John Clark was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Rochester, New New York
Education
In 1966 he received a Bachelor of Arts.from the University of Rochester, where he also studied horn with Verne Reynolds at the Eastman School of Music. He studied composition and improvisation with Jaki Byard, Ran Blake, and George Russell. And horn with James Stagliano, Thomas Newell, and Paul Ingraham.
Career
John Clark is an American jazz horn player and composer. From 1967 until 1971 he played in the United States Coast Guard Band. Clark received a M.M. degree (with honors) from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1973.
In 1991 he received a patent for the "hornette," an instrument with the same range as a French Horn but with a forward-facing bell for greater projection.
He taught at the State University of New York at Purchase from 2001 until 2008. He is now on faculty at Manhattan School of Music.
As one of only a handful of horn players proficient in non-classical genres, Clark has performed or recorded with a wide variety of musicians. These include Glen Velez, Jerome Harris, Anthony Jackson, Linda Ronstadt, B. B. King, Oliver Lake, Ornette Coleman, McCoy Tyner, Sting, Lew Soloff, David Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Akiko Yano, Leroy Jenkins, Gerry Mulligan, Isaac Hayes, Mike Richmond, Howard Johnson, Carla Bley, Grachan Moncur, Ashford and Simpson, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Pat Metheny, Frank Sinatra, Dave Grusin, John Scofield, Spyro Gyra, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, LL Cool J, Gil Evans and the Gil Evans Orchestra, Joe Lovano, Jaco Pastorius, Paquito Doctorate"Rivera, Jim Hall, Rachel Z, Jimmy Heath, Johnny Griffin, Toots Thielemans, John Faddis, Gary Bartz, Billy Joel, the Fugees, the Transport-Siberian Orchestra, the Turtle Island String Quartet, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Speculum Musicae, the Aspen Wind Quintet, and the Paul Winter Consort.
Clark plays the Patterson custom descant Horn and uses the AMT (Applied Microphone Technology) microphone systems