Mike McGinnis

Mike McGinnis (b. Sanford, Maine 1973) is an American saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.

Biography

He began playing the alto saxophone at age ten in his middle school band but it was not until the age of 14 when he started studying with saxophonist/mouthpiece maker/repairman Bill Street (the father of bassist Ben Street) that he devoted himself to playing the saxophone. After high school he attended the University of Southern Maine where he focused more on classical saxophone and then the Eastman School of Music where he was able to study with Michael Cain and Ralph Alessi. Also at Eastman during this time were many musicians who are creating some the most vibrant music today like Shane Endsley & Kneebody, Jerseyband, So Percussion, Anna Dagmar, Eric Biondo, Jeff Hermanson. Mike has lived in New York City since 1997.

His first group was called Between Green and featured all of Mike's original music. The other members were Shane Endsley - trumpet, Jacob Sacks - piano, Dave Ambrosio - bass, Mark Dodge - drums. They recorded one CD titled "Tangents" for Ravi Coltrane's label RKM Music. It was released in 2000.

In 1999, McGinnis and composer, pianist, accordionist Tom Aldrich formed a band called the four bags. McGinnis and Aldrich had played together in high school. Beside McGinnis and Aldrich, the group had Brian Drye on trombone and Sean Moran on guitar. In the four bags McGinnis started to play clarinet more often and this also led to his beginning to play the bass clarinet. The four bags have made three recordings for the NCM East label.

He has also recorded in the projects DDYGG and the Morpholinos for NCM East.

Other groups McGinnis has performed with are the Ohad Talmor/Steve Swallow Sextet, Steve Coleman's Aquarius Ingress and the Lonnie Plaxico Group.

McGinnis is a member of the group ok|ok with vocalist Kyoko Kitamura and guitarist/ukelele-ist Khabu Young

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Name	Macginnis, Mike
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Date of birth	1973
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