Sax Solo Artist

Sax and the city: Jazzman Warner steeped in NYC scene
By Kate Shanaphy Maingot

When Greg Warner plays he can sweep his listeners back to the days when the saxophone’s warm sounds were all the rage. Legendary players such as Stan Getz or Zoot Sims profoundly influenced Warner,
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Warner played with many prominent American jazzmen starting from young age. He recalls as a boy listening to guitarist Remo Palmieri, and himself beginning to learn to play guitar at 7. As a teen, Greg Warner resisted rock music in favor of the more sophisticated soloing and harmonies that came from the generation before his, the great standards and jazz compositions of the 1940s and ’50s.

Pursuing his jazz interests, he was fortunate to study with musician and music educator Arnie Berle, who has authored more than a dozen instructional guitar books. Enrolling in the Manhattan School of Music, Warner studied theory and harmony with Daniel Ricigliano, who chaired the school’s theory department.

“I was lucky to study with great guitarists in New York like Chuck Wayne, who was Tony Bennett’s musical director, and Joe Puma, who performed with Dick Hyman and countless others. They had a great duo in New York at the time and would play all over the City”

His exposure to the New York City jazz scene in the late ’60s and ’70s afforded Warner a close-up view and insider take on how, when and what to play. It also provided him lifelong friendships with notable jazz musicians to whom most teenagers simply did not have access.

“Joe Puma, a seasoned New York musician, lived right up the street from me and we would hang out all the time,” Warner recalls. “He really became a surrogate father to me and I got involved in some of the greatest musical situations through him: Mabel Mercer, her incredible accompanist Jimmy Lyon, pianist Hank Jones, and jazz sax greats Zoot Sims and Al Cohn.”

Although Warner’s guitar technique and performance was very good, he felt he wasn’t “getting at the music,” as he puts it. So he began teaching himself – on guitar – the soulful solos of sax great Lester Young. Young, who had played with the Count Basie Orchestra, had a cool, relaxed style of playing that “free-floated,” as Warner says. For him, it had a transformative effect; he fell in love with the sound. It wasn’t long before Warner sold one of his most prized guitars to purchase his first saxophone, a Selmer Mark VI, and began his professional career as a sax player.

In the late 1980s, through his friendship with saxophonist Ray Turner, Warner met pianist Danny Negri. Negri, who had performed with famed sax players Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster and alternated with piano great Art Tatum, became a regular part of Warner’s musical life in New York. Around the same time, though, the city’s jazz scene started to change. When Negri moved to Sarasota in search of new opportunities in Florida, Warner soon followed suit and settled into the musical landscape of Florida’s west coast.

Warner’s parents lived in Hollywood, where one of the city commissioners was pianist and current Vero Beach resident John Williams. It was a good scene musically, with gigs running until 4 a.m. thanks to a city ordinance that mandated that at least two musicians had to be playing if a bar or restaurant wanted to stay open late – as late as 4 a.m. Warner went from playing in Hollywood occasionally to playing regularly, often at several venues a night. “In South Florida at that time, even if you weren’t working, there were places to sit in seven nights a week,” Warner recalls. “We would play a gig in Fort Lauderdale that would close at 2 a.m., head to Hollywood and play until 4 a.m., and then finish playing in Miami at 6 in the morning.”

His experiences led him to play with many of South Florida’s finest musicians, including Joe Roland, Ira Sullivan, Pete Minger, Dolph Castellano and Lew Berryman.
For New Year’s Eve, 2000 Warner traveled north to Melbourne, playing his last gig of the year at Austin’s Bistro on New Haven Avenue. The gig was good in more ways than one: Not only did Warner end up playing there as a resident musician for the next eight years, he also met his future wife Julia.

Today, Warner performs his solo sax with background music he himself sequenced, a skill he has perfected since 2004. Fusing the sequenced music with artfully crafted harmonies and orchestrations, he provides his audiences with an extensive repertoire.
“I try to share my love of the standards, but also the versatility of the different forms; to introduce standards that are less familiar, and play the songs people know, but maybe haven’t heard them done that way.”

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