Magay
Meditation in the morning, on fire at night — jazz, classical, ragas, bossa, choro, funk, free improvisation, and much more!
A fresh voice on saxophones, flute, and clarinet — music as a way of healing the world.
Dan Magay is steeped in jazz, classical, Indian ragas, Brazilian bossa and choro, funk, and free improvisation — a voice finding fresh things to say on the horn since 2005.
Born in Los Altos, California, he took up the clarinet at nine and the saxophone at ten. He studied with Mary Fettig, Mel Martin, and Rory Snyder; at USC with Yehuda Gilad of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and at the Berklee College of Music with George Garzone, Bill Pierce, Joe Viola, Jerry Bergonzi, and Hal Crook, graduating magna cum laude in 1994.
In New York he co-founded The Hub with Tim Dahl and Sean Noonan — a punk-jazz trio that toured Europe, Japan, and the United States and drew praise from The Guardian and Jazzwise.
Back home in the Bay Area, he has played with the Fil Lorenz and Marcus Shelby orchestras, Funky Buela, and the Avatar Ensemble, and leads his own Wind Up Trio, Dan Magay Trio, and Heve Heve Bebe.
II · Listen
Wake with sound, with vibration — become present.
Some mornings a meditation arrives — a short piece to breathe with. Itinerant by nature: sometimes daily, sometimes not. Keep the ones that move you, and lay your own track on top — hum, sing, play, chant, read a poem, or whatever you like onto it — then send it back. It may return as a musical partnership.
Lay your voice over the morning.
Press record and the meditation plays underneath you. Hum, sing, play an instrument, chant, or read a poem into it. Keep your take, or send it to Dan — some come back, woven in, as a duet across distance.
Many mornings, by date & feeling.
Be present — the music is just the part you can hear.
Be where you are — the note you are playing is the only one that exists.
Watch the one who is watching; that is where the music comes from.
Let the last note go — the next one is already forgiving you.
Let's hang something together.
Move these around, add your own — let's create
Match a horizon to a horizon, a colour to a colour, stack them, scatter them — whatever you like. Double-click a print to grow or shrink it, pick your own wall colour, hover any print to let its colour deepen. It remembers how you leave it.
What Dan's caught lately.
Photos, videos — sunsets to bandstands — whatever's been fresh, intriguing, amusing, inspiring. For more, check out Dan's Facebook and Instagram.
Dan also teaches — all the woodwinds, every age and level. Start where you are, from music you already love.
The bands, the nights, the press, the bookings — healing by morning, fire by night. Dan after dark has a stage of its own.