Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Madeline Eastman was born June 27, 1954 in San Francisco, California. It wasn’t until she turned 18 while watching Lady Sings The Blues that she became enchanted with jazz singing. Listening to Miles Davis’ mid-‘60s quintet and the vocals of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan but gleaned her greatest inspiration from Carmen McRae.
In 2004, Ms. Eastman won 3rd place in the Down Beat Reader’s Poll “Best Female Jazz Vocalist” and was recognized in Down Beat Magazine’s International Critics Poll as “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition.” Eastman has long been heralded for her vocal gifts, interpretive savvy, and irrepressible sense of adventure.
Splitting her time between touring and teaching at Stanford Jazz Workshop and being named Department Chair of Jazz Vocal Studies at the Jazzschool in Berkeley, California, Madeline has performed in Asia and Europe and major clubs in the U.S. such as Yoshi’s, Jack London Square, New York nightclubs and festivals like the Cotati, Monterey and Glasgow.
She has released five CD’s on her own Mad Kat label that she co-founded with vocalist Kitty Margolis and has recorded with such luminaries as Cedar Walton, Kenny Barron, Phil Woods, Rufus Reid and Tony Williams. Vocalist Madeline Eastman continues to record and perform in her bold and original interpretations of the jazz canon and lively onstage persona.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Cunliffe was born June 26, 1956 in Andover, Massachusetts. His musical introduction began as a child listening to his mother play piano and listening to Sixties and Seventies music, especially the jazz oriented music.
Attending Phillips Academy he played in rock and roll bands, spent several years at Wesleyan University, heard an Oscar Peterson record and overnight converted to jazz. Graduating from Duke University he received his masters from Eastman School of Music where he studied with Mary Lou Williams.
Over the course of his career taught music at Central State University at Wilberforce, Ohio, toured as pianist and arranger with the Buddy Rich Big Band, worked with Frank Sinatra, played piano in various hotels and wrote jingles for several music production houses. A move to Los Angeles gave him the opportunity to work with such jazz notables as Ray Brown, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson and James Moody and joined the Clayton Brothers band.
Pianist and composer Bill Cunliffe, has received several Emmy, Grammy and Down Beat awards, has written several books on jazz, has delved into the music of Latin America and Brazil and in between recording and performing, he teaches at California State University.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Smith was born John Henry Smith on June 25, 1922 in Birmingham, Alabama but his family moved north during the Depression living in several cities before their final destination ending in Portland, Maine.
Smith taught himself to play guitar in pawnshops, which let him play in exchange for keeping the guitars in tune. At thirteen years of age he was teaching others to play the guitar. He got his first guitar after one of his students bought a new guitar and gave him his old guitar becoming the first guitar Smith owned.
Dropping out of high school, Johnny joined a local hillbilly band, Uncle Lem and the Mountain Boys, and travelled around Maine earning four dollars a night. His interest in jazz peaked after hearing jazz bands on the radio, started practicing playing jazz, left The Mountain Boys at eighteen and founded a jazz trio called The Airport Boys.
Equally at home playing Birdland or sight-reading scores in the orchestral pit of the New York Philharmonic and was one of the most versatile guitarists of the 1950s. He recorded for Roost Records, with his most critically acclaimed Moonlight In Vermont was named one of Down Beat magazine’s top jazz albums in 1952. His most famous musical composition is the tune “Walk Don’t Run” in 1955. Johnny Smith stepped out of the public eye/ear in the 1960s, having moved to Colorado in 1958 to teach and run a music store and to raise his daughter after the death of his second wife. The cool jazz and mainstream guitarist who actively participated in the jazz scene from 1935 to 1960 passed away on June 11, 2013.
Jazz Is Global – Share
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Gruntz was born in Basel, Switzerland on June 24, 1932. The young pianist won prizes at Zurich Jazz Festivals and in 1958 was pianist with the International Youth Band at the Newport Jazz Festival. While there he accompanied, among others Louis Armstrong and in an instant became famous.
George went on to work with jazz musicians Phil Woods, Roland Kirk, Don Cherry, Chet Baker, Art Farmer, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin and Mel Lewis to name a few. From 1972 to 1994 he served as artistic director for the JazzFest Berlin, composed his first opera, founded the Piano Conclave and the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band and moderated the TV music series “All You Need Is Love”.
An accomplished arranger and composer, having been commissioned by many orchestra and symphonies, he is also an organist, harpsichordist and keyboardist with more that three dozen albums to his credit. He continued to compose, arrange, record and perform until his death on January 10, 2013.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Donald Harrison, Jr. was born June 23, 1960 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and then went on to study at Berklee College of Music. In the 80s he became a Jazz Messenger, played with Roy Haynes, Jack McDuff, Terence Blanchard and Don Pullen, and was part of the re-formed Headhunters band in the Nineties.
By1991 Don had recorded “Indian Blues” capturing the sound and culture of New Orleans’ Congo Square in a jazz context and by mid-decade created the “Nouveau Swing” jazz style, merging the swing beat with many of today’s popular dance styles of music as well as those prominent from his cultural experiences in his hometown.
Harrison has performed in the smooth jazz arena, is a producer, singer and rapper in the traditional Afro-New Orleans Culture and hip-hop genres with his group, The New Sounds of Mardi Gras and is the Big Chief of the Congo Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group that keeps alive the traditions of Congo Square.
Not limited by his music crossing genres in his compositions and playing, Don has created large orchestral pieces, was featured in Spike Lee’s HBO documentary “When The Levees Broke”, directed the New Jazz School for the Isidore Newman School, is the director of Tipitina’s Intern Program and has nurtured a number of young musicians including his nephew and Grammy-nominated trumpeter Christian Scott, Mark Whitfield, Cyrus Chestnut, Christian McBride and the Notorious B.I.G.
Give The Gift Of Knowledge
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