Daily Dose Of Jazz…

David Owen Mackay was born on March 24, 1932 in Syracuse, New York. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut from 1950 to 1954, where he was the first blind student to graduate. He then attended Boston University from 1956 to 1958, where he studied with Margaret Charloff. He also studied with Lennie Tristano in New York City, then at the Lenox School of Jazz where he studied with Bill Evans, and lastly at The Hartford School of Music where he studied with Asher Zlotnik.

By the mid-1960s, Mackay joined the Hindustani Jazz Sextet with Don Ellis, Harihar Rao, Emil Richards, Steve Bohannon, Chuck Domanico and Ray Neapolitan. During this period he played with the Don Ellis Orchestra. The late Sixties saw him and Vicky Hamilton formed a duo and produced two recordings together with instrumentation including flute and saxes from Ira Schulman and guitar from Joe Pass.

In the mid-1970s, Dave along with Bill Henderson, and Joyce Collins formed a unique trio which toured the northwest, recorded two Grammy nominated albums for Discovery, and by 1981 they were performing on the television show Ad Lib. By the end of the decade with Lori Bell, and Ron Satterfield he formed the group Interplay, which garnered them four Grammy npominations. In the 1990s, he teamed up with Stephanie Haynes.

By the turn of the century he teamed with John Giannelli on bass and Joe Correro on drums performing Bill Evans tunes in a celebration of the Life and Music of bassist Scott LaFaro. He then hooked up with bassist Kenny Wild and singer Tierney Sutton. He would go on to perform with Serge Chaloff, Sonny Stitt, Bob Wilber, Bobby Hackett, Jim Hall, Don Ellis, Emil Richards, Shelly Manne, Chet Baker, Joe Pass, Warne Marsh, Kai Winding, Stephanie Haynes, and Tierney Sutton.

As a composer a couple of Mackay’s original compositions were later recorded by Cal Tjader, and by the Baja Marimba Band. He wrote a majority of the music with lyricist Barbara Schill for a hit stage musical comedy titled Is It Just Me, Or Is It Hot In Here?

Pianist, vocalist and composer Dave Mackay, with roots in the works of Art Tatum, Bud Powell, and Bill Evans, who favored the standards of the 1940s and 1950s and the bossa novas of Luíz Eça, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and João Gilberto, transitioned on July 29, 2020.

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The Jazz Voyager

The Jazz Voyager is back once more on a flight to the nation’s capital to the Big Apple. I’ll be giving my regards to Broadway before heading up a few blocks to 10 Columbus Circle 10019 where the Appel Room is located within Jazz At Lincoln Center. It will be a night of Brazilian music and romance with vocalist Rosa Passos.

Based on the design of a Greek amphitheater, The Appel Room merges luxuriant splendor with functional accessibility. One glance at the dramatic 50′ × 83′ wall of glass confirms that The Appel Room possesses one of New York City’s greatest backdrops—Central Park and the Manhattan skyline. Several mechanical tiers make up the fluid inner structure of the amphitheater, offering a strikingly adaptable layout. This ingenious design allows for a smooth transformation from supper-club or event mode to theater mode. For additional capability, The Appel Room features a removable stage on its bottom level.

Vocalist Rosa Passos reunites with NEA Jazz Masters Kenny Barron and Ron Carter in the Appel Room for the first time together. While Passos has been called the female João Gilberto, she is a prolific and distinct vocalist and guitarist with a playful yet sophisticated style, marked by perfect pitch and spacious elegance. Enhancing this meeting of these three masters is first-call Brazilian drummer, Rafael Barata.

The Appel Room is located at 10 Columbus Circle, New York City 10019. For more info 212~258-9800 or visit https://2023.jazz.org/rosa-passos-with-kenny-barron-and-ron-carter

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lance Bryant was born on March 23, 1961 in Markham, Illinois. His early musical experience was in the Baptist church. He received his formal education at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts where he studied saxophone composition and arranging. Moving to New York City in the mid Eighties he continued his study of saxophone and arranging privately with Frank Foster.

In the Nineties he began his relationship with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and three years later became the orchestra’s musical director and principal arranger. He made his film debut in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. He traveled extensively with Phyllis Hyman, Jon Hendricks, Pete “LaRocca” Sims, Wallace Roney, Abdullah Ibrahim, Bootsy Collins,James Williams and numerous others. He was an on-stage musician for the Broadway musical review Swing, has recorded with Carla Cook, George Gee, Yoron Israel.

Returning to his church roots he became Director of Instrumental Music at Fountain Baptist Church, Minister of Music for Andover Baptist Church and released Psalm in 2002, his first of a four cd series of originals and jazz arrangements of hymns and spirituals. As an educator he has taught Covenant Christian Academy, Phillips Academy, his alma mater Berklee, and Jazz At Lincoln Center’s Educational Department.

Saxophonist, arranger and vocalist Lance Bryant when not touring with Abdullah Ibrahim and Ekaya, he continues to perform around New York and New Jersey with Andy Farber Orchestra and the New Lionel Hampton Big Band.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Fred Anderson was born in Monroe, Louisiana on March 22, 1929.  When he was ten, his parents separated, and he moved to Evanston, Illinois, where he initially lived with his mother and aunt in a one-room apartment. When Anderson was a teenager, a friend introduced him to the music of Charlie Parker, and he soon decided he wanted to play saxophone, purchasing his first instrument for $45. He listened to Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, and Illinois Jacquet, all of whom would influence his playing. He also heard Young and Parker in concert on multiple occasions.

Unlike many musicians at the time, Anderson did not play with dance bands or school ensembles, and instead focused on practicing, taking private lessons, and studying music theory at the Roy Knapp Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois all the while supporting his family by working as a waiter. He also began making an effort to develop a personal sound on his instrument, with the goal of combining Ammons’ big sound with Parker’s speed.

At around this time, he began to develop a series of exercises which he incorporated into his daily practice routine, and which eventually became a book titled Exercises for the Creative Musician.

In the early 1960s, Anderson began listening to and studying the music of Ornette Coleman, and immediately related Coleman’s playing to that of Charlie Parker. Influenced by Coleman, he formed a piano-less band with trumpeter Bill Brimfield, bassist Bill Fletcher, and drummer Vernon Thomas, playing a mixture of bebop standards and Anderson originals. During the decade he would go on to play weekly jam sessions, joined the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and remained in the States when many of his AACM colleagues left for Europe seeking better opportuities.

In the Seventies he formed the Fred Anderson Sextet, with trombonist George E. Lewis, reedist Douglas Ewart, bassist Felix Blackmon, drummer Hamid Drake, and vocalist Iqua Colson.  By 1977 he and Brimfield visited Europe, where they recorded Accents with the Austrian trio Neighbours, then returned and opened a venue in Chicago that he named the Birdhouse, after Charlie Parker. Unfortunately, Anderson encountered resistance and harassment from officials and people in the neighborhood, who were suspicious of his motives, and he ended up closing the club a year later.

The following decade saw Fred taking over ownership of a bar in Chicago called the Velvet Lounge, and transformed it into a center for the city’s jazz and experimental music scenes, hosting Sunday jam sessions and numerous concerts. The club expanded and relocated in the summer of 2006.

Though he remained an active performer, Anderson rarely recorded for about a decade beginning in the early Eighties. In 1990, however, he received the first Jazz Masters Fellowship from Arts Midwest, and by the mid-1990s, he resumed a more active recording schedule, both as a solo artist, and in collaboration with younger performers. He would go on to perform as a soloist with 30 piece orchestras, mentor young musicians, and his Velvet Lounge has international fame.

Tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, rooted in the swing, hard bop and free jazz idioms, who continued to record and tour throughout the 2000s and was scheduled to perform the day he died, transitioned on June 24, 2010.

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Three Wishes

Pannonica asked what three wishes Ronnie Boykins who request and his answer was:

1. “Three more!”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

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