My diverse ensembles (Five Agents, Rhapsodalia, String Trio Plus One and others) have included Michaël Attias, Sam Bardfeld, Andy Biskin, Charlie Burnham, Sean Conly, Charlie Giordano, Alex Harding, John Hebert, Kevin Norton, Meg Okura, Heather Paauwe, Dave Phillips, Nate Radley, Marlene Rice, Beth Schenck, George Schuller, Yousif Sheronick, Take Toriyama, Doug Wieselman and others.
Influences
My music is influenced mostly by the eclectic and exciting mix of people and cultures that I live with in New York City — but also very much by the work of (in no particular order) Johnnie To, Don Cherry, AR Rahman, Tsiu Hark, Marcella Hazan, Jet Li, FJ Haydn, Hung Yan-Yan, Carla Bley, Lau Kar Leung, WA Mozart, Timbaland, Franz Schubert, Alfred Hitchcock, JS Bach, Farah Khan, Roswell Rudd, Julio Cortázar, Henry Threadgill, Jay Chou, William C.C. Chen, Jordi Savall, Wong Kar-Wai, Italo Calvino, Eric Dolphy, Sergiu Celibidache, Astor Piazzolla, Jack Teagarden, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Willem Breuker Kollektief and more.
Sounds Like
...how I feel in a movie theater; the way I cook in my kitchen; a bridge across time and the world; a cosmopolitan cafe/art music from an unknown land; the things that make me feel something...
Or as other people have said:
"...[Barcelona in 48 Hours] is an intriguing tone poem that repays repeated listening.... Ratliff’s method of theme and reiterations (rather than variations) recalls Gato Barbieri’s soundtrack for Last Tango in Paris." --John Walters, The Guardian
"...composer-brassmeister-accordionist Ratliff has fashioned a little quintet that sustains its tenderness and agility while still blowing like Vesuvius. Factor in the gypsy strain that arrives via the Far East and you've got singularity, too." --Jim Macnie, Village Voice
"...colorful, stylistically eclectic and humor-filled... this is tightly arranged stuff... give the group credit for playing the charts with a verve and spontaneous feel that enlivens them even further." --Harvey Pekar, Jazz Times
"This ensemble achieves a wonderfully large sound for a quintet, in the manner of the grand old Mingus groups where the whole was always greater than the sum of the parts.... A great disc." --Robert Spencer, Cadence
"Think Fiddler on the Roof meets The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and you may get a tiny grasp of what this music is all about." --Benji Knudsen, The Vermont Review
"...spirited ensemble work and eloquent soloing.... Ratliff is superb, smoldering and energising, but both Michael Attias on alto and Sam Bardfeld’s violin are just as vital, injecting a further wildness to the music.... altogether an unexpected pleasure...." --Paul Donnelly, EJazzNews.com
"...fetching, globe-trotting, and insatiably romantic, [Barcelona in 48 Hours] entrances within seconds, begs you to get involved, and ages with grace.... The mixture of styles and instruments is unconventional to say the least, and Ratliff’s compositions have a persistently magnetic quality." --Nils Jacobson, AllAboutJazz.com
“Ratliff is a well-accomplished musician no matter what instrument he’s handling...and always brilliantly. As a composer he is able to fashion an exceedingly great number of singular sounds.... His deft handling of line, balance and color is exceptional. It’s obvious all of the band members truly understand the musical conception of each piece and really commit themselves to its fullest performance." --Dr. Thomas Erdmann, JazzReview.com
[Ratliff] is all over the map, the same map that Carla Bley, Phillip Johnston, John Lurie, Steven Bernstein and the Kamikaze Ground Crew use. Bits of tango, polka, old big band jazz, Latin rhythms, Charles Ives, turn-of-the-century salon music, rock & roll, R&B, Stravinsky are all used in a daffy yet genially coherent tapestry." --Mark Keresman, JazzReview.com
Edward Ratliff is a New York City-based composer and multi-instrumentalist (trumpet, cornet, trombone, euphonium and accordion). He has been called "a wonderfully spunky and imperturbable trumpet player" (The New York Times) and "a fine musician who possesses a clever and crafty compositional pen" (AllAboutJazz.com).
His music has been heard on a wide variety of programs presented by HBO, Nickelodeon, the Discovery Channel, ABC Family, MTV, VH1 and more — everything from a biography of Dostoyevsky to Real Sex Xtra. He is very interesting in licensing his music for broadcast, cable, film, dance or theater, as well as creating new music for projects. Please email edward for information.
Ratliff and his bands have appeared at festivals including the JVC Jazz Festival New York, Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival New York, MODAFE (Seoul), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), SommerSzene Salzburg (Austria), the Improvisation Festival/NY, Knitting Factory "What is Jazz?" Festival, and at theaters, clubs and other venues throughout New York City, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Whitney Museum, Dance Theater Workshop, Barbès and Performance Space 122.
For a complete bio, press info and to purchase CDs, please visit edwardratliff.com.
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