| Spyro Gyra To the members of Spyro Gyra, a mainstay of the contemporary jazz scene since the mid 1970s, the band?s longevity is no great mystery. ?You know, this music isn?t about the latest style,? says founder/saxophonist/producer Jay Beckenstein. ?It?s about people who spend a long time perfecting a craft. Following fashions is what puts an expiration date on you as an artist.? Born in Brooklyn, Jay Beckenstein grew up listening to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie albums and started playing the saxophone at age seven. Beckenstein attended the University at Buffalo and started out as a biology major before changing to music performance. During summer breaks, he and an old high school friend, keyboardist Jeremy Wall, played gigs together back on Long Island. Wall attended college in California, and after both graduated, Beckenstein stayed in Buffalo for its thriving music scene where Wall eventually joined him. This band, whose odd name has since become world famous, was born simply as ?Tuesday Night Jazz Jams? when Beckenstein and Wall were joined by a rotating cast of characters. Tuesday just happened to be when they had the night off from playing music that paid their bills. Keyboardist Tom Schuman began sitting in when he was only sixteen years old. The assemblage?s growing popularity, combined with the purchase of a new sign for the club, prompted the owner to insist that Beckenstein come up with a name for his band. ?It was a joke when I said ?spirogyra,? he misspelled it and here we are thirty years later. In retrospect, it?s okay. In a way, it sounds like what we do - it sounds like motion and energy.? In their earliest days, Spyro Gyra took their cues from Weather Report and Return to Forever - bands whose creative flights were fueled by a willingness to do things that had never been done before. ?I believed that we were springing from what Weather Report did,? says Beckenstein. ?I never thought in commercial terms. I just thought they were the next step in the evolution of jazz, and that we would be part of it.?
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