Chris Dingman

In the creative jazz circles of twenty-first-century New York City, vibraphonist and composer Chris Dingman has earned recognition both as a bandleader and as a sought-after ensemble player. He entered the world in La Jolla, California, in 1980 and spent his childhood in San Jose before traveling east to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. There his instructors included Anthony Braxton, Jay Hoggard, and Pheeroan Ak Laff; he completed a bachelor’s degree in music in 2002. While at Wesleyan he explored musical practices from Asia, Africa, and South America and traveled to Kerala, India, to study South Indian classical music.

Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Terence Blanchard chose Dingman for the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He finished the two-year curriculum and received a Master of Music degree in 2007. That same year he relocated to New York City, where he quickly became a frequent studio and stage collaborator, contributing to projects by Steve Lehman, Ambrose Akinmusire, Harris Eisenstadt, and Gabriela Anders. In 2010 Dingman and Tyshawn Sorey shared percussion duties in the large ensemble that recorded Anthony Braxton’s opera Trillium E; New Braxton House issued the four-disc set the following year.

Dingman’s debut recording as a leader, Waking Dreams, appeared on Between Worlds Music in 2011. Conceived to be experienced “from beginning to end without pause,” the album presented original Dingman pieces together with Joe Chambers’s “Nocturnal.” The core sextet comprised trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, saxophonist Loren Stillman, pianist Fabian Almazan, bassist Joe Sanders, drummer Justin Brown, and the leader, with guitarist Ryan Ferreira, flutist Erica von Kleist, and bass clarinetist Mark Small appearing on selected tracks. Over the ensuing seasons Dingman’s group presented the Waking Dreams repertoire in New York City and at venues spanning the United States.

Following positive critical response to his first album, Dingman undertook a larger-scale work that showcased his command of extended forms. Chamber Music America commissioned the five-part suite The Subliminal and the Sublime. Drawing on journeys through the natural landscapes of the American West, Dingman devoted more than a year to composing music that would evoke nature’s smallest details as well as its sweeping vistas. The thoroughly notated score merged jazz language with ambient music and the minimalist techniques associated with Steve Reich. A sextet of Dingman, Stillman, Almazan, Ferreira, Brown, and bassist Linda Oh introduced the piece at SubCulture in New York City in November 2013; two days later the same ensemble began tracking at the Clubhouse Studio in Rhinebeck, New York. Inner Arts Initiative released The Subliminal and the Sublime in June 2015.