The brilliant clarinetist and tenor saxophonist, Ken Peplowski will appear alongside bandmates Ehud Asherie on piano, Peter Washington on bass, Willie Jones III on drums, and Houston Person on tenor saxophone as the closing act for the Mainstage shows at Litchfield Jazz Festival on Saturday, July 30th in Washington, CT. Peplowski, like so many jazz stars, started performing at a very young age and would go on to build a stellar career.
Born in 1959 in the dynamic port city of Cleveland, Ohio, Peplowski’s intertest in music was cultivated early in his life by his father. A police officer and an amateur musician on the side, Peplowski’s father had a crack at a variety of instruments but failed to master any particular one. These rejected instruments would find new companionship with the young Peplowski brothers; his brother Ted would gravitate to the trumpet and Ken to the clarinet. As it happens both boys had musical aptitude.
Ken Peplowski
By the time they were around 12 years old, their father had them form a polka band called the Harmony Kings and hire out weddings and other gigs. Peplowski described this sudden push toward live performance as, “…exactly like if you wanted to learn how to swim by being thrown into the water. We [had] to progress, because we all of a sudden find ourselves having to play these jobs” (Lee Mergner, jazztimes.com, 2019). By the time the brothers were in high school, Ken began experimenting more with jazz while performing with their school’s stage bands and other local musicians. Ken would even start teaching at his local music store, mastering his saxophone and clarinet. Later, he studied at Cleveland State for two years. Here he would begin performing in the big leagues. He had the opportunity to perform alongside Teddy Wilson’s trio and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra under the direction of Buddy Morrow with whom he toured from 1978-1980 when he moved to New York at the age of 21 to work freelance.
There, Peplowski would work with top pros, most notably Benny Goodman and Carl Jefferson, and record some 20 albums as a leader with Concord Records over a decade. These include his debut album, 1988’s Double Exposure and 1992’s The Natural Touch which was awarded Best Jazz Record of the Year by the Prises Deutschen Schallplatten Kritiken. This success led to his touring throughout Asia, Europe, and the US and still making time to headline gigs like the Hollywood Bowl and the Newport Jazz Festival. In this busy period, he also recorded as a sideman, and sometimes as a leader, with musicians like the Eddie Higgins Quintet, Bobby Short, Shelly Berg, Jay Leonhart, and Joe La Barbera.
Peplowski went on to succeed exponentially with his music. In total, he would record 70+ CDs as a soloist and some 400 as a sideman over the course of his career. He would go on to play on the soundtracks to Woody Allen movies, become music director for interactive French and Italian cookbooks, and become director for the Sarasota Jazz Festival, the Newport Beach Jazz Party, and the Newport, Oregon Jazz Festival, and won many awards for his work.
Ken Peplowski is widely regarded as the greatest living jazz clarinetist. He has gone above and beyond to become one of the premiere modern performers in the jazz world and a true master of the clarinet and saxophone. Today, at 63, Peplowski can be found most often teaching workshops for students of all ages, directing and performing in jazz festivals around the globe, or recording albums like the 2019 duet Counterpoint (Arbors Records) with Dick Hyman.
Visit Litchfield Jazz Festival’s website at www.litchfieldjazzfest.com to learn more about the performances in store July 29-31. To purchase tickets to see Ken Peplowski perform at 5:15 pm, along with the whole July 30th Litchfield Jazz Fest Saturday lineup, and share an Artist Talk at 2:25 pm with fellow saxophonist Albert Rivera, be sure to click: ljf2022.eventbrite.com. Saturday mainstage performances are all in the Tisch Family Auditorium in the Perakos Art and Community Center at the Frederick Gunn School, Washington, CT.