Top 40 as you’ve never heard it before
Sitting in a diner in Omaha, Nebraska in 1954, Todd Storz noticed that a teenage waitress selected the same song on the jukebox over and over. At that moment, Top 40 radio was born, joining the TV dinner, the Reuben sandwich, the bobby pin, and the ski lift on the list of famous and infamous inventions from the city that sits atop the Strategic Air Command. Now comes the latest invention, Omaha Diner, four storied musicians attempting to redefine a format that forever changed the way we experience music. You may love Top 40, you may hate it, you may not care about it all, but you cannot escape it....
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Top 40 as you’ve never heard it before
Sitting in a diner in Omaha, Nebraska in 1954, Todd Storz noticed that a teenage waitress selected the same song on the jukebox over and over. At that moment, Top 40 radio was born, joining the TV dinner, the Reuben sandwich, the bobby pin, and the ski lift on the list of famous and infamous inventions from the city that sits atop the Strategic Air Command. Now comes the latest invention, Omaha Diner, four storied musicians attempting to redefine a format that forever changed the way we experience music. You may love Top 40, you may hate it, you may not care about it all, but you cannot escape it.
In their combined 125 years of experience the members of Omaha Diner have worked in some capacity with an unlikely and astonishing array of artists including Aretha Franklin, Sting, John Mayer, Levon Helm, John Adams, Roswell Rudd, Linda Ronstadt, Pearl Jam, Elton John, Courtney Love, Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt, R.E.M., and others. The group has toured around the world playing rock arenas, iconic jazz clubs, Carnegie Hall, and hardscrabble Kentucky roadhouses. The Diner turns up in other places as well—author of the liner notes to Miles Davis’ In Concert record, actor on Saturday Night Live, dancer, sous-chef, and teacher.
Steven Bernstein – trumpet
New York trumpeter Steven Bernstein was music director of John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, co-leader of the trio Spanish Fly, and served as arranger and leader of the Kansas City Band (from the Robert Altman film and Verve All-Stars Tour). Bernstein arranged the Academy Award-nominated score for the film Get Shorty and has written charts for Bill Frisell, Rufus Wainwright, and Elton John, to name a few.
Charlie Hunter – seven-string electric guitar
Although his public exposure was as a member of Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy in the early ’90s, Charlie Hunter has gone on to establish himself as a world-class jazz guitarist, smoothly blending bop, funk, free jazz, and pop into a vibrant whole that updates and expands the boundaries of jazz fusion. As a bandleader, he shines in small-group settings and has collaborated with a varied roster of artists from both the jazz and pop worlds.
Bobby Previte – drums
A series of albums recorded in the late ’80s established Previte as one of the relative few jazz drummers who are also composers of significance, alongside Jack DeJohnette, Bob Moses, and a handful of others. Previte received his BA in Music from the University of Buffalo where he studied percussion with Jan Williams and moved to New York City in 1979 where he collaborated with many of the musicians who would put “downtown” on the map. Since then then Previte has composed for a variety of contexts ,from the new music aggregation Relache to his Music of the Moscow Circus album. Previte is a recipient of the 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship for composition.
Skerik – tenor saxophone
The one-named saxophone legend from Seattle is a pioneer in the a playing style that has been dubbed saxophonics. He is a founding member of Critters Buggin, Garage a Trois, and Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet. He is also an original member of both Les Claypool’s Fancy Band and Frog Brigade and has toured with and played with numerous others in a variety of genres.
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