Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ted Rosenthal was born on November 15, 1959 and raised in Great Neck, Long Island, New York. He began playing by ear at a young age, and started studying at 12 with Tony Aless, a sideman with Charlie Parker and Stan Getz. In high school, he studied briefly with Jaki Byard and Lennie Tristano, and attended workshops with Billy Taylor, Woody Shaw and others.
Finding limited opportunities to study jazz at the conservatory level, Ted found joy in in studying classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance while continuing to pursue his love of jazz outside the classroom. After college, he continued his classical piano studies with Phillip Kawin while playing jazz in and around New York.
Rosenthal won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 1988, launched his solo career, released his first CD as a leader New Tunes, New Traditions, with Ron Carter, Billy Higgins and Tom Harrell. The album interweaves Thelonious Monk songs with his original compositions. In the early 1990s with the last Gerry Mulligan Quartet, recording three CDs with Mulligan and performed in major jazz festivals throughout the world. After Mulligan’s death, Rosenthal became musical director of The Gerry Mulligan All Star Tribute Band, featuring Lee Konitz, Bob Brookmeyer and Randy Brecker. The group’s CD, Thank You, Gerry!, was nominated for a Grammy award in 1998.
As a sideman Ted has performed in small groups led by Art Farmer, Jon Faddis, Phil Woods, Jay Leonhart, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Westchester Jazz Orchestra, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Lewis Nash, George Mraz, Bill Charlap, Dick Hyman, Helen Merrill, Mark Murphy and Ann Hampton Callaway, to name a few.
Pianist Ted Rosenthal, a recipient of 3 NEA grants, currently holds faculty positions at the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music in New York City, is a member of the Juilliard Jazz Quintet and continues to perform, record, compose and tour as a leader and sideman.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kim Rene Nalley was born November 14, 1971 in San Francisco, California but was raised in New Haven, Connecticut in a musical family that includes jazz drummer and photographer Reggie Jackson and R&B guitarist-vocalist Earl Whitaker. She received piano lessons from her great-grandmother and originally pursued classical voice, studying drama and opera at the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. She went on to study classical music at Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
At Holy Cross, Nalley sang with the power rock combo The Limit, which featured Crusader musicians Garrett Scott Flynn, Steve Guerette, Jim Januzzi, Allan Harper and Anthony O’Donnell. Switching to jazz shortly after moving to San Francisco, while attended UC Berkeley, she sang in the Cal Big Band, as well as receiving a See’s Candy’ Scholarship for Outstanding Musicianship.
Kim performed weekly at the Alta Plaza and director Michael Tilson Thomas discovered and recorded her in concert and hired her to sing a program of Gershwin tunes with the San Francisco Symphony. She began performing with the Johnny Nocturne Band for the Rounder/ Bullseye label, went on national and international tours, relocate to Switzerland, but returned to save the club Jazz at Pearl’s from going out of business.
Citing the Little Rascals and Bug Bunny cartoons as her seminal jazz influences, jazz and blues singer, actress, historian and former Jazz at Pearl’s club owner Kim Nalley, known for her powerful 3½ octave range, scatting, r&b, spirituals and folk guitar, continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ernie Farrow was born on November 13, 1928 in Huntington, West Virginia and is the half-brother to Alice Coltrane. It is said that he was responsible for introducing her to jazz. He had his own bands throughout high school and emerged in the professional jazz scene in the first half of the ’50s, working with a series of demanding bandleaders including Terry Gibbs and Stan Getz.
Farrow’s relationship with Yusef Lateef began around 1956, performing alongside Hugh Lawson and drummer Louis Hayes and recording a dozen albums with him from 1957 to 1964. Over the course of his short career he also worked with Barry Harris and John Williams among others.
A few years later he began leading his own group, based out of Detroit and was a strong influence on his younger piano-playing sister. In the ’60s he was featured on bass in a terrific classic jazz piano trio fronted by Red Garland.
Best known as a bassist, he however, started on piano before adding bass and drums. Multi-instrumentalist Ernie Farrow, who played piano, double bass, and drums, passed away on July 14, 1969.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Miles Jaye Davis was born on November 12, 1957 in Yonkers, New York and is known professionally as Miles Jaye. He studied music theory and classical violin for more than a decade at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Saratoga School of Orchestral Studies, Indian Hill and Brooklyn College.
While in the Air Force Jaye played flute, keyboards and bass and launched his singing career while stationed at Clarke Air Force Base in the Philippines. He toured Europe with jazz guitarist Eric Gale and singers Phyllis Hyman and Jon Lucien before taking over as “Cop” in the Village People in the mid 1980s. He stayed with the band for two years before launching his solo career and signing to Teddy Pendergrass’ production company Top Priority Records.
Releasing his debut album, Miles, on Island Records, he continued on the soul course with his music, contributing as musician, songwriter and co-producer on the Pendergrass 1988 hit album, Joy.
In 1991 he formed his own company, Black Tree Records, and recorded and released a string of increasingly jazz-influenced albums. Never straying completely from jazz he has also worked with George Duke, Roy Ayers, Grover Washington, Jr. and Branford Marsalis. Violinist, singer, producer and songwriter Miles Jaye continues to pursue new horizons in jazz.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kahil El’Zabar was born on November 11, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois and attended Lake Forest College before joining the AACM, Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in the early 1970s. He would go on to become its chairman in 1975.
During the 1970s, he formed the musical groups Ritual Trio and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, both of which have remained active. Kahil has collaborated include Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Cannonball Adderley, and Paul Simon.
The multi-instrumentalist, Kahil El’Zabar, who is mainly a percussionist and composer, regularly records for Delmark Records. As a leader and co-leader he has released eight albums, fourteen with the Ensemble, 14 with the Trio, two with the group Tri-Factor and has recorded four as a sideman with David Murray and Wadada Leo Smith. He continues to perform, compose and record.
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