Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Peter Erskine was born on June 5, 1954 in Somers Point, New Jersey and began playing the drums at the age of four. He graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, then studied percussion at Indiana University.
He began playing professionally in 1972 when he joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra. After three years with Kenton he spent two years with Maynard Ferguson and in 1978 Erskine joined Weather Report along Jaco Pastorius in the rhythm section. After four years and five albums with Weather Report and the Jaco Pastorius big band Word of Mouth, he joined Steps Ahead.
Over the course of his prolific career Peter has recorded 20 albums as a leader and to date has been a sideman on over ninety-five albums working with John Abercrombie, Diana Krall, Eliane Elias, Queen Latifah, Linda Ronstadt, Eberhard Weber, Kate Bush, Gary Burton, Randy and Michael Brecker, George Cables, Pino Daniele, Eddie Daniels, Al Di Meola, Marty Ehrlich, Joe Farrell, Jan Garbarek, Giorgio, Gordon Goodwin, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Marc Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Gary Peacock, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Rod Stewart, Ralph Towner, Joe Zawinul, Kenny Wheeler and many more.
Drummer Peter Erskine currently splits his time between performing and teaching. He ss a professor at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. His big band recordings with the Bob Mintzer Big Band are modern big band jazz/funk performances studied by many students of drums and drumming. He has published five books on drumming and has one DVD titled The Erskine Method of Drumming.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anthony Braxton was born June 4, 1945 in Chicago, Illinois. He studied philosophy at Roosevelt University and early in his career he led a trio with violinist Leroy Jenkins and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. He was involved with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) founded in his birthplace.
In 1969, Braxton recorded the double album For Alto, the first full-length album for unaccompanied saxophone. The album’s tracks were dedicated to Cecil Taylor and John Cage among others. The album influenced other artists like soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and trombonist George Lewis, who would go on to record their own solo albums.
Joining pianist Chick Corea’s trio with bassist Dave Holland and Barry Altschul they form the short-lived avant garde quartet Circle around 1970. When Corea broke up the group to form Return To Forever, Holland and Altschul remained with Braxton for much of the 1970s as part of a quartet, rotating Kenny Wheeler, George Lewis and Ray Anderson. With Sam Rivers they recorded Holland’s This group recorded for Arista Records and the core trio with saxophonist Sam Rivers recorded Holland’s Conference of the Birds on ECM. In the 1970s he recorded duets with Lewis and with synthesizer player Richard Teitelbaum. In 1975, he released Muhal with the Creative Construction Company featuring Richard Davis, Steve McCall, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith and Leroy Jenkins. He would oo on to record through the 70s, 80s and early 90s wth Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway.
He performed at the Woodstock Jazz Festival, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, composed his Ghost Trance Music released on his now defunct Braxton House label, and the final Ghost House live recordings at the New York City Iridium club were released by Firehouse 12 label in 2007. He recorded a prodigious series of multi-disc sets of standards during the 1990 and early 2000s
Besides playing saxophone, Braxton also plays clarinet, flute and piano, performs and records in the avant-garde, improvisation, bebop and mainstream genres, composes operas, orchestral and classical compositions, and is an avid chess player. He is the author of multiple volumes explaining his theories and pieces, such as the philosophical three-volume Triaxium Writings and the five-volume Composition Notes.
Composer and instrumentalist Anthony Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s, has taught at Mills College in the Eighties, was Professor of Music at Wesleyan University from the 1990s until his retirement at the end of 2013, and in 2013, was named a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.
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Theodore Curson was born on June 3, 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He became interested in playing trumpet after watching a newspaper salesman play a silver trumpet, however, his father preferred he become an alto saxophonist like Louis Jordan. By the time he turned 10 years old he received his first trumpet.
Curson attended Granoff School of Music in Philadelphia and at the suggestion of Miles Davis, moved to New York City in 1956. He performed and recorded with Cecil Taylor in the late 1950s and early 1960s and his 1964 Eric Dolphy tribute composition Tears for Dolphy has been used in numerous films.
Ted is a familiar face in Finland performing annually at the Port Jazz Festival each year since its inception in 1966. In 2007 he played the Finland’s Independence Day Ball at the invitation of President Tarja Halonen.
Trumpeter Ted Curson recorded some twenty albums as a leader for Old Town, Prestige, Fontana, Atlantic, Freedom, EMI Columbia Interplay and Inner City record labels among many others. He has been a sideman on fifteen other albums with Andrew Hill, Nick Brignola, Charles Mingus, The NY Contemporary Five, Sal Nistico, Archie Shepp, Pepper Adams and a host of others until his death on November 4, 2012 in Montclair, New Jersey.
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Irène Schweizer was born on June 2, 1941 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. She studied piano and immersed herself in the free improvisation genre but is adept at playing various jazz styles.
She has performed and recorded numerous solo piano performances as well as performing as part of the Feminist Improvising Group with Lindsay Cooper, maggie Nichols, Georgie Born, and Sally Potter. Schweizer has played a series of duets with drummers Pierre Favre, Louis Moholo, Andrew Cyrille, Gunter Sommer, Han Bennink and Hamid Drake.
Irène has performed in trio and quartet sessions with John Tchicai, Evan Parker, Peter Kowald and with Yusef Lateef, Uli Trepte and Mani Neumeier at the Montreux Jazz Festival.. One of her most enduring collaborations is with the improvising musician Rudiger Carl.
Pianist Irène Schweizer continues to perform and record in the the free jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation genres.
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Yolande Bavan was born on June 1, 1942 in Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka. She toured Australia and Asia as a singer with Graeme Bell’s band early in her career. She is best known for replacing Annie Ross in the legendary jazz vocal group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross after Ross was forced to leave the group due to poor health in 1962. She recorded three albums, all live recordings, with the group under the name of Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan. In 1964, she and Dave Lambert left the group, effectively ending the trio.
She appeared on “To Tell the Truth” in 1962 and in a rare feat, the singing group appeared and sang This Could Be The Start (of something big). In 1969,Peter Ivers and she made an album for Epic Records, called Knight of the Blue Communion. Bavan provided vocals for Weather Report’s 1972 album I Sing The Body Electric, and has made several recorded appearances in musicals including Salvation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Bernarda Alba. She has performed in films, and continues to plays and currently continues to perform.
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