Anthony Ortega (musician)

Ortega was born in Los Angeles. He began to play the saxophone at age 14 and studied the instrument under Lloyd Reese. A year after starting alto saxophone, he took up the clarinet. He was heavily-influenced by and introduced to musicians by his cousin, Ray Vasquez. == Career ==

In 1947, Ortega played with Earle Spencer. From 1948 to 1951, he served in the United States Army playing in an army band. In 1954 he went to Norway and formed a group with Norwegian players while in Oslo. The Swedish jazz magazine ESTRAD credited him for stimulating the jazz movement in the country. Ortega recorded the soundtrack for the movie Gloria (1980) starring Gena Rowlands. He can be heard playing throughout the movie with Tommy Tedesco on guitar. He worked with Don Ellis and Gerald Wilson in 1965 and with Lalo Schifrin in 1968. In the early-1970s, he toured internationally with Quincy Jones and continued working with Wilson into the 1980s. He toured and recorded in Paris several times in the 1990s. As of October 2021, he was still performing actively at Mr. Peabody's in Encinitas, California. ==Discography==

• A Man and His Horns (1956) • Chamber Music for Moderns with the Nat Pierce Quintet (Coral, 1957) • Jazz for Young Moderns (And Old Buzzards, Too) (Bethlehem, 1958?) • New Dance (Revelation, 1967) • Permutations (Revelation, 1968) • A Delanto (Jazz Chronicles, 1976) • Rain Dance (Discovery, 1978) • On Evidence (Evidence, 1992) • Neuf (Evidence, 1996) • Bonjour (Harmonia Mundi, 2001) • Scattered Clouds (hatOLOGY, 2001) • Afternoon in Paris (hatOLOGY, 2007) ==References==