Four-time Grammy Award Winner Stanley Clarke has attained “living legend” status during his over 40-year career as a bass virtuoso. He is the first bassist in history who doubles on acoustic and electric bass with equal ferocity and the first jazz-fusion bassist ever to headline tours, selling out shows worldwide. A veteran of over 40 albums, he won the 2011 Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy Award for The Stanley Clarke Band. Clarke co-founded the seminal fusion group Return to Forever with Chick Corea and Lenny White. In 2012 Return to Forever won a Grammy Award and Latin Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Forever.
Clarke’s newest CD, The Stanley Clarke Band: UP, will be released on Mack Avenue Records September 30. Entirely produced by Clarke, he considers UP to be the most energetic, fun, rhythmic and upbeat album that he has ever done. Unlike his predominant acoustic bass work on the last few albums, UP is almost equal electric and acoustic bass. He revisits one of his classic recordings, the bass anthem “School Days.”
Clarke’s creativity has been recognized and rewarded in every way imaginable: gold and platinum records, Grammy Awards, Emmy nominations, virtually every readers and critics poll in existence, and more. He was Rolling Stone’s very first Jazzman of the Year and bassist winner of Playboy’s Music Award for ten straight years. Clarke was honored with Bass Player Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of Guitar Player Magazine’s “Gallery of Greats.” In 2004 he was featured in Los Angeles Magazine as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People. He was honored with the key to the city of Philadelphia and put his hands in cement as a 1999 inductee into Hollywood’s “Rock Walk” on Sunset Boulevard. In 2011 he was honored with the highly prestigious Miles Davis Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival for his entire body of work. Most recently Clarke won the 2013 Downbeat Magazine’s Reader’s and Critic’s Poll for Best Electric Bass Player.
An accomplished film and TV composer of over 65 projects, his credits include Boyz N The Hood, the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, Romeo Must Die, The Transporter and most recently the 2013 blockbuster, Best Man Holiday. He has garnered three Emmy Nominations and a BMI Award for his scoring. In 2014 Clarke was invited to become a member of the exclusive Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
Born in Philadelphia, Clarke has been a constant force of nature in American music since the early 1970s with the success of the jazz-fusion group Return To Forever. That accomplishment gave way to a number of extremely successful solo albums for Clarke. Along the way, he has collaborated with Quincy Jones, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, The Police, Herbie Hancock and many more, and has shared the stage with Bob Marley and Miles Davis.
Clarke heads his own record label, Roxboro Entertainment Group. Five artists were chosen for its first releases; Lloyd Gregory, Sunnie Paxson, Ruslan Sirota, Kennard Ramsey and 16-year-old jazz piano prodigy Beka Gochiashvili from Tbilisi, Georgia (formerly a part of Russia).
Clarke believes in giving back to help young musicians hone their skills. He and his wife Sofia established The Stanley Clarke Foundation thirteen years ago as a charitable organization, which offers scholarships to talented young musicians each year.