The Jazz Voyager
The Jazz Voyager is on his way across the pond once again to the City of Lights to a little venue located in the heart of Paris, between the Forum des Halles and the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Sunset/Sunside Jazz Club, which was created in 1982 by Michèle and Jean-Marc Portet.
The restaurant was transformed upon the request of musicians and regulars who patronized, thus the basement with vaulted ceilings and great acoustics made the area perfect for an intimate club. It was the first club to open on rue des Lombards.
This week I’m landing in Paris to hear a new voice from Kansas City called Eboni Fondren. She comes to Sunside as the lead singer of the famous Kansas City Big Band. Because she has often been compared to Nancy Wilson, my all time favorite vocalist, I have to hear her unique sensual voice tinged with gospel and R&B and an innate sense of swing for myself.
Showtimes: 9:30pm ~ 11:00pm
Cover: 20.00 € ~ 30.00 €
Sunset / Sunside is located at 60 Rue des Lombards 75001 Paris, France. For more information contact the venue at https://www.sunset-sunside.com.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Hollenbeck was born June 19, 1968 in Binghamton, New York and earned degrees in percussion and jazz composition from the Eastman School of Music. He moved to New York City in the early 1990s. He has worked with Bob Brookmeyer, Fred Hersch, Tony Malaby, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Kenny Wheeler, Pablo Ziegler, and Meredith Monk.
In 1998, he composed The Shape of Spirit, a piece for wind ensemble on Mons Records. The following year he composed Processional and Desiderata for wind ensemble and orator. This composition, written for and featuring the voice and trombone of Bob Brookmeyer, was released on Challenge Records in 2001.
Hollenbeck went on to receive several commissions from the Bamberg Choir and the Windsbacher Knabenchor in Germany, Bang on a Can, the People’s Commissioning Fund, the IAJE Gil Evans Fellowship, and in addition he composed and performed the percussion score to the following Meredith Monk works: Magic Frequencies, Mercy and The Impermanence Project.
His 2000 debut release Static Still with Theo Bleckmanne began his recording as a leader and in 2001 his sophomore project No Images landed on Gary Giddins’ Village Voice Top Ten list. He has gone on to record nine more albums to date as a leader and nine albums with the Claudia Quintet.
Drummer John Hollenbeck, who was an eleven year professor of jazz drums and improvisation at the Jazz Institute Berlin and in 2015 joined the faculty of Schulich School of Music, continues to perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mat Mathews was born Mathieu Hubert Wijnandts Schwarts on June 18, 1924 in The Hague, Netherlands and learned to play accordion while the country was still under the Nazi rule during World War II. It was after hearing Joe Mooney on a radio broadcast after the war that he decided to play jazz.
Moving to New York City in 1952, Mat formed a quartet which included Herbie Mann. He also worked and or recorded with Kenny Clarke, Art Farmer, Percy Heath, Carmen McRae, Oscar Pettiford, Joe Puma, Milt Jackson and Julius Watkins.
He worked mainly as a session musician in the late 1950s, and returned to the Netherlands in 1964, where he worked as an arranger, session musician, and record producer. In the 1970s, he again worked in the United States with Charlie Byrd, Doug Duke, Marian McPartland, and Clark Terry.
Accordionist, arranger, record producer Mat Mathews, who recorded eight albums as a leader, died on February 12, 2009 in Clarence Center, New York.
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On The Bookshelf
3 SHADES OF BLUE | JAMES KAPLAN
Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans And The Lost Empire Of Cool
1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the other members of Miles’s sextet come together to record the best selling jazz album of all time: Kind of Blue. That year, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity. Black geniuses, so legendary that they go by one name – Mingus, Monk, Rollins, Ornette, Blakey, Cannonball, Brubeck and Miles. They changed the music landscape and introduced a new sound. Kind of Blue is widely considered the most iconic jazz album of all time and certainly the bestselling.
3 Shades of Blue follows the paths of Miles, Coltrane and Evans to the mountaintop of 1959 and their roads on from there. It’s a book about music and business, race and heroin, and an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange hothouses that can produce its full flowering. But above all this is the story of three very different men – their struggles, their choices, their inspiration. The tapestry of their lives is, in James Kaplan’s hands, an American Odyssey.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Christopher Columbus Morris was born on June 17, 1902 in Greeenville, North Carolina. He led his own band from the 1930s into the late 1940s, holding a residency at the Savoy Ballroom for a period. During the mid 1940s he began drumming behind Louis Jordan, remaining with him until 1952. In the mid-to-late 1950s, Columbo backed Wild Bill Davis’s organ combo, and he recorded with Duke Ellington in 1967.
He worked again as a leader in the 1970s, in addition to doing tours of Europe with Davis. While in France he played with Floyd Smith, Al Grey, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Buddy Tate, and Milt Buckner. He got his first professional gig playing with Fletcher Henderson in 1921. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, Columbo played at most of the city’s nightclubs, and led the Club Harlem Orchestra for 34 years until 1978, when the club shut its doors.
Columbo worked, recorded, and toured with prominent jazz artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. He did an album on the Strand label called Jazz: Re-Discovering Old Favorites by the Chris Columbo Quintette featuring organist Johnny “Hammond” Smith. He appeared in the 1945 film It Happened In Harlem, based on the Harlem nightclub Smalls Paradise and the 1947 film Look Out Sister.
Prior to suffering a stroke in 1993 which partially paralyzed, Columbo was the oldest working musician in Atlantic City. Chris’ band went on to perform at practically every Atlantic City casino hotel. At the time of his stroke, he was playing regularly at the Showboat.
Drummer Chris Columbo, who was a father figure to Sonny Payne, who was also known as Crazy Chris Columbo and sometimes credited as Joe Morris on record, died on August 20, 2002 in New Jersey. He was 100 years old.
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