Paul McCandless


Paul Brownlee McCandless Jr. is an American multi-instrumentalist and founding member of the American jazz group Oregon. He is one of few jazz oboists. He also plays bass clarinet, English horn, and soprano saxophone.

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, Navigator, Heresay, Premonition. With Oregon, he has recorded over twenty albums, as well as several albums 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 album 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 1999 album Greatest Hits of the 20th Century and the 2002 album Live at the Quick, and has toured with tabla musician Sandip Burman. He was a guest of Leftover Salmon and The String Cheese Incident 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 classical music. 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 the album Oregon in Moscow. "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 and headlining at the Stanford Jazz Festival. The quartet has appeared at Birdland, Blues Alley, Yoshi's Jazz Club, The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, The Dakota Jazz Club, and 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, Jazz Centrum, and the Jazz Gunung Bromo Festival

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 and honors

As leader

With Oregon
With Pierluigi Balducci
With Suzanne Ciani
With Alex De Grassi
With Béla Fleck
With David Friesen
With Tony Furtado
With Steven Halpern
With Mark Isham
With Peter Kater
With Nguyen Le
With Michael Manring
With Jaco Pastorius
With Fred Simon
With Paul Winter
With others'