Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Piers Lawrence was born on April 19th in Manhattan, New York and raised in Palo Alto, California and Switzerland. He attended the Conservatoire de Musique de Lausanne. After finishing his studies he made San Diego, California his new home and established himself as a solo guitarist, band leader and session musician.

An alum of the Harlem-based Jazz-Mobile Orchestra he studied with Barry Galbraith and Ted Dunbar. Piers has played Broadway shows including Guys and Dolls, Dancin’, Eubie, and Your Arms Too Short to Box With God. He has toured and recorded with Wilson Picket, The Main Ingredient, Esther Phillips, Phyllis Hyman, The Caribbean All-Stars and Merl Saunders and the Rainforest Band.

He is the lead guitarist for the San Diego based Soul Jazz AllStars and the Piers Lawrence Quartet. He established a record label, JazzNet Media, which produces independent projects and Ambient Music for film and television.

Guitarist and songwriter Piers Lawrence continues to grace the stages of venues and festivals across the nation, service his corporate clients, and perform and record with Narada Michael Walden, Sammy Figueroa, Jerry Garcia and Tommy Flanagan, to name a few of the many.

More Posts: bandleader,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,songwriter

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mika Mimura was born in Osaka, Japan on April 18, 1978. She began to play marimba when she was 6 years old. She studied classical music at Osaka College of Music and finished her Master’s degree at the college. Inspired by pianist Makoto Ozone, she began her study of jazz vibraphone after graduation. She entered Berklee College of Music in 2004 and studied with Dave Samuels, Ed Saindon, Tiger Okoshi, and Ed Tomassi , among others.

Mika became a regular member of Phil Wilson’s Rainbow Big Band and Rainbow All Stars. In 2007 she performed with Greg Osby in 2007. She joined The BandA ecLectics, whose leader, Petros Sakelliou, had won the first prize at Thelonious Monk Institute Composition Competition. Together they played the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California. She has performed many times in concert throughout the Boston, Massachusetts and New York City areas.

Vibraphonist Mika Mimura, who is currently a part of the New York City jazz scene, continues to energetically perform, compose and arrange in jazz or classical.

More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,marimba,music,perccussion,piano,vibraphone

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jan Hammer was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia on April 17, 1948 to a mother who was a well-known Czech singer, and his doctor father who worked his way through school playing vibraphone and bass guitar. He began playing the piano at the age of four with formal instruction starting two years later. He aspired to follow his father into medicine until a family friend convinced him to develop his musical talents instead.

Forming a jazz trio in high school, he performed and recorded throughout Eastern Europe at the age of fourteen. Upon entrance to the Prague Academy of Musical Arts, he completed many compulsory classes including harmony, counterpoint, music history, and classical composition. He moved to the United States and resolved to become a citizen after receiving a scholarship at Berklee School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Upon completion of his studies, Jan spent a year touring with Sarah Vaughan, recorded with Elvin Jones and Jeremy Steig, then moved to New York City in 1971 and joined the original lineup of the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Though he previously recorded as a leader and sideman, his debut solo album, The First Seven Days, dropped in 1975. He formed the Jan Hammer Group in 1976 to support the album tour, which received good reviews from both jazz and rock critics. During the mid 70s to early 80s he recorded and played with Joni Mitchell, Billy Cobham, Santana, Tommy Bolin, Harvey Mason and Stanley Clarke.

Returning to solo work he recorded an album in 1978, formed a new band, known as Hammer, and wrote theme song for a British television series. He formed Schon & Hammer, played benefit concerts, and has received three Grammys and an Emmy nomination. By the Nineties and well into the new millennium, he continued to score and compose for film and television. In 2018 he released his first album of new material in over 10 years: Seasons – Part 1.

Keyboardist, drummer, composer, and record producer Jan Hammer continues to produce and perform.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,keyboard,music,producer,synthesizer

JAZZ POEMS

TRANE Propped against the crowded bar he pours into the curved and silver horn his old unhappy longing for a home the dancers twist and turn he leans and wishes he could burn his memories to ashes like some old notorious emperor of rome, but no stars blazed across the sky when he was born no wise men found his hovel, this crowded bar when dancers twist and turn, holds all the fame and recognition he will ever earn on earth or heaven. He learn against the bar and pours his old unhappy longing in the saxophone

KAMAU BRATHWAITE

More Posts: book,classic,collectible,history,jazz,library,poet

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Roy Hamilton was born on April 16, 1929 in Leesburg, Georgia to Evelyn and Albert Hamilton, where he began singing in church choirs at the age of six. The summer of 1943 he was fourteen and the family migrated north to Jersey City, New Jersey in search of a better life. There he sang with the Central Baptist Church Choir, and attended Lincoln High School where he studied commercial art. Being gifted, his paintings were placed with a number of New York City galleries.

In 1947 the seventeen-year-old Hamilton took his first big step into secular music, winning a talent contest at the Apollo Theater. But nothing came of it, so to support himself he worked as an electronics technician during the day, and an amateur heavyweight boxer at night, with a record of six wins and one defeat. The following year he joined the Searchlight Gospel Singers, studied light opera, and continued to perform gospel until 1953 when the group broke up. Then he headed back into pop music with something different to offer.

1953 saw Roy discovered by Bill Cook, the first Black radio disc jockey and television personality on the East Coast. As his manager, Cook made a demo tape, brought it to the attention of Columbia Records and got him signed to Okeh Records. His first session produced Rodgers and Hammerstein’s You’ll Never Walk Alone from the musical Carousel.  However Columbia released it on their pop label Epic and it topped the Billboard charts for eight weeks. He would go on to have hits with If I Love You, Ebb Tide and Unchained Melody and in 1955 was named Vocalist of the Year by Down Beat magazine. He would go on to record Great American Songbook singles Without a Song, Cuban Love Song, Everybody’s Got a Home But Me, and Somebody Somewhere.

Hamilton’s last hit record, You Can Have Her, came in 1961, and the Epic label treated him as a major star and issued sixteen albums by him. By the middle of the decade his career declined while recording with MGM and then RCA. In 1969 in Memphis, Tennessee, he made the final recordings of his career.

In early July 1969, he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage at his home in New Rochelle, New York. He was taken to New Rochelle General Hospital where he lay in a coma for more than a week. On July 20, 1969 vocalist Roy Hamilton, who was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, was Epic Records first star, inspired Sam Cooke, and influenced Elvis Presley and the Righteous Brothers, died after being removed from life support. He was 40 years old.

More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,vocal