Who is Walter Blanding?
Walter Blanding Jr. (born August 14, 1971, Cleveland) is an American jazz saxophonist and clarinetist. Blanding grew up in a musical family in New York City; both his parents played in the house band at the New York jazz club Village Gate, and Blanding played with them as a teenager. He studied under Barry Harris and went to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School. He was a member of the group Tough Young Tenors, who recorded an album in 1991, and lived for several years in Israel in the mid-1990s. After returning he became a member of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and was involved with live performances of Wynton Marsalis's Blood on the Fields. Blanding has performed or recorded with Farid Barron, the Count Basie Orchestra, Cab Calloway, Wycliffe Gordon, Rodney Green, Roy Hargrove, The Harper Brothers, Louis Hayes, Illinois Jacquet, Ryan Kisor, Odean Pope, Eric Reed, Marcus Roberts, and Rodney Whitaker.
