Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenny Werner was born on November 19, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York and by four was a member of a song and dance group. He started piano lessons at seven and by the time he turned 11, he recorded a single with a fifteen-piece orchestra and appeared on television playing stride piano. He attended the Manhattan School of Music as a concert piano major and later transferred to the Berklee School of Music.
Upon graduation he travelled working in Brazil and Bermuda before returning to New York where he formed a trio with drummer Gary Berkowitz and bassist Alex Peglise. In 1977 he recorded first LP that featured of the music of Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson and George Gershwin and later that year with Charles Mingus on “Something Like A Bird”.
By the early 80s he toured extensively and recorded with Archie Shepp, recorded his own solo album of original compositions titled “Beyond the Forest of Mirkwood”, followed by a recording of the sounds heard coming from his Brooklyn-based studio – a hotbed of late-night jam sessions, titling the record after his address, 298 Bridge Street. In 1984 he joined the Mel Lewis Orchestra, began performing more in Europe and New York City as a leader and in duos with such notables as Rufus Reid, Ray Drummond, Jaki Byard also doing stints in the groups of Eddie Gomez, Tom Harrell, Joe Lovano and many others.
Since 1989 he has served as pianist, arranger and musical director for the noted film, television and Broadway star, Betty Buckley, has performed and recorded with Toots Thielemans mostly in duo settings but in trio with Oscar Castro-Neves and quartet with Airto Moreira. He has been nominated for a Grammy, has received performance grants from the NEA, a Guggenheim Fellowship Award for the 2010 release “No Beginning No End”, was commissioned to compose and conduct a memorial piece for Duke Ellington, and has been honored with the distinguished Composer award.
Kenny has a catalogue of twenty albums and another six as a sideman composer chops have had him writing compositions for the Mel Lewis Orchestra, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Cologne Radio Jazz Orchestra, the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra, the Metropole Orchestra and the Umo Jazz Orchestra and most recently has joined Quincy Jones. He is a published author of “Effortless Mastery” that features the physical, technical, psychological and spiritual aspects of being an artist and this publication has garnered him requests as a teacher and clinician from universities around the world, while maintaining an Artist-in-Residence at New York University.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cindy Blackman was born November 18, 1959 in Yellow Springs, Ohio into a musical family. Her mother and grandmother were classical musicians, an uncle was a vibraphonist and her dad was into jazz. Her first introduction to the drums happened when she was seven years old at a friend’s house she sat down at a drum set starting hitting and knew it was for her. Following this was joining the school band and convincing her parents to get a set of her own. By age 11 she was in Bristol, Connecticut, studying at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford and gaining an interest in jazz two years later after listening to Max Roach. It was at this time she got her first professional drum kit at fourteen.
One of her early influences was drummer Tony Williams who was the first drummer she ever saw perform live, later having the opportunity to participate in a William’s drum clinic. She soon moved to Boston, studying at the Berklee College of Music. She left after three semesters and moved to New York in 1982, became a street performer and got a chance to watch and learn from drummers like Billy Higgins, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones and Art Blakey who became her mentor and major influence.
Blackman initially encountered resistance to a woman playing drums in the jazz world, both racial and gender prejudice along with her musical opinion and hairstyle. But persistence paid off in 1984 when she was showcased on Ted Curson’s “Jazz Stares of the Future”, then in 1987 her first compositions appeared on Wallace Roney’s Verses album, then Muse offered her a contract and in ’88 lead her debut session “Arcane” with Joe Henderson, Wallace Roney, Tony Williams, Clarence Seay, Kenny Garrett and Larry Willis.
Cindy has immersed herself in both jazz and rock leaving the former for a period recording and touring with Lenny Kravitz but returned to her love of jazz. She has recorded several straight-ahead jazz sessions since her 1994 release of “Telepathy” and continues to evolve the music playing with a who’s who list of luminary jazz musicians. In her own words, “To me, jazz is the highest form of music that you can play because of the creative requirements”.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roswell Rudd, born Roswell Hopkins Rudd, Jr. on November 17, 1935, grew up in Sharon, Connecticut. Graduating from Yale University where he had played and recorded two albums of boisterous trad-jazz with Eli’s Chosen Six, a Dixieland band of Yale students that Rudd joined in the mid-’50s. But his landmark collaborations with Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, John Tchicai and Steve Lacy grew out of the lessons learned while playing rags and stomps in college.
In the 1960s, Rudd participated in key free jazz recordings with his ultra avant-garde New York Art Quartet, the soundtrack of the 1964 film New York Eye and Ear Control, Michael Mantler & Carla Bley’s 1968 Jazz Composer’s Orchestra-Communications with Cecil Taylor; and has collaborations with Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Larry Coryell and Gato Barbieri. A major factor in his career has been his lifelong friendships with saxophonists Archie Shepp and Steve Lacy, recording and performing the music of Thelonious Monk numerous times with the later.
Roswell is skilled in a variety of jazz genres but is best known for his avant-garde contributions. Rudd has taught ethnomusicology at Bard College and the University of Maine. Over a period of three decades he has assisted with world music song style – Cantometrics and Global Jukebox projects. He has collaborated and recorded with Malian, Mongolian and with Hispanic New Yorkers.
The Grammy Award-nominated jazz trombonist and composer Roswell Rudd conducts master classes and workshops around the world and since 1962 Rudd has worked extensively with saxophonist Archie Shepp.
Inspire A Young Mind
From Broadway To 52nd Street
The Music Man opened at the Majestic Theatre on December 19,1957 and entered the ranks of “Blockbuster” with one thousand three hundred and seventy-five performances. The book, music and lyrics were written and composed by Meredith Wilson for Robert Preston and Barbara Cook, who held the starring roles. The cast album won five Grammy Awards for “Best Original Cast Album”, was on the Billboard charts for 245 weeks and spawned a 1962 film version in which Preston reprised his role with Shirley Jones as the lead love interest. The song “Till There Was You” remains a jazz standard today.
The Story: This is the tale of smooth talking con man Harold Hill who poses as a boys band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with the cash. In River City, Iowa the prim librarian and piano teacher Marian Paroo sees through him, but when Hill helps her younger brother overcome his fear of social interactions due to his lisp, Marian begins to fall in love with Harold. Harold, in turn falling for Marian, risks being caught to win her.
Jazz History: Swing music or simply “Swing” is a form of American music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1940. Swing uses a strong rhythm section of double bass and drums as the anchor for a lead section of brass instruments such as trumpets and trombones, woodwinds including saxophones and clarinets and sometimes stringed instruments such as violin and guitar, medium to fast tempos, and a “lilting” swing time rhythm. The name swing came from the phrase “swing feel” where the emphasis is on the off–beat or weaker pulse in the music, unlike classical music. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement.
The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders were the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, a period known as the Swing Era.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Albert Edwin Condon was born November 16, 1905 in Goodland, Indiana and started playing music on the ukulele before switching to guitar. By the time he was sixteen he was in Chicago playing professionally with Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden and Frank Teschmacher.
In 1928 Condon moved to New York City frequently arranging jazz sessions for various labels, sometimes playing with the artists he brought like Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. He organized racially integrated recording sessions – when these were still rare – with Waller, Armstrong and Henry “Red” Allen. He played with the Red Nichols band, later forming a long association with Milt Gabler’s Commodore Records in 1938.
From the late 1930s on Eddie was a regular at Nick’s in Manhattan with Pee Wee Russell, Wild Bill Davison and Bobby Hackett. He went on to appear in a short film with Hackett, produced a series of jazz broadcasts from Town Hall during the last years of WWII that gave him national popularity.
From 1945 through 1967 he ran his own New York jazz club, Eddie Condon’s. In the 50s he recorded a sequence of classic albums for Columbia Records, toured Britain, Australia, Japan, the U. S. and performed at jazz festivals throughout the world until 1971. Two years later, Eddie Condon, jazz banjoist, guitarist, bandleader and arranger passed away on August 4, 1973 in New York City.
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