Legendary 4-time Grammy-winning, 11- times Grammy nominated record producer/musician/songwriter/composer Larry Klein has produced or played on some
of the most important pop and jazz albums of the past decades. His work encompasses producing highly regarded albums such as Herbie Hancock’s 2007 Album Of The Year winning “River, The Joni Letters”, the first jazz recording to win that Grammy award since the Getz/Gilberto Bossa Nova classic in 1964. Other important recordings are “Turbulent Indigo,”by Joni Mitchell, the Grammy award winning Pop Album Of The Year in 1994, and Tracy Chapman’s last critically applauded and Grammy-nominated album “Our Bright Future.” As a bass player, Klein has performed and recorded with such iconic jazz greats as Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson, and Carmen McRae. He has also contributed to many important pop albums with artists such as Robbie Robertson, Don Henley, Lindsey Buckingham, Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel, Bryan Adams, Aaron Neville, the British pop group Talk Talk, and many more. In the last few years Klein has produced Chinese virtuoso pianist Lang Lang on an ambitious album called New York Rhapsody, which braided together classical and orchestral, hip-hop and pop elements, and featured vocalists such as actor Jeffrey Wright, Jason Isbell, Andra Day, and Madeleine Peyroux, as well as performances by Herbie Hancock.
Klein has written songs with artists such as Warren Zevon, Bonnie Raitt, and Joni Mitchell, and has produced and written many songs for film, including songs and the underscore for the Martin Scorsese produced/ Allison Anders directed film “Grace Of My Heart,” which featured the Academy Award nominated Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach song “God Give Me Strength”. One of his earliest bass-playing jobs in film was to play on the score for Scorsese’s classic film “Raging Bull”.
An insatiable and eclectic musical curiosity has led Klein to collaborate with such artists as Portugal’s premier fado singer Ana Moura on her groundbreaking Portuguese hit fado album “Desfado,” as well as acclaimed Norwegian alt-pop singer and songwriter Thomas Dybdahl, with whom he has made two critically acclaimed albums.
In the last several months Larry Klein produced the just-released Bossa Nova informed Melody Gardot album titled “Sunset In The Blue” for Decca UK, and is now working on a new Thomas Dybdahl album as well as a new album by jazz artist Lizz Wright, which will be the second album that they have made together. He continues to be drawn to working with a broad array of artists, traversing from jazz to pop to soul to classical music, as well as everything in the cracks between.
