Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Davis was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 14, 1967 but was raised in Binghamton, New York. He grew up with jazz music being played in the household listening to his father’s record collection and his grandparents played. With mentors Doug Beardsley and Al Hamme, he was fortunate to play with his peers Kris Jensen, Tony Kadleck, Tom Dempsey, Dena DeRose and John Hollenbeck among many others.
He went on to study jazz under Dr. Jackie McLean at The Hartt School of the University of Hartford in Connecticut. While in school, Davis also gained valuable experience sitting-in and gigging with Hotep Galeta, Nat Reeves, Don DePalma, Larry DiNatale and others at The 880 Club. A recommendation to Art Blakey saw Steve joining the Jazz Messengers at Sweet Basil in New York City in 1989. Following Blakey’s death, he joined the Hartt faculty in 1991 where he continues to teach today, and taught at The Artist’s Collective in Hartford.
He gained further international recognition playing with McLean’s sextet for five years and for four in Chick Corea’s Origin. Trombonist Steve Davis has played and recorded with Freddie Hubbard and The New Jazz Composers Octet, Benny Golson’s New Jazztet, Hank Jones, Cecil Payne, Horace Silver, Cedar Walton, Harold Mabern, Larry Willis, Eddie Henderson, Roy Hargrove, Avishai Cohen, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and Michael Weiss.
Davis has been a member of the cooperative sextet One for All since its inception in 1996, alongside Eric Alexander, Jim Rotondi, David Hazeltine, John Webber and Joe Farnsworth. He also currently plays with Larry Willis’s Quintet, The Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Star Big Band/Septet, leads The Steve Davis Quintet and remains a fixture on the New York and Hartford jazz scenes.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Marshall was born Edwin Marshall on April 13, 1938 in Springfield, Massachusetts and learned to play the drums as a child. He played in his father’s swing group and R&B bands while in high school. He moved to New York City in 1956, developing his percussion style under the influence of Max Roach and Art Blakey.
Two years later he was playing with Charlie Mariano followed by a stint with Toshiko Akiyoshi prior to Army service. He reunited with Akiyoshi in 1965, then worked with the house band at The Dom in New York, and with Stan Getz, Sam Rivers and toured with Dionne Warwick.
In 1967 he was a member of the fusion group The Fourth Way, touring San Francisco during the early Seventies, followed by work with Jon Hendricks and the Pointer Sisters. He would go on to work in Almanac with Bennie Maupin, Cecil McBee and Mike Nock releasing an album in ’77.
In the 1980s he worked in the project Bebop & Beyond, recording tribute albums to Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Undergoing heart surgery in 1984, temporarily sidelined his career, but he continued to perform on the recorder. He then taught at the San Francisco School of the Arts, issued his second release as a leader in 1999 and in the 2000s worked on the San Francisco Arts Commission. Drummer Eddie Marshall died of a heart attack on Wednesday, September 7, 2011.
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Requisites
Portrait In Jazz: This album contains Bill Evan’s greatest trio with wonderful interplay between piano and bass on Autumn Leaves and it introduces Evans’ Peri’s Scope. This is a gem of an album filled with standards but the interpretations are not the predictable routine.
Personnel: Bill Evans – piano, Scott LaFaro – bass, Paul Motian – drums
Record Date: Riverside / December 28, 1959
Songs: Come Rain or Come Shine, Autumn Leaves (take 1), Autumn Leaves (take 2), Witchcraft, When I Fall In Love, Peri’s Scope, What Is This Thing Called Love, Spring Is Here, Someday My Prince Will Come, Blue In Green (Take 3), Blue In Green (Take 2*)
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herbie Hancock was born Herbert Jeffrey Hancock on April 12, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. Illinois. Starting with a classical music education, he was considered a child prodigy, studied from age seven and played the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Chicago Symphony at age eleven.
Through his teens he was influenced by the vocal group Hi-Lo’s, Herbie never had a jazz teacher, developing his ear and sense of harmony. Influenced by Clare Fischer, Bill Evans, Ravel and Gil Evans, his harmonic guru was Chris Anderson with whom he studied. In the Sixties he attended Grinnell College, moved to Chicago, began working with Donald Byrd and Coleman Hawkins, studied at the Manhattan School of Music, quickly gained a reputation and played sessions with Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods.
In 1962 Hancock recorded his first solo album Takin’ Off for Blue Note Records that contained the hit for both Hancock and Mongo Santamaria – Watermelon Man. More importantly it caught the ear of Miles Davis and landed him an introduction by Tony Williams and membership of the second great quintet in 1963. It was during the Davis years that Herbie found his voice and subsequently produced two of the decade’s most influential albums, Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage.
He has recorded a catalogue of nearly sixty albums as a leader dozens of sessions as a sideman, working with the likes of Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Grant Green, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Donald Byrd, George Coleman, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard among others. He has been the subject of five films, won an Oscar for “Round Midnight soundtrack, received 14 Grammy Awards, five Playboy Music Polls and was honored as a NEA Jazz Master in 2004 along with a host of other recognitions. He is currently occupies the Creative Chair for Jazz with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Hancock joined the University of California, Los Angeles faculty as a professor in the UCLA music department where he teaches jazz music. He has received a Kennedy Center Honors Award for achievement in the performing arts, won 14 Grammy Awards, 1 Oscar for the Original Soundtrack of ‘Round Midnight and has been honored as an NEA Jazz Master among numerous other accolades.
He is the 2014 Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. Holders of the chair deliver a series of six lectures on poetry, “The Norton Lectures”, poetry being “interpreted in the broadest sense, including all poetic expression in language, music, or fine arts.” His theme is “The Ethics of Jazz. Pianist Herbie Hancock continues to advance the jazz genre in new directions.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anita Gravine was born April 11, 1946 in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. An experienced but little-known singer, in the mid-’60s, she sang with the bands of Larry Elgart, Buddy Morrow, and Urbie Green. She made her solo debut with Dream Dancing on the Progressive label in the early ’80s.
This was followed by her release of I Always Knew in 1985 for the now defunct Stash Records that displayed her appealing voice, solid sense of swing, and versatility. Gravine’s third project Welcome to My Dream, although not a critical success, continues to prove she can handle both ballad and up-tempo songs with ease of voice and rhythmic assurance.
She has worked with arranger and pianist Mike Abene, George Mraz, Billy Hart and Tom Harrell. She released Welcome To My Dream for Jazz Alliance in 1993. In 2010 Anita released the last of her four albums “Lights! Camera! Passion! Jazz And The Italian Cinema”, and she continues to perform and tour.
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