Joshua Redman

Personal

Vocation

Family

American musician, a legendary saxophonist by the age of 25. In 2000 he was named artistic director for San Francisco's Jazz Festival. Josh is the son of the legendary avant-garde tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman and Renee Shedroff. His parents never married but had an intense love affair. Josh's dad was not around enough of the time to influence his music but it seeped through his soul. As a two-year-old, he would line up mom's pots and pans in a way as to create an ascending scale. Joshua Shedroff became a featured soloist in the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble. However, music was not his goal. He excelled in his studies with the idea of going to Harvard into a professional career. In 1989, his junior year, he started a gig with his dad at the Village Vanguard in Manhattan that lasted two years and influenced his lifetime. He went on to Harvard Law School but continued exploring music on the side. He took a year off and moved to Brooklyn to play professionally, continuing to deny any influence from Dewey. In the fall of 1991 the reticent youth changed his name to Redman "because I was tired of explaining my life history to strangers." Josh married Gabrielle Armand, senior director of jazz marketing for Columbia Records. At the end of 1997 they gave up their duplex apartment in Manhattan and moved into a three-story Dutch Colonial in Sleepy Hollow, Westchester. He and Gabrielle had met in March 1994 at an AIDS benefit concert. Within a few months she quit her job and spent the next year and a half on tour with Joshua. They married in June 1997. He was named Artistic Director for San Francisco's Jazz Festival in 2000. Link to Wikipedia biography