family's native Scandinavia. Moving to New York to pursue his dream of playing jazz trumpet, Leif soon found himself in demand, performing with many of the city's great big bands, including a stint with the Gil Evans Orchestra.

In 1997 a very successful nightly cameo performance in a production at the Rainbow and Stars caught the attention of New York City critics, who universally compared Leif to the late jazz trumpeter/singer Chet Baker. He soon found himself singing and writing for a bewildering array of performances and recording projects, including his highly successful series of tributes to Baker, the great jazz stylist with whom Leif shares a special aesthetic sensibility, and to whose lineage critics continue to refer.

In the course of performing the Baker tributes, Leif worked with many of the finest musicians on the New York jazz scene, and eventually was able to put together a group that was not only capable of honoring his diverse set of influences, but of integrating themselves into his music, collaborating with him to create a distinctive sound and sensibility that has caused quite a stir on the famously jaded New York scene. That sound has resulted in unprecedented bookings for Mr. Arntzen, including a revelatory engagement at Birdland, the world-famous jazz club that represents a pinnacle in the jazz world.

"Channeling Chet," the group's first recording, documents the Chet Baker tribute that the band put together over the course of the first year of its existence, and which it performed to such acclaim at Birdland. Recorded in one continuous take on a rainy night in Brooklyn, Arntzen’s other-worldly voice and clarion trumpet lines are perfectly complimented by the soulful lyricism of guitarist Keith Ganz (As Is Ensemble, Sean Smith Quartet), the elemental bass of Will Woodard (Rick Hollander Quartet, Chuck Clark Little Big Band), and the perfectly attuned and always swinging drumming of Vito Lesczak (Andy Bey, John Hendrix).

"Channeling Chet" is a collection of standards associated with Baker, with the lone exception of the Arntzen-penned "Playpen," which was awarded 1st prize in the 2001 Billboard Song Contest Award. The recording functions as a seamless whole, an invocation of after-dark intimacy, of the varied shades of romance, of the beauty that a troubled world can create to shield itself.