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.
More Posts: arranger,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone,vocal
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.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
Three Wishes
Pannonica asked what three wishes Ronnie Boykins who request and his answer was:
- “Three more!”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
More Posts: baroness,bass,history,instrumental,jazz,music,pannonica,three,wishes
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael John David Westbrook was born March 21, 1936 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England and grew up in Torquay. After a spell in accountancy and his National Service he went to art school and studied painting and where he began his first bands in 1958, soon joined by such musicians as John Surman, Lou Gare and Keith Rowe.
Moving to London, England in 1962, Westbrook led numerous bands, large and small, and played regularly at the Old Place and the Little Theatre Club at Garrick Yard, St Martin’s Lane. Together with Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, Westbrook shared the role of house-band at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club.
Becoming a key figure in the development of British jazz, Mike produced several big-band records for the Deram label, with the newly formed Mike Westbrook Concert Band, which varied in size from 10 to 26 musicians. His music was given exposure on BBC Radio. The British Arts Council awarded him a bursary to develop ‘Metropolis’ for an enlarged Concert Band, and the jazz suite was further broadcast on BBC Radio Three.
The 1970s saw a wide range of different projects beyond his orchestra work including but not limited to carnival processions, jazz-rock, avant-rock. At 80 years old, Westbrook, as part of the celebrations, recorded his first solo piano album for 40 years, titled PARIS.
Pianist, composer, and writer of orchestrated jazz pieces Mike Westbrook, who was awarded the OBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), and recorded his latest album London Bridge Live in Zurich 1990 in 2022, continues to expand his musical horizons.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James R. Coe was born in Tompkinsville, Kentucky on March 20, 1921 and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana with his family as a child. He first played in a band with Erroll “Groundhog” Grandy, who mentored J. J. Johnson and Wes Montgomery.
From 1938 to 1940, Coe performed with Buddy Bryant’s band and by the age of 20, was already touring with the Jay McShann band, which included Charlie Parker, Al Hibbler, Walter Brown, Bernard Anderson, Gene Ramey and Doc West.
In the 1950s Jimmy recorded for King Records as a member of Tiny Bradshaw’s band, then made a session with his own combo, though the company oddly insisted on billing him as Jimmy Cole. 1953 saw States recording his Gay Cats of Rhythm. By the late 1950s, he led the house band for the small Indianapolis-based label Note Records. Some of the material was licensed to Checker, which had better distribution.
Coe backed performers Wes Montgomery, Slide Hampton, David Baker, Freddie Hubbard, Carl Perkins, Larry Ridley, Leroy Vinnegar, as well as Aretha Franklin, Roy Hamilton, Gladys Knight & the Pips. and doo-wop performers, The Students.
Saxophonist Jimmy Coe transitioned in Indianapolis on February 26, 2004 at the age of 82.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone