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Andy Fite is a jazz guitarist, singer, and songwriter living in Stockholm, Sweden since 1994. Before that he lived in New York City for ten years. Already in his hometown of Pittsburgh Andy had the good luck to perform with most of the top local musicians, as well as with such illustrious visitors as Kenny Clarke, Billy Eckstine, Attila Zoller, Bucky Pizzarelli and Tal Farlow. Not to mention the Inkspots, the Four Aces, the Lettermen and Pia Zadora.
Arriving in New York in the mid-1980’s, Andy Fite began an intensive study of improvisation with pianist Connie Crothers, and very soon the insights he gained there led to a great breakthrough and an original style. Soon he was playing regularly with a number of close friends of the late pianist Lennie Tristano, a big hero and great source of inspiration in Andy’s music.
In 1987, Andy Fite was invited to join the new co-operative record company New Artists Records (www.newartistsrecords.com), and there he made six CDs as leader or co-leader between 1988 and 1997. His playmates on these discs include Liz Gorrill, Red Mitchell, Bob Casanova, Carol Liebowitz and Roger Mancuso.
After moving to Sweden, Andy Fite caught fire and began writing songs like crazy. By the end of 2010 he had 439 of them, and there are more now, and more still coming. From this has evolved his current concept for a solo show, Jazz Comic Philosopher. It's a spontaneous performance centered around his own songs (which tend either to the comic or the tragic, often blending both), but including a lot of improvising with both voice and guitar, the occasional song from the Great American Songbook (he knows hundreds).
Andy Fite has played with many of the top Swedish jazz musicians, and runs a monthly jam session in Stockholm where he tries to recreate the atmosphere of the sessions organized by Connie Crothers during his years in New York: an informal yet highly focused setting where musicians of different levels of accomplishment could meet and create together without getting hung up in a competitive mindset. His partner in this endeavor is bassist Ulf Åkerhielm.
Andy Fite also performs with his own bands, often with Ulf Åkerhielm and drummer Sebastian Voegler, and his son Niklas Fite on guitar. He is available as well on a freelance basis to play with pretty much anyone working from a jazz context, with a special feeling for singers, and an extra-special feeling for the intimacy of a duet. With so many songs committed to memory and the ability to play any of them in any key you choose, it doesn't take much rehearsal to get the duo up and running.
Andy Fite also works as a teacher, working with guitarists and singers as well as anyone else who wants to develop their capacity to express themselves more deeply, and especially spontaneously. He works in his own private studio and at Kulturama in Stockholm, and has guest-lectured at the Royal Academy of Music, Uppsala University, Birka Folkhögskola and Bollnäs Folkhögskola in Sweden, the Sibelius Academy and Oulu University in Finland, and elsewhere. He has also worked as a performer in children’s television in Sweden. |
