Patrick O’Hearn was born on September
6, 1954 in Los Angeles, California. Patrick was raised in the Pacific
Northwest, and began his professional music career at age 15 when he joined the
Musicians Union and began playing night clubs in Portland, Oregon. Upon
graduating from Sunset High School in 1972, he moved to Seattle, Washington.
There, he briefly attended Cornish College of the Arts and, as well, studied
privately with bassist Gary Peacock.
In 1973, he moved to San Francisco,
California and soon became involved in the vibrant Bay Area jazz scene of that
time, playing bass for well-established artists Charles Lloyd, Joe Henderson,
Dexter Gordon, Joe Pass, Woody Shaw, Eddie Henderson, and Bobby Hutcherson, as
well as with other like-aged young musicians, including Terry Bozzio, Mark
Isham and Peter Maunu.
While on tour in Los Angeles in 1976,
O'Hearn met musician Frank Zappa, who offered him a job as bass player in his
band - a position he held for over two years. During this period, O’Hearn
shifted from the acoustic bass to the electric bass guitar, and also became
increasingly interested in electronic music. Zappa encouraged O’Hearn to
explore his premium collection of synthesizers, and also introduced him to the
technical aspects of intricate physical tape editing as a way of producing
compositions, audio engineering, and home studio audio recording equipment.
In 1979, O'Hearn teamed with trumpet
player Mark Isham and guitarist Peter Maunu to form Group 87. Although they
only produced two LPs — ‘Group 87’ in 1980, and ‘A Career in Dada Processing’
in 1984 — Group 87 would help establish the musical direction of O'Hearn's solo
career.
While his musical repertoire spans a
diverse range of music, he is an acclaimed new-age artist in his solo career.
To date in his career, he has released 13 solo albums.
He composed to score for the
Euro-western “Silent Tongue” in 1993.
Today we celebrate Patrick O’Hearn’s
60th birthday.
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