Dr. Lyn Christie

Bass

Dr. Lyn Christie, a general medical practitioner, graduated from the Otago Medical School in New Zealand. He came to the US to be Chief Resident at Yonkers General Hospital and on examination was granted MD license by the NY State University. Seven decades as bassist, BMI composer, educator, group leader, concert and recital soloist in many musical fields has brought international recognition. Presently at Manhattanville College, he has been on the faculties of Lehman College, West-Conn State University and the Westchester Conservatory where he created the annual June Jazz Festival 1980-88. Principal bass with the Yonkers Philharmonic and the Senior Concert Orchestra of NY, his work follows years playing principal with the National Orchestral Association, Ridgefield Orchestra, New Jersey Philharmonic, County Symphony at Lyndhurst, North-Eastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, New Rochelle Opera Company, Ossining Chorale Society, New Haven Symphony, and in the Philharmonic Symphony of Westchester where he played concerts with a pantheon of soloists that included Menuhin, Oistrakh, Perlman, Zuckerman, Szeryng, La Roccha, Watts, Van Cliburn, Bachauer, Barenboim, Nelsova.

A studio musician, he has played many musical series on radio, TV, CBS and NBC, and musicals on Broadway including Kurt Weill's, "Lost in the Stars" with Brock Peters, "Minnie's Boys" with Shelley Winters, "Sugar" with Robert Morse, Bacharach's, "Promises, Promises" with Jerry Orbach, and "1776" with Howard Da Silva. Time magazine attention followed his first major NYC jazz engagement with be-bop guitar legend, Tal Farlow. He then toured US with Paul Winter Consort, Chet Baker, and Ahmad Jamal, Europe with Attila Zoller, and Japan with Toshiko Akiyoshi. He made four world-encircling tours in the trio of harpist Daphne Hellman's "Angels". During thirty years as house bassist at famed "Village Gate" club in NYC his work ranged in groups from Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, Lionel Hampton, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Barney Kessel, and Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, Buddy Rich to a "Who's Who" of jazz. His many recordings, compositions, and musical groups are detailed in the "New Grove Dictionary of Jazz", B. Kernfield (Macmillan Press) 1988, and "Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Seventies", Gitler/Feather (Horizon books). The Lyn Christie Jazz Trio continues frequent club and concert appearances.

Dr Christie studied with Charles Gray of Sydney Conservatory, Homer Mensch of the Juilliard School under a grant from National Orchestral Association, in master classes with Gary Karr, Henry Portnoi and David Walter, and privately with Jaco Pastorius. In the press Nat Hentoff observed, "- he really speaks on his instrument" and John S. Wilson of NY Times, "- - excels".