Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Austin was born on October 22, 1958 in Capetown, South Africa. His passion for guitar was evident at a very tender age and spent his youth mingling with gifted street musicians around the city who greatly influenced him over the years.
A versatile guitarist and a wholehearted Jazz composer. In the late 70’s, he co-founded and performed with the “Touch” band and enjoyed great national success until the mid 80’s. Following this first accomplishment, he toured and made appearances with various musicians and live bands across South Africa until he made his international debut with the Andrew Young band in 2002. For the next 3 years, he played with the band in numerous countries such as China, Turkey and Tunisia.
Between 2005 and 2008, he performed at Le Royal Meridien Beach Resort & Spa in Dubai. During 2009 & 2010, he toured throughout the United Arab Emirates. After touring Harry released 2 albums over the net titled Mojaezz, and Easylike.
Guitarist Harry Austin, who performs in the smooth jazz idiom, continues to play, tour and record.
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On The Bookshelf…
THE LAST HOLIDAY: A MEMOIR | GIL SCOTT-HERON
From a humble childhood divided between his grandmother in Jackson, Tennessee and his mother in New York City, Gil Scott Heron became one of the most uncompromising and fearless truthtellers of his generation.
His memoir provides a remarkable glimpse into his life and times, from the young man who gained entry into New York’s prestigious Fieldstone School, finding a path out of poverty even as his mother was being hospitalized in a diabetic coma, to the bill budding activist who led his university in a strike to demand better student healthcare.
As he comes of age as a man and as an artist, he provides keen observations on the civil rights movement and the tumultuous changes of the 1960s.
The Last Holidday, published by Grove Press on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 16, 2012 in honor of the historic tour in which he participated in the fall of 1980. It serves as both the climax of the book and the inspiration for the title.
His friend Stevie Wonder decided to use his Hotter Than July tour to raise popular support for a national holiday honoring the great civil rights leader, and he invited Scott-Heron to join him. Thus, the book is not just a tribute to Gil’s activism but also offers highly personal recollections of Wonder, Clive Davis, and other musical peers and acquaintances, as well as insights into the music industry, the Civil Rights movement, modern America, governmental hypocrisy, and our wider place in the world.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tupac Mantilla was born October 21, 1978 in Bogotá, Columbia. Holding a Master of Music Honors Degree from the New England Conservatory, he won first prize at the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra’s Classical Soloist Competition in 2002.
As a scholar, Mantilla is associated with Stanford University and the Berklee College of Music. He gives workshops and lectures and runs rhythm/percussion oriented programs worldwide, through Percuaction’s Global Rhythm Institute (GRI), of which he is founder, CEO and artistic director.
Mantilla has appeared at festivals, institutions and venues and several percussion-oriented workshops and lectures for multi-national companies and organizations around the world.
Mantilla has collaborated and performed with artists including Bobby McFerrin, Bill Cosby, Esperanza Spalding, Zakir Hussain, Savion Glover, Danilo Perez, Tia Fuller, Julian Lage, Reinhard Flatischler, Kenny Werner, John Patitucci, Bob Moses, Cecil McBee, Medeski Martin & Wood, Lisa Fischer, Selene Muñoz, Jamey Haddad, Anders Koppel, and the Bogotá’s Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.
Drummer and percussionist Tupac Mantilla, who is the artistic director of the percussion group Tekeyé, continues to devote much of his time to his solo percussion project.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edgardo “Dado” Moroni was born October 20, 1962 in Genoa, Italy and started playing piano at age four. A self-taught musician, by his mid-teens he was playing professionally around Italy and by age 17 had recorded his first album.
Throughout the 1980s Dado worked mostly in Europe and played a long stint as part of former Duke Ellington bassist Jimmy Woode’s trio at Widder Bar in Zurich, Switzerland. At 25, in 1987 he served as a juror at the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition.
He moved to the U.S. in 1991 and became part of the New York jazz scene. He appeared regularly as a leader and sideman at Blue Note, Birdland, and the Village Vanguard. During this period he recorded several CDs.
Moroni has played with Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Ray Brown, Ron Carter, Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, Hank Jones, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Alvin Queen.
Based in Italy, Dado continues to perform worldwide. In 2007 he won the Italian Jazz Awards as Best Jazz Act. 2009 had him named Best Italian Jazz Pianist in the Top Jazz referendum sponsored by Musica Jazz magazine. The following year he was appointed Professor of Jazz Piano at Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Music in Turin, Italy.
Pianist, composer and educator Dado Moroni continues to perform, record and teach.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roger Wolfe Kahn was born on October 19, 1907 in Morristown, New Jersey, into a wealthy German Jewish banking family. He began studying the violin aged six and is said to have learned to play eighteen musical instruments before starting to lead his own orchestra in 1923, at the age of only 16. His interest in music led the ten year old to buy a ukulele with instructions on how to play. The ukulele turned his mind toward violins, pianos, banjos and jazz orchestras.
By sixteen he rejected college, formed his own booking agency and organized a paying band. He installed it at the Knickerbocker Grill in New York. Self-taught, he could play every instrument in the outfit, and his favorite instruments were the piano and saxophone. By the time he reached nineteen, he had eleven orchestras on his books that played in resorts and hotels from Newport, Rhode Island to Florida. His success enabled him to pursue his passion for composing music and aviation.
Kahn appeared in a short film, hired many famous jazz musicians and singers of the day to play and sing in his band, especially during recording sessions. They were Tommy Dorsey, Morton Downey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Artie Shaw, Jack Teagarden, Red Nichols, Libby Holman, Gertrude Niesen, Franklyn Baur, Dick Robertson, Elmer Feldkamp and Gene Krupa.
Early on in his career he made several recordings under the name Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Hotel Biltmore Orchestra. He and his Orchestra recorded four takes of the song Rhythm Of The Day for Victor Records and for some reason Victor chose not to release any of them. Undeterred, he wrote the song Following You Around, and arranged the score of his stage musical Rhapsurdity and Hearts and Flowers.
During his career Roger made recordings for Victor, Brunswick and Colubia records, fronted several fashionable New York night clubs and owned several clubs, one beingLe Perroquet de Paris, opened in New York in November 1926 with a five-dollar cover charge. In 1938, the Kahn Orchestra reformed to perform a special one-off concert, in what could have been the Kahn Orchestra’s last concert.
Roger Wolfe Kahn, who was a composer, bandleader and an aviator, died of a heart attack in New York City on July 12, 1962.
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