FM
Biography
Arthur Lipner grew up in Weston, Connecticut in a musical household. His mother, soprano soloist Judith Lipner (1930-2017), attended the Yale Music School and freelanced in the NYC area. Arthur attended many of her concerts and recorded them with his Dad on a Revox reel to reel, learning at a very young age about electronics, microphone placement, tape editing and more. Arthur began classical piano at age 6 with Bill Duffy at the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, CT. At age 10 he began a second weekly lesson, studying improvisation and theory with legendary jazz educator John Mehegan in neighboring Westport, CT. At age 12 he acquired a Deagan xylorimba and mallet percussion with Howard Zwickler in downtown Westport above a head shop next to Buffalo Clothier. At 13, after discovering the vibraphone, he declined a classical piano scholarship to the Mannes School of Music Prep Division and focused solely on vibes. He also studied general percussion with David Smith, who at the time was a Professor at Western CT State College in Danbury, CT. Arthur's first jazz mallet teacher was David Friedman, then Dave Samuels with whom he continued studying with regularly through high school and college. Friedman, Samuels and Zwickler were role models for Arthur during these early years.
After earning a BS in Plant Science at the Univ of Delaware, in which he focused on plant pathology and genetics, Arthur stayed on at UD and began his Masters in Nutrition doing Graduate Research. His research was a Land Grant involving analytical organic chemistry, assessing the viability of a specific soybean variety for human consumption. He also worked with carrots that had been up in space through a NASA research grant, assessing bacterial disease growth in a weightless environment. During this year of grad school, Arthur went on tour to Costa Rica for three weeks with the Hal Schiff Big Band. In his second semester he accidentally started a large fire in one of the Nutrition Dept. labs, while doing a fatty acid extraction, which could have been quite serious (ie he could have blown up himself and the building). As that second semester wrapped he felt the need for change. An acquaintance was at North Texas State (now Univ. of North Texas) so he decided to put mass spectrometry/gel electrophoresis on hold and drove down to Denton, TX. As a 23 year-old part-time student he quickly assimilated in the working music scene of the Dallas/Forth Worth area. He was an original member of the band "Heads Up," formed by Dave Love, who went on to create a successful jazz record company of the same name. In 1983 Heads Up did an album of the same name, Arthur's first. Heads Up was the opening act for many headliners at the Agora Ballroom in Dallas. Rubbing shoulders with Phil Woods, Steps Ahead, Jaco Pastorius' Big Band, Mike Stern, Bob Mintzer, McCoy Tyner and many others gave Arthur the itch to get back to the gritty NYC scene. After only three semesters in Denton, Arthur left for Manhattan to begin his professional career.
