Biography

Matt Penman's biography

Matt Penman was born in Auckland, New Zealand, where he started playing bass at the age of 14. A scholarship from Berklee saw him move to the States in 1994 and to New York soon after that, where he leads a busy life as an artist and educator.
He is currently an established member of the SFJazz Collective, an 8-piece composers collective devoted to presenting the original works of its members as well as arrangements by the band of a different jazz great’s work every year. The Collective is in its sixth year and currently features Joe Lovano, Dave Douglas and Stefon Harris. He also performs regularly with John Scofield, in his trio-plus-horns formation, and in a quartet with Joe Lovano and Matt Wilson, as well as in the Joshua Redman trio. Past collaborators and projects include Kenny Werner, Brad Mehldau, Chris Cheek, Brian Blade, Mark Turner, Guillermo Klein, Rebecca Martin, Eric Truffaz, Nicholas Payton and Kurt Rosenwinkel. He toured extensively with the singer Madeleine Peyroux for three years. He has three albums under his name: Flipside (Naxos Records, 1998) The Unquiet and Catch of the Day (Fresh Sound, 2001 and 2008). As a sessionist, he has collaborated on over a hundred projects.
Matt teaches and has taken part in workshops and seminars in Sevilla, Spain, and Tavira Portugal, and in 2006 was Artist in Residence at the Brubeck Institute in Stockton, California.