Paul McCandless

Biography

Paul Brownlee McCandless Jr. was born into a musical family. His father taught him clarinet, his mother piano, and he attended the Manhattan School of Music. In 1971 he auditioned with the New York Philharmonic playing English horn and was a finalist.

McCandless has released a series of records of his own compositions with bands he led, including All the Mornings Bring (Elektra/Asylum, 1978), Heresay (Windham Hill, 1988), Navigator (Landslide, 1981), and Premonition (Windham Hill, 1992). With Oregon, he has recorded 28 albums and CDs, in addition to 7 records and CDs with Paul Winter.

In 1996, McCandless won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He also won Grammys in 2007 and 2011 with the Paul Winter Consort, for Best New Age Album, and in 1993 for Al Jarreau's album Heaven and Earth. His performance on Oregon's album 1000 Kilometers was nominated for a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo in 2009. He won the Down Beat Critics' Poll for Best Established Combo, the Deutscher Schallplatten Preis for his albums Ectopia, and the Arbeitskreis Jazz im Bundesverband der Phonographishen Wirtschaft Gold Record Award.

In 1985, McCandless toured Europe with bassist Barre Phillips and German clarinetist Theo Jörgensmann. He has been a guest musician with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, appearing on the 2002 album Live at the Quick, and has toured with tabla artist Sandip Burman. He also was a guest of Leftover Salmon and The String Cheese Incident multiple times in the late 1990s. He has appeared on stage in duets with pianist Art Lande, with whom he recorded the album Skylight. Since 2013 he has been playing regularly in Europe with the Samo Salamon Bassless Trio.

McCandless is active in the classical music world. As an orchestral soloist, he has performed with the Camerata Chamber Orchestra of Mexico City, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. Three of Paul's orchestral scores are heard on a CD called Oregon in Moscow. One of these, called "Round Robin," the opening track, received 2001 Grammy nominations for Best Instrumental Composition and Best Instrumental Arrangement.

In 2014, McCandless began performing with Charged Particles a jazz trio based in San Francisco, including opening the 2015 San Luis Obispo Jazz Festival with them on the main stage and headlining at the Stanford Jazz Festival. The quartet has also appeared at Birdland (in NYC), Blues Alley (in Washington, DC), Yoshi's Jazz Club, The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, The Dakota Jazz Club, and an array of other venues throughout the U.S. In 2017, McCandless and Charged Particles did a ten-day tour of Indonesia, performing at the Motion Blue Jazz Club (Jakarta), Jazz Centrum (Surabaya), the Jazz Gunung Bromo Festival (on Mount Bromo) and elsewhere.

Reception

The London Telegraph called McCandless's contribution to The Great Jubilee Concert "remarkable". Said Jazz Journal, "Paul McCandless delivered terrific, beautifully modulated solos on both oboe and soprano."

The Washington Post called McCandless a "stellar player" who plays "sparkling harmonic cascades."

Awards

Solo

As sideman

With Paul Winter Consort

With Oregon on Vanguard

on Elektra

on ECM

on Intuition

on CAM Jazz

With Paul Winter

With Art Lande

With Béla Fleck

With Béla Fleck and the Flecktones

With Andrea Pellegrini

With Comotion

With Pierluigi Balducci

With others

As composer