Anthony Ortega (musician)

Anthony Robert "Tony" Ortega (June 7, 1928 – October 30, 2022)^[1] was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, and flautist.

Ortega was born in Los Angeles. He began to play the saxophone at age 14 and studied the instrument under Lloyd Reese.^[2]A year after starting alto saxophone, he took up the clarinet.^[3] Ortega`s bandmate in Lloyd Reese`s practice orchestra included another Reese pupil, Eric Dolphy.^[4] He was heavily-influenced by and introduced to musicians by his cousin, Ray Vasquez.^[5]

In 1947, Ortega played with Earle Spencer. From 1948 to 1951, he served in the United States Army. He became a member of Lionel Hampton's group (whose members included Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Art Farmer, Quincy Jones and Jimmy Cleveland), which toured Europe; while there he also recorded with Gryce, Farmer, and Milt Buckner.^[2] After the tour was over in 1953, he left the band and worked around the eastern U.S. with Milt Buckner.^[3]

In 1954 he went to Norway and formed a group with Norwegian players while in Oslo. The Swedish jazz magazine ESTRAD credited him for stimulating the jazz movement in the country.^[3] He also met his future wife, pianist and vibraphonist Mona Ørbeck, at the Penguin jazz club in Oslo; they married later that year.^[2]

Upon his return to southern California, he put a band together consisting of Carl Perkins, Monk Montgomery and Chuck Thomson and worked briefly in Los Angeles, but relocated to New York City in late 1955 after touring with organist Louis Rivera. There he recorded with Nat Pierce, Quincy Jones, Ernie Wilkins, Dinah Washington, Johnny Hartman, Billy Taylor, Herbie Mann and Maynard Ferguson. He also worked with Claude Thornhill, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Clifford Brown and Elliot Lawrence.^[3] In 1958, he returned to Los Angeles, where he worked with Paul Bley, Claude Williamson, and the Lighthouse All Stars.

In the 1960s, he played mostly in the Southwest and California, and worked on film soundtracks such as The Pawnbroker (1964).^[6] Ortega recorded the soundtrack for the movie Gloria (1980) starring Gena Rowlands. He can be heard playing throughout the movie with Tommy Tedesco on guitar.

He worked with Don Ellis and Gerald Wilson in 1965 and with Lalo Schifrin in 1968. In the early-1970s, he toured internationally with Quincy Jones and continued working with Wilson into the 1980s. He toured and recorded in Paris several times in the 1990s. As of October 2021, he was still performing actively at Mr. Peabody's in Encinitas, California.^[7][8]

• A Man and His Horns (1956)
• Chamber Music for Moderns with the Nat Pierce Quintet (Coral, 1957)
• Jazz for Young Moderns (And Old Buzzards, Too) (Bethlehem, 1958?)
• New Dance (Revelation, 1967)
• Permutations (Revelation, 1968)
• A Delanto (Jazz Chronicles, 1976)
• Rain Dance (Discovery, 1978)
• On Evidence (Evidence, 1992)
• Neuf (Evidence, 1996)
• Bonjour (Harmonia Mundi, 2001)
• Scattered Clouds (hatOLOGY, 2001)
• Afternoon in Paris (hatOLOGY, 2007)

• Anthony Ortega discography at Discogs
• Anthony Ortega at IMDb