The Jazz Voyager

Heading back up to the Big Apple, this time motoring up the highway on 95 North. I’ll get in early and will be catching the sights and sounds of the city until it’s time to make my way to Columbus Circle. There it will be my fortune to be in the house that Wynton Marsalis helped build, as an audience member in Dizzy’s Club. Overlooking the New York skyline, the lights of the night will only enhance the performance.

This week this jazz voyager will be taking a very talented organist, pianist and composer, Akiko Tsuruga. Landing in New York City from Osaka, Japan she quickly immersed herself into the jazz scene. Sitting in and playing gigs, she eventually recorded with Frank Wess, Jimmy Cobb, Grady Tate and other top NY musicians. In 2006 she joined Lou Donaldson’s quartet.

Performance Lineup:

Akiko Tsuruga, organ Joe Magnarelli, trumpet Myron Walden, tenor & baritone, saxophone, flute Byron Landham, drums Charlie Sigler, guitar

Tickets: $20.00 ~$50.00

More Posts: adventure,club,genius,jazz,music,organ,piano,preserving,travel

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jon Ivar Christensen was born March 20, 1943 in Oslo, Norway. In the late 1960s he played alongside Jan Garbarek on several recordings by the composer George Russell. He also was a central participant in the jazz band Masqualero, with Arild Andersen, and they reappeared in 2003 for his 60th anniversary.

He appears on many recordings on the ECM label with such artists as Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Bobo Stenson, Eberhard Weber, Ralph Towner, including the seminal 1975 Solstice, Barre Phillips, Arild Andersen, Enrico Rava, John Abercrombie, Michael Mantler, Miroslav Vitous, Rainer Brüninghaus, Charles Lloyd, Dino Saluzzi Jakob Bro, and Tomasz Stanko.

Christensen was a member of the Keith Jarrett “European Quartet” of the 1970s, along with Jan Garbarek and Palle Danielsson, which produced five jazz recordings on ECM Records.

Drummer Jon Christensen died on February 18, 2020, at the age of 76 in his hometown.

More Posts: drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Yervant Harry Babasin, Jr. was born on March 19, 1921 in Dallas, Texas to American/Armenian parents. He attended North Texas State University, one of many noted jazz alumni from the school. Among them were Jimmy Giuffre, with whom he played in Bill Ware’s orchestra around 1940, and Herb Ellis, who played with him in the Charlie Fisk Orchestra starting in 1942. Fisk actually fired his rhythm section after hearing Ellis and Babasin play, and after he was admitted, Babasin quit school to go on tour with Fisk.

He toured in the 1940s with Jimmy Joy, Bob Strong, Billie Rogers, Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet, Boyd Raeburn, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Frank DeVol, and Jerry Gray. He also appeared in A Song Is Born, one of many jazz stars to play roles in the film. On the film set he met guitarist Laurindo Almeida, and the two began jamming together. Along with Roy Harte and Bud Shank their quartet was an early experiment blending Brazilian music and jazz. Their 1954 ten inch discs are predecessors to the bossa nova explosion of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

1947 saw him recording the first cello solos known in jazz music, with the Dodo Marmarosa Trio. In order to do so, he tuned his strings in fourths. In later cello ensembles he added a bass player. He and Oscar Pettiford did a session together with two cellos. In the mid-1950s, he put together his own ensemble, Harry Babasin & the Jazzpickers. This ensemble released three albums and played regularly at the Purple Onion in Hollywood, California. One recording of note was made in 1952 at the Tradewinds nightclub in Inglewood. It features Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, Sonny Criss, Al Haig, Larance Marable, and Harry, in one of Bird’s few West Coast appearances.

His career cooled in the 1960s, returning to work with Charlie Barnet and supporting Bob Hope’s USO tours. In the 1970s he and Harte initiated the Los Angeles Theaseum, a jazz archive and preservation society. Harry gave his last tour in 1985 with John Banister on piano. Over the course of his career he was possibly a part of as many as 1,500 recordings.

Bassist Harry Babasin, nicknamed The Bear, died of emphysema in Los Angeles, California on May 21, 1988.

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

Jazz Poems

COLTRANE, SYEEDA’S SONG FLUTE

When I came across it on the 

piano it reminded me of her, 

because it sounded like a 

happy, child’s song.

COLTRANE

To Marilyn, to Peter,

playing, making things : the walls, the stairs,

the attics, bright nests in nests;

the slow, light, grave unstitching of lies,

opening, stinking, letting in air

you bear yourselves in, become your own mother

and father,

you own child.

You lying closer.

You going along. Days.

The strobe-lit wheel stops dead

once, twice in a life: old fashioned rays:

and then all the rest of the time pulls blur,

only you remember it more, playing.

great things of us all, I think wwe will all, Coltrane,

meet speechless and easy in Heaven,our names

known and forgotten, all dearest, all come

giant-stepping

out into some wide, light, merciful mind..

Coltrane, 40, gone

right through the floorboards,

up to the shins, up to the eyes,

closed over,

Syeeda’s happy child’s song

left up here, playing.

JEAN VALENTINE

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jose Mangual Sr. was born on March 18, 1924  in Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico. He began playing percussion at the age of ten and by 1938 moved to New York at the age of 14. In 1952 he began playing timbales and percussion for Machito’s Orchestra.

In the 1950s Mangual played with the godfather of modern-day salsa Arsenio Rodriguez and with Latin jazz pioneer Cal Tjader. Then he joined Erroll Gardner’s band with whom he traveled the world, playing jazz for international audiences. During this time he performed and recorded with Cannonball Adderley, Sarah Vaughn, Herbie Mann. and appeared on Count Basie’s April in Paris, Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, Dizzy Gillespie’s Talkin’ Verve, Tito Puente’s Babarabatiri, Willie Bobo’s Spanish Grease, Gato Barbieri’s Viva Emiliano Zapata, as well as on multiple Charlie Parker’s compilations.

He has also performed with Dexter Gordon, Carmen McRae, Jorge Dalto, Stan Getz, Louis Jordan, Ray Charles, Tito Rodriguez, Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente and Chano Pozo.

In the 1970s, Mangual recorded two instructional albums Buyú and José Mangual* & Carlos “Patato” Valdez* – Understanding Latin Rhythms Vol. 1 with Carlos “Patato” Valdez for the drum maker Latin Percussion^.

In 1986 he co-wrote and recorded Los Mangual – Una Dinastia with his sons Jose, Jr. and Luis Mangual. In 2001 he was posthumously inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.

Percussionist Jose Mangual Sr., world renowned for his bongo drum performances and recordings during the 1940s and 1950s, died on September 4, 1998 in New York City.

More Posts: bongos,history,instrumental,jazz,music,percussion