Profile
Long Bio
“The score’s irresistible energy seemed to come from everywhere: classical forms, jazz harmonies, and Arvo Pärt-like meditativeness, were all on tap, and the last bars were pure Romanticism.”
—Allan Kozinn, New York Times (review of Piano Trio No. 1 at MoMA’s Summergarden)
Recently awarded the prestigious Seattle Commissioning Club’s 2013 Commission, New York and Paris-based composer and saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli has been active in jazz and classical music since 1990. Zimmerli’s Modern Music for two pianos was premiered at Carnegie Hall in March 2011 by Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays. A CD featuring that and other compositions, written, arranged, and produced by Zimmerli, has just been released on Nonesuch Records, to acclaim in the New York Times and elsewhere.
Zimmerli has recently teamed up with saxophonist Joshua Redman for an evening-length work for saxophone, string quartet, bass and percussion. The work, which will feature bassist Larry Grenadier, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, and the Escher String Quartet, will be premiered at London’s Wigmore Hall in Fall 2013.
Redman has also asked Zimmerli to write for his new saxophone quartet featuring Chris Potter, Mark Turner, and Chris Cheek; the ensemble will debut at Paris’ Cite de la Musique in June 2012. Other current commissions include a Quintet for Saxophone, Violin, Viola, and Cello for saxophonist Robert Carom, violinist Scott Yoo, and the Festival Mozaic in 2012, and a work for solo cello inspired by the Kol Nidre, to be premiered in Fall of 2012 by Cleveland Orchestra cellist Brian Thornton.
A prolific composer and producer with 7 CDs to his credit, Zimmerli recently completed a seven-movement Quintet for Piano, Strings and Jazz Percussion for the Festival Mozaic in California and his Festival Overture for Orchestra, a commission from the Colorado Music Festival. Zimmerli’s catalogue also includes a 30-minute Chamber Symphony written for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; two four-movement Piano Trios, written for the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and released on Arabesque Recordings; and two four-movement Piano Concertos with jazz percussion, written for the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra.
Zimmerli wrote a large-scale solo violin piece for Timothy Fain, who premiered it in New York in early 2007 and has since performed it at festivals throughout the US and recorded it for the Naxos label. He also composed and arranged eight pieces for cello, piano, percussion, and electronics for cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper’s CD Stone & Steel, released on the Koch Label.
In 2005 Zimmerli began a concert series, entitled Emergence, dedicated to the creation and performance of new work. The series featured his 9-piece ensemble and each concert featured special guests from the classical, jazz, and electronic music communities. From 2005-2008 there were 17 performances and over 30 premieres, including excerpts from Zimmerli’s opera-in-progress Lucia, at venues such as the Jazz Standard, Makor, Arium, and at Columbia University in New York.
Zimmerli won the first annual Colorado Music Festival CLICK People’s Commission, a competition for an orchestral commission wherein the festivalgoers themselves voted for the commissionee from among four finalists. Other recent commissions include a multimedia orchestral piece with video inspired by architecture for the Colorado College Summer Music Festival’s 25th Anniversary Season in 2009, and a Trio for flute viola and harp for the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music in 2010. Zimmerli has also been commissioned by the Ying String Quartet, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and the Belgian jazz octet Octurn, for whom Zimmerli wrote an hour-length suite, supported by an American Composers’ Forum Composers Commissioning Program grant.
Zimmerli’s Piano Trios were released in August 2004 on the Arabesque label. His ensemble CD, Phoenix, was released on Songlines in June 2005. Excerpts from his Narratives for Solo Piano are scheduled to be recorded by Adam Neiman for the Arabesque label. Zimmerli’s work has also been recorded on the Blue Note, Antilles, Jazz City, and Naive labels, and he has written extensively for radio, TV, and film.
As a jazz saxophonist, Zimmerli has worked with many of his generation’s luminaries, including Brad Mehldau, Ethan Iverson and Reid Anderson of the Bad Plus, Larry Grenadier, Ben Monder, Scott Colley, Bill Stewart, John Hollenbeck, and Jeff Ballard, as well as bandleaders Mike Stern, Joey Baron, Mark Dresser, Thelonious Monk, Jr., Don Sickler, and Jeff Williams.
From 2002-2005 Zimmerli served as Composer in Residence with the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra. His music has been performed at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, on NPR’s Fresh Sounds, and at the Jazz Composers’ Collective. Awards include first prize in the first annual BMI/Thelonious Monk Institute Composers’ Competition. Zimmerli teaches at Sciences Po in Paris and at Columbia University in New York, where he earned a BA in 1990, an MPhil in 1996 and a DMA in 2000 in Music Composition under Fred Lerdahl. He attended high school in West Hartford, CT, where he was the youngest-ever winner of the Downbeat Young Jazz Awards in 1985 and 1986.