The Fabulous Gunslingers Band Performs Today

Photo provided by Heather Pinson

Go see Heather Pinson perform with The Fabulous Gunslingers at 9 p.m. TODAY!
SEPTEMBER 14TH - SUNNY JIM’S
255 CAMP HORNE RD.

PITTSBURGH, PA 15202
412-761-6700
9PM - 1AM

Heather Pinson with The Antz Marching Band

Photos by Stacey Fortuna of Heather Pinson performing with Antz Marching band. Click here to read about this artist.

Photo credit: Stacey Fortuna

Photo credit: Stacey Fortuna

Photo credit: Stacey Fortuna

Photo credit: Stacey Fortuna

Mark your Calendar

Photo provided by Heather Pinson

On June 8th, Heather Pinson will be performing with the Fabulous Gunslingers at the Saltsburg Canal Days in Saltsburg, PA from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

"Serve" Special Needs Program

Photo provided by Heather Pinson

Reminder: Heather Pinson will be performing Saturday, April 20th with The Fabulous Gunslingers at the St. Richard's Church Community.

APRIL 20TH - BENEFIT FOR “SERVE” SPECIAL NEEDS PROGRAM ST. RICHARD’S CHURCH COMMUNITY ROOM 3841 DICKEY ROAD GIBSONIA, PA. 15044 7PM - 11PM $15 DONATION TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR FOOD, ADULT BEVERAGE, SILENT AUCTIONS, CHINESE AUCTIONS AND 50/50 RAFFLE MUST BE 21 YEARS OLD AND HAVE ID ALL PROCEEDS TO BENEFIT THE “SERVE” SPECIAL NEEDS PROGRAM

Follow Heather Pinson and Her Band

Heather Pinson performing with The Fabulous Gunslingers

Find out where and when Heather Pinson is performing with The Fabulous Gunslingers by visiting this website.  

How to be a musician and a professor- Heather Pinson

Photo provided by Heather Pinson

"In American culture, it's very important to have [kids] involved in as many different things as possible," Heather Pinson explained on the many activities she was involved in as a kid. Her parents enrolled her in different sports, music and ballet classes. Nevertheless, she quitted many of them out of a lack of interest.
"I was nine when I started playing violin," she went on, also admitted jokingly to being a late starter. "I started reading Sherlock Holmes, and he played the violin. I wanted to be like him so I decided to keep up with it."
she went on to study music in college with an emphasis in performance making the violin an even bigger part of her life.
"I practiced a lot in college," she narrated. "We played music about seven hours a day from orchestra to string quartet to chamber music."
That's when she started experiencing excruciating pain in her left wrist, which led her to see a doctor and realize she had Keinbock's disease, a disorder of the wrist.
"It is a disorder where your bones don't grow the same length, which causes pain when you turn your wrist around to play the violin," Pinson explained. "They had to remove part of the bone to make them the same length."
"I had to take a year off of playing," she said. "I lost my voice. I still went to college, but I couldn't play classical music."
"I still went to orchestra and chamber music, and I just sat there. I couldn't play. That's when I started learning jazz."
... And thus began Pinson's journey in jazz, regaining her voice from this genre of music. Jazz gave her more control over the musical notes, and therefore she could alternate the notes she couldn't play, an exercise impossible in classical music.
"Jazz was to me like a beautiful exotic woman I didn't know anything about," Pinson cleverly illustrated. "I would go to jazz clubs wondering why they are clapping in the middle of the song. That's what you do in jazz. You clap after the soloist plays his or her performance."
"It was so odd and fascinating because it was so different from anything I grew up with, and I learned it in the clubs," she added. "My teacher would be the guy playing the horn in the house band. He would show me a couple of notes here and there every night. They were very patient with me and told me what I was doing wrong."
After graduating college, Pinson moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana  to attend a graduate program in music history in Louisiana State University. One of her teachers who understood her love for jazz, let her join his jazz band.
"He didn't know where the hell to put me because there's no violin [in jazz]," she said between a chuckle.
He let her play the part of the third trumpet on her violin, which gave her freedom to improvise on the notes. She joked about how horrible she was at the beginning, yet her determination led her to other gigs in country, rock and zydeco bands.
Nowadays, Pinson plays in two bands, Antz Marching band, a Dave Matthews cover band and The Fabulous Gunslingers, a country band she joined a month ago.
"I have to learn their music," she said referring to the latter band. She held up three sheets of paper with a long list of songs for me to see.
She is also the interim department head of communication at Robert Morris University and a faculty member.
During the time she is not teaching, administrating or playing music, Pinson volunteers as a board member for the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra. She also works with "poetry reading, the art group and the music group in Pittsburgh."
"It takes a lot of time, but you build up [your network] that way," she confessed.
She does her best to juggle between all of those obligations.
"I can do this with the amount of energy I have right now. The music is my relief from work."
"I think music is important because it enriches one's life," she stated.
She advised aspiring musicians to be flexible and to have a backup plan. For instance, her first years as a musician, Pinson taught violin to support herself.
"In music, you have to be able to teach, compose, perform and play in all venues," she concluded.

Photography, Jazz and Heather Pinson

Photo provided by Heather Pinson

There are many photographic books on Herman Leonard, but what makes Heather Pinson's book, The Jazz Image, unique is its focus on the life of Herman Leonard and his jazz photography, representing symbolic images of jazz players.
He was a photographer from the mid 1900's and worked for famous magazines, such as Playboy magazine and Life magazine.  He was also a commercial photographer and took pictures of album covers for major record companies.
Aside from his other works, Leonard, who loved Jazz, was a good friend of some of the jazz musicians and used to frequent Harlem where the African-American culture culminated. He would follow the jazz musicians from New York to Paris and took many pictures of them.
Even though he was not the only photographer to capture the life of jazz musicians, he was given credit for creating that jazz image. One of the main features of his photographs was his focus on smoke. Even in a dark background, Leonard was able to capture the immersing smoke, which helped symbolized the jazz image.
Even though those pictures were taken during the 1940's and 1950's, he only became famous in 1988 when he had an exhibition, titled The Image of Jazz, at The Special Photographer's Company in London. People started seeing his jazz photography and paying attention to his emblematic and amazing images. This show helped relaunch his career.
"Herman caught them at the right time in the right place," said Pinson, referring to Leonard's importance in photography pertaining to jazz.

Herman Leonard and Heather Pinson. Photo provided by Heather Pinson

Pinson wanted to write about how Leonard represented jazz in his photographs and created the visual culture of the jazz music. She also had the great pleasure of meeting this legend and interview him for her book.
"[this book] contributes to a view point about jazz that people don't look at," said Pinson. "It is about visual photography and music."
Her book is very important not only because it tells the story of the culture of jazz but because it is the last book written before the death of Leonard.

http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Image-Leonards-Photography-American/dp/1604734949