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Since co-founding the seminal improv rock
outfit Phish in 1983, guitarist, composer, and songwriter Trey
Anastasio has explored a wide variety of musical pathways ranging
from atonal fugues and elaborate charts with Phish to adventurous
free jazz on his first solo project, Surrender to the Air (1996),
to collaborations with the likes of Tom Marshall, Les Claypool,
Philip Glass, Stewart Copeland, and others. After Phish went on
long-term hiatus in late 2000, Anastasio focused on a myriad of
projects, including Oysterhead and his eight-piece solo band.
Born Ernest Joseph Anastasio III in 1964, Anastasio attended Princeton
Day School in Princeton, NJ, where he met future songwriting partner
Tom Marshall. As a teenager, he helped his mother, Dina, write
songs for children's records. At the University of Vermont, he
teamed up with bassist Mike Gordon, drummer Jon Fishman, and guitarist
Jeff Holdsworth to form Phish. After being suspended from the
university for a semester for a prank gone awry, Anastasio transferred
to the highly experimental Goddard College outside of Burlington,
where he studied intensely with composer Ernie Stires while writing
and rehearsing Phish's complicated early material. Soon after,
Holdsworth was replaced by keyboardist Page McConnell.
Phish remained Anastasio's primary musical outlet for the duration
of the '80s and the '90s, as his original work progressed from
lengthy prog-influenced compositions, such as "You Enjoy Myself"
of the mid-'80s, to the more focused (though still complex) songs
of Rift (1993). While Phish placed more and more emphasis on group
improvisation, Anastasio's charts gradually fell by the wayside.
In 1996, he organized and produced Surrender to the Air, a big-band
free jazz excursion with Sun Ra saxman Marshall Allen, organist
John Medeski, avant-garde guitarist Marc Ribot, experimental drummer
Bob Gullotti, and many others. Though Anastasio was nominally
the leader of the project, he played as an equal member of a large
group of downtown heavyweights.
The transformation of Anastasio's work from composition-based
to improvisation-based was completed in 1997 and 1998 with The
Story of the Ghost and The Siket Disc, two Phish releases chiseled
out of hours of collective jamming overseen by producer John Siket.
Anastasio's ongoing collaboration with Tom Marshall also resulted
in a bevy of new material, far too much for Phish to assimilate
into their already gigantic live repertoire. Though Anastasio
brought some of the songs to his newly formed side trio, he still
felt he was holding back. Phish performed at a massively successful
New Year's celebration in Big Cypress, FL, and in 2000 came the
release of Farmhouse (entirely written and produced by Anastasio),
but given the band's increasingly unfocused live performances,
Phish decided to take a hiatus of an undetermined length beginning
in October of that year.
Anastasio went right to work, scoring an arrangement of the Phish
song "Guyute" (one of his last multi-sectioned compositions) for
the Vermont Youth Orchestra with mentor Ernie Stires. Following
its performance, he hit the road with a horn-bolstered version
of his side trio and almost a dozen new songs, many of which returned
to the complicated work of years past. Soon after, he wrote and
recorded an album with Oysterhead, a power trio of Anastasio along
with Primus bassist Les Claypool and former Police drummer Stewart
Copeland, beginning a new chapter in his musical history. His
time spent with Oysterhead was experimental, but not permanent.
By early 2002, Anastasio prepped for his proper solo release for
Elektra. His groovy cool self-titled album was issued that April
and Anastasio returned to the road for a string of U.S. tour dates.
The live effort Plasma appeared in April 2003, showcasing more
than two hours of performances from Anastasio's 2002 summer/fall
trek of North America. Seven brand-new tracks and a few covers
were sprinkled into the double-disc set as well. The all-instrumental
Seis de Mayo was released in April 2004, and Shine appeared in
2005.
This bio courtesy www.allmusic.com
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