Bio

Larry Klein is a record producer, musician, and songwriter who is 4-times Grammy-winner and 10-times Grammy-nominated. He has been nominated for the Producer Of The Year (non-classical) 3 times. His latest release is “Here It Is: A Tribute To Leonard Cohen”, Klein’s tribute to his dear friend, the great singer, songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen. After Cohen’s passing, Klein found himself selecting many songs from various periods of Leonard’s work to revisit and re-interpret. He finally decided to propose the idea of doing an entire album of Cohen’s work through a genre-defying- lens, working with a stellar band of prescient and forward-looking musicians including Blue Note artists guitarist Bill Frisell and alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, drummer Nate Smith, bassist Scott Colley, pianist Kevin Hays, organist Larry Goldings, and pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz to Don Was, the president of Blue Note Records. With Was’ approval and the help of these great musicians who think outside the limitations of genre, these great musicians, Klein would endeavor to create a language with which to re-contextualize Cohen’s great poems, using the music to create a stark and cinematic back-drop for the darkly romantic ethos that Cohen created with his writing.

Klein worked with an eclectic group of great voices on the album, including Norah Jones, Gregory Porter, Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel, Sarah McLachlan, Nathaniel Rateliff, Mavis Staples, David Gray, Luciana Souza and James Taylor.

Simultaneously, Klein has been working on a third album with Norwegian singer and songwriter Thomas Dybdahl; this one a transparent set of meditations on adolescence written with lyricist Edie Kuhnle which combines a spare rhythmic context that Dybdahl and Klein built in a house in the California desert with the poetic and painterly string orchestra writing of the Grammy-winning arranger/composer Vince Mendoza.

Previous to this album in 2013 Klein and Dybdahl first collaborated on the Tchad Blake-mixed “What’s Left Is Forever” which was nominated for a Best Engineered Album Grammy (non-classical). This was followed in 2018 by “All These Things” (V2 Records-Benelux). “All These Things is a dark portrait of Los Angeles that could easily be a soundtrack to accompany such stories of the dark side of L.A. as one might find in “The Day Of The Locust” by Nathanael West.

More recently in 2021 Klein produced the self-titled album by the Argentinian duo Cande Y Paulo (Decca/Universal UK). As a result of this album’s reception the duo was nominated for a Latin Grammy for Best New Artist at the 2022 Latin Grammys.

Throughout his career, Klein has been recognized as an award winning producer and collaborator, working with artists such as Herbie Hancock, Tracy Chapman, 4 albums with Madeleine Peyroux including 2004’s “Careless Love”, a solo album by Steely Dan’s Walter Becker, Luciana Souza, Melody Gardot, Pink, Seal, numerous albums with Joni Mitchell, Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, Celine Dion.

He produced the Grammy 2007 Album Of The Year-winning, and Best Contemporary Jazz Album Of The Year, River: The Joni Letters with Herbie Hancock, featuring vocals from stars such as Norah Jones, Joni Mitchell herself, Tina Turner, Luciana Souza, Corinne Bailey Rae, and Leonard Cohen. The album was only the second jazz album to win the Grammy Album Of The Year aside from 1964’s “Getz/Gilberto”. He subsequently produced the last record that Herbie Hancock released, the genre-traversing Imagine Project, which featured a variety of artists from around the world including Jeff Beck, John Legend, Toumani Diabete, The Chieftains and Los Lobos.

Also recognized as one of the premier bass players/musicians in the world, Klein has performed on many of his production efforts. Klein has also worked as a composer, music producer, and musician on many films. He composed the underscore and produced the music for the Martin Scorsese produced, Allison Anders film “Grace Of My Heart”, and a biopic about the infamous country session guitarist Hank Garland in a film entitled “Crazy”. He has played on numerous scores and film soundtracks, beginning with Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” in 1980.

EARLY MUSICAL CAREER

Klein grew up in southern California, and it was an after-school musical program at The Community Schools at U.S.C. that enabled him to hone his playing and compositional skills with university professors while still in high school. He worked in with various Jazz and Latin groups while still a college student at Cal State L.A., early breaks that led to nearly five years of touring with Hall of Fame caliber groundbreakers like Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, Willie Bobo among others. Klein began to garner the reputation of a musical prodigy, with legendary Stanley Clarke later citing him in an interview as one of the handful of great bass players who have 'moved beyond the bass.' Klein appeared on a wide assortment of records in the mid-70’s and early 80’s, displaying a tremendous range, working with diverse artists such as Dianne Reeves, Bobby McFerrin, and Robbie Robertson. It was Klein’s work with Robertson that led to his other collaborations with a host of goundbreaking rock musicians such as Don Henley (Building The Perfect Beast, The End Of The Innocence), Bob Dylan (Down In The Groove), Bryan Adams (Waking Up The Neighbors), Joni Mitchell (Grammy winning Turbulent Indigo, among others), as well as Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel, Randy Newman and Warren Zevon.

JONI MITCHELL

Klein’s celebrated collaboration in and out of the studio with singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell became the cornerstone of his early collaborative period. The two became romantically linked during the making of 1982’s Wild Things Run Fast, becoming husband and wife the same year. The duo forged an intense creative relationship that would endure for more than a decade, and include such monumental albums as their first joint production, 1985’s Dog Eat Dog, and their Grammy winning swan song, 1994’s Turbulent Indigo. Mitchell and Klein also collaborated on the Grammy-winning orchestral album “Both Sides Now” with arranger/composer Vince Mendoza; a musical depiction of the arc of a romantic relationship and marriage.

Klein’s impeccable collaborative credentials and revered bass playing skills also saw him play on some of the biggest albums of the late ‘80s rock era: Don Henley’s Building the Perfect Beast (1984) featuring his work on the classic single “Boys of Summer”, Henley’s “The End Of The Innocence”, Peter Gabriel’s So (1986), and Tracy Chapman’s self-titled debut album with the smash hit “Fast Car” (1988). He toured with Gabriel on the first Amnesty International “Conspiracy Of Hope” tour.

PRODUCTION ERA & ACTIVITIES

In 1985, Klein knocked off his first solo production credit with Cars bassist Benjamin Orr’s The Lace. In 1988, Joni Mitchell released the Klein-Mitchell co-produced Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm.

An enlightening session with producer John Robert “Mutt” Lange during work on Bryan Adams’ 1991 release Waking Up The Neighbors, became another transformational production encounter. Klein’s reputation as a songwriter grew, and he scored several memorable co-writing ventures for talents such as Bonnie Raiit - “The Fundamental Things,” and Warren Zevon – “Genius.” Klein collaborated with the great Warren Zevon on some of his later work, playing bass on songs such as “Mutineer” and co-writing songs on the classic My Ride’s Here (2002).

In the 1990s, Klein began to be recognized as an astute producer of female singer/songwriters, working with critically acclaimed female trailblazers such as Mary Black, (Shine 1997,) and Shawn Colvin (Fat City 1994), Julia Fordham (Concrete Love 2002 and That’s Life 2004) and Madeleine Peyroux (Careless Love, 2004, which made Newsweek magazine’s Year-end Top 10 List).

Klein also reunited in the studio with Joni Mitchell in 2000, with the duo releasing Both Sides Now, a textured re-working of eight great standards and two pieces of Mitchell’s work for full orchestra. A subsequent double CD titled, Travelogue, was released in 2004.

Klein has continued to explore the areas that lie between genre, circling back to his jazz roots to work with mentors of his like Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, writing for and producing such hybrid artists as Madeleine Peyroux and Lizz Wright, exploring new areas with diverse artists from around the world such as fado singer and Portuguese star Ana Moura, with whom he made two albums, “Desfado” and “Moura”, Norwegian alt-singer-songwriter Thomas Dybdahl, and French pop legend Eddy Mitchell. Most years you will find his records sitting in various categories of Grammy -nominated projects. His musical curiosity continues to lead him towards a completely eclectic array of artists and projects from every area of music.