INTERVIEW: Stratospheerius bandleader Joe Deninzon on his many musical styles

Joe Deninzon, ever the mutli-hyphenate, is a man of many musical stylings. He’s the bandleader of Stratospheerius, a progressive-rock group. He’s a 12-time recipient of a BMI Jazz Composer grant. His music has been heard on CMT, VH1, Comedy Central and National Geographic, among many other TV channels. The list of fellow musicians he has helped is a long one, featuring such names as Everclear, Smokey Robinson and Bruce Springsteen.

His musical journey continues in the next couple weeks with a return visit to the Grand Canyon Music Festival with Sweet Plantain, his Latin jazz string quartet, plus the premiere of his concerto with the Muncie Symphony Orchestra in Muncie, Ind., on Sept. 19.

He’ a busy, fulfilled musician.

“Next week [Sept 3-6] I’m going to be at the Grand Canyon Music Festival, which I have been playing for 16 years,” Deninzon said recently during a phone interview. “There I’m performing with harmonica virtuoso Robert Bonfiglio, and I’m also playing with my group, the Sweet Plantains, a Latin jazz string quartet. And we’re also doing two educational projects. One is the Grand Canyon School of Rock, which I founded eight years ago, where we work with local high school kids from a band [and] perform then at the end of the week. The other is called the NACAP, which is the Native Americans Composers Apprentice Project.”

Deninzon said he loves the busy schedule. “Variety is the spice of life,” he added.

It makes sense that he became a successful musician. Music runs in the family. “My parents are both classical musicians, and my father has been playing violin with the Cleveland Orchestra for 36 years,” he said. “And my mother is a concert pianist, and she has 50 students. I sort of grew up in a music school. I grew up surrounded by classical music, so my rebellion was getting into rock ‘n’ roll and jazz … I married a classical musician. My wife is a violinist with the New York Philharmonic.”

At the age of 5, Deninzon received his first violin from his father. “I went through a love-hate relationship with it,” he said. “I hated to practice. He [my father] would have to chase me around the house to make me practice. I hated the tedious part of it, the work you have to put into it to become a proficient [violinist]. In hindsight I really appreciate his efforts and his tenacity to make me work hard and become a good musician.”

Rock ‘n’ roll came when Deninzon was 8 years old, and he started playing guitar and bass. Eventually he came full circle and landed back at the violin. “I tried to play all the music I love on the violin, regardless if it’s classical or rock or jazz or hip hop or metal,” he said.

Deninzon seems to be a believer in the concept of no musical boundaries. He said an instrument shouldn’t limit a musician trying out a new genre. “I think that’s just up to the musician,” he said. “If you have good intuition that you develop through a lot of experience and trial and error, you’ll know when something works well or not.”

When he’s not working on his own projects, Deninzon helps other musicians with arrangements, in addition to writing jingles for commercials. He never sees this outside work as a chore — more like an opportunity. “It’s actually fun to provide a service for other people and then to go back and do your own,” he said. “I think if I did just one or just the other, it wouldn’t be as fun.”

Stratospheerius, which is working on a new album, is perhaps his most well-known project. Deninzon called it his “brand child,” a progressive-rock band that started in the late 1990s after he graduated from college. “I wanted to move to New York with a CD in hand,” he said. “So I recorded like my first CD, which is an instrumental kind of jazz fusion record with local musicians from Cleveland where I grew up. And I wanted to come to New York and put together a band, and play local clubs and develop that music, and then it sort of morphed more and more into this vocal, progressive rock kind of thing. … It’s had a lot of lineup changes over the years, and we’ve toured all over. It’s really my vehicle for exploring the seven-string electric violin and kind of merging all my favorite stuff together.”

Deninzon has found much success in the music world, and he credits that to having a good balance between creativity and business acumen. Here’s his advice:

“You never know where the next opportunity or the next inspiration will come from, but I remember starting out I would spend as many hours a day on the phone or online trying to get gigs as I was working on my music,” he said. “If you want to be a working string player, and you’re not fortunate enough to get an orchestra job, which is like winning the lottery, you have to be a jack of all trades. You have to be able to record yourself. You have to be able to write, to teach, to know a lot of different stuff in music so you can always be a voice and more employable. I think that’s the approach people have to take. It’s a lot harder now to put all your eggs in one basket.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

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