Art Lande

Born in New York, Lande began piano at the age of four. He attended Williams College and moved to San Francisco in 1969. In 1973 he recorded Red Lanta, an album of duets with Norwegian musician Jan Garbarek. With Mark Isham on trumpet, he started the Rubisa Patrol group in 1976. They performed in the Bay Area and toured extensively in Europe by van. This group made two records for ECM: Rubisa Patrol (1976), Desert Marauders (1977), and one for 1750 Arch Records, The Story of Ba-Ku (1978).
In the early 1980s Lande taught at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. He moved to Switzerland, where he taught at a jazz school in St. Gallen. In 1987 he moved to Boulder, Colorado to teach at Naropa University.
Lande has written many compositions, but is also known for his unusual and distinctive interpretations of popular and jazz standards. He has made several solo piano recordings devoted to such material, including The Eccentricities of Earl Dant in 1977, Hardball! (1987), Melissa Spins Away (1987), Friday the Thirteenth (1996, featuring thirteen Thelonious Monk compositions) and While She Sleeps (2005).
Although he is known as a pianist, Lande has performed and recorded on drums. He appeared in the 2021 film JazzTown, directed by Ben Makinen