Norman Salant - Biography

Artists grow, artists change. That's been the hallmark of Norman Salant's life and career. During his period as a saxophonist/instrumentalist, it was easy to map the stages of growth and change as he moved from project to project, staking out a new territory, exploring it, developing it, realizing it, and moving on. Seen in that light, songwriting is one more stage in the career path of an artist. But seen in another light, songwriting has always been an underlying thread since the beginning, even before the saxophone.

Throughout his saxophone career, he would periodically go on hiatus, pull back, recharge, take stock, then venture out again. Each time he would turn to songwriting to fill in those gaps. In San Francisco he spent time with the disenfranchised Mission-based poets that gathered around Kush's Cloud House on 16th Street, soaking up the influence of the writers there: Kush himself, Dennis Dunn, Steve Abbott, Anthony Vaughan, Jack Micheline. Becoming a member of Andrew Shulman's Berkeley band Deakin and contributing songs to that effort was another step. But when he founded his first signature band in San Francisco, the Norman Salant Group, it was an entirely instrumental effort.

By the end of that band's run, a couple of vocal songs had found their way into the repertoire. This was followed by a short-lived collaboration with a pair of producers and Cal Arts graduates, electronic artists Roy Sablosky and Gregory Jones, in a project that merged electronic music, dance grooves and pop structures with vocals and lyrics. This was followed by a further move in that direction -- a collaboration with former Parliament-Funkadelic/Bride of Funkenstein singer Lynn Mabry, who had recently finished a stint with Talking Heads on the Stop Making Sense tour, producing along with New York impressario Joel Weber and P-Funk's Bernie Worrell nearly an album's worth of bright, intelligent, joyful and slightly subversive dance pop, a marriage of saxophone orchestra studio effects, electronic grooves and r&b soul.

At which point, he relocated to NYC and returned to serious sax art for a fairly long stretch.

In 1998, needing a break, he picked up songwriting again. But something had changed. After years of working in a nonverbal form, and with a lifetime's worth of ups and downs to draw upon, the opportunity to put that experience into words proved seductive. As it went on, the writing went further and the songs got more involved, reflecting his sense that there was much more that needed to be said and so many ways to say it. As the songs began to come faster, he surrounded himself with other songwriters, immersing himself in the culture, first in workshops sponsored by the nonprofit arts organization The Field, later at the East Houston Street apartment of stalwart Jack Hardy with his weekly NY Songwriter's Exchange, where he could absorb vociferous and often cantankerous points of view on the nature of songwriting from Jack, David Massengill, Suzanne Vega, Bruce Balmer, John Hodel, Frank Tedesso, Tim Robinson, Dawn Landes, Noelle Jones...

The songs were an attempt to give face to the elements of life that moved him most, the good, the bad, the sweet, the painful, the real, the unreal, truth, illusion, beginnings, ends, the insight that we can live better and be better as we achieve a greater understanding of things. Now eight years in, the songs are still coming and the saxes are still waiting for his return.

The songs are for today, melodious, beautiful, intricate and subtle, with lyrical wordplay, large themes, honest, exacting, abstract and poetic all at once; deceptively simple songs that often don't reveal their complexity until you've played them yourself. Songs that read differently than they sound, containing all of the music he has gathered, heard, created, played, absorbed along the way from there to here. Pop songwriting, yes, and a radically different kind of songwriting than one is likely to have heard today or yesterday.

When Norman Salant left the music business in 1998, he admits that he did not expect to return to public view. Realizing that it was the creation process that was his prime motivation, and with no desire to deal with the culture of the industry or any of what it entailed, he turned away from the public arena. But he continued to write, and as things have developed there is now a large body of work that has gone pretty much unheard by anyone, more than a hundred songs making up a substantial catalog, ready and waiting.

After testing the waters at some of his early Salons he gave a first public performance as songwriter/singer at an independently co-produced concert with friend and mentor, fellow songwriter Frank Tedesso at a small midtown theater. Accompanied by guitarist Bruce Balmer, that performance was followed by a solo loft concert two months later -- again, advertised by word of mouth, staying under the radar. Aside from a few small featured appearances at various acoustic events around the city such as the Living Room, Mickey's Blue Room (R.I.P.) and the like, several showcases sponsored by The Field (at the Here Arts Center and Dance Theater Workshop), and the original warm-up set at the former C-Note... those have been the only formal concerts in New York thus far. In the summer there have been several shows in home-away-from-home Vermont -- Middlebury and Burlington -- but that's been about it.

Getting the songs recorded has begun, with stripped down guitar/voice versions of six songs completed last year at Reed Robins' MacIntyre Music studio on Broadway. These can be heard here on this website, as well as at myspace.com/normansalant.

Also choreographer collaborator Laura Schandelmeier has set several recent pieces to songs of his (July, Riding Horses On The Moon), and a few music artists have begun to record and perform some of his songs as well.

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	Artists grow, artists change. That's been the hallmark of Norman Salant's life and career. During his period as a saxophonist/instrumentalist, it was easy to map the stages of growth and change as he moved from project to project, staking out a new territory, exploring it, developing it, realizing it, and moving on. Seen in that light, songwriting is one more stage in the career path of an artist. But seen in another light, songwriting has always been an underlying thread since the beginning, even before the saxophone. Throughout his saxophone career, he would periodically go on hiatus, pull back, recharge, take stock, then venture out again. Each time he would turn to songwriting to fill in those gaps. In San Francisco he spent time with the disenfranchised Mission-based poets that gathered around Kush's Cloud House on 16th Street, soaking up the influence of the writers there: Kush himself, Dennis Dunn, Steve Abbott, Anthony Vaughan, Jack Micheline. Becoming a member of Andrew Shulman's Berkeley band Deakin and contributing songs to that effort was another step. But when he founded his first signature band in San Francisco, the Norman Salant Group, it was an entirely instrumental effort. By the end of that band's run, a couple of vocal songs had found their way into the repertoire. This was followed by a short-lived collaboration with a pair of producers and Cal Arts graduates, electronic artists Roy Sablosky and Gregory Jones, in a project that merged electronic music, dance grooves and pop structures with vocals and lyrics. This was followed by a further move in that direction -- a collaboration with former Parliament-Funkadelic/Bride of Funkenstein singer Lynn Mabry, who had recently finished a stint with Talking Heads on the Stop Making Sense tour, producing along with New York impressario Joel Weber and P-Funk's Bernie Worrell nearly an album's worth of bright, intelligent, joyful and slightly subversive dance pop, a marriage of saxophone orchestra studio effects, electronic grooves and r&b soul. At which point, he relocated to NYC and returned to serious sax art for a fairly long stretch. In 1998, needing a break, he picked up songwriting again. But something had changed. After years of working in a nonverbal form, and with a lifetime's worth of ups and downs to draw upon, the opportunity to put that experience into words proved seductive. As it went on, the writing went further and the songs got more involved, reflecting his sense that there was much more that needed to be said and so many ways to say it. As the songs began to come faster, he surrounded himself with other songwriters, immersing himself in the culture, first in workshops sponsored by the nonprofit arts organization The Field, later at the East Houston Street apartment of stalwart Jack Hardy with his weekly NY Songwriter's Exchange, where he could absorb vociferous and often cantankerous points of view on the nature of songwriting from Jack, David Massengill, Suzanne Vega, Bruce Balmer, John Hodel, Frank Tedesso, Tim Robinson, Dawn Landes, Noelle Jones... The songs were an attempt to give face to the elements of life that moved him most, the good, the bad, the sweet, the painful, the real, the unreal, truth, illusion, beginnings, ends, the insight that we can live better and be better as we achieve a greater understanding of things. Now eight years in, the songs are still coming and the saxes are still waiting for his return. The songs are for today, melodious, beautiful, intricate and subtle, with lyrical wordplay, large themes, honest, exacting, abstract and poetic all at once; deceptively simple songs that often don't reveal their complexity until you've played them yourself. Songs that read differently than they sound, containing all of the music he has gathered, heard, created, played, absorbed along the way from there to here. Pop songwriting, yes, and a radically different kind of songwriting than one is likely to have heard today or yesterday. When Norman Salant left the music business in 1998, he admits that he did not expect to return to public view. Realizing that it was the creation process that was his prime motivation, and with no desire to deal with the culture of the industry or any of what it entailed, he turned away from the public arena. But he continued to write, and as things have developed there is now a large body of work that has gone pretty much unheard by anyone, more than a hundred songs making up a substantial catalog, ready and waiting. After testing the waters at some of his early Salons he gave a first public performance as songwriter/singer at an independently co-produced concert with friend and mentor, fellow songwriter Frank Tedesso at a small midtown theater. Accompanied by guitarist Bruce Balmer, that performance was followed by a solo loft concert two months later -- again, advertised by word of mouth, staying under the radar. Aside from a few small featured appearances at various acoustic events around the city such as the Living Room, Mickey's Blue Room (R.I.P.) and the like, several showcases sponsored by The Field (at the Here Arts Center and Dance Theater Workshop), and the original warm-up set at the former C-Note... those have been the only formal concerts in New York thus far. In the summer there have been several shows in home-away-from-home Vermont -- Middlebury and Burlington -- but that's been about it. Getting the songs recorded has begun, with stripped down guitar/voice versions of six songs completed last year at Reed Robins' MacIntyre Music studio on Broadway. These can be heard here on this website, as well as at myspace.com/normansalant. Also choreographer collaborator Laura Schandelmeier has set several recent pieces to songs of his (July, Riding Horses On The Moon), and a few music artists have begun to record and perform some of his songs as well.
	For upcoming shows or booking information, please contact: Norman Salant nnsalant@yahoo.com
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