Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kat Parra was born on January 13, 1962 in San Francisco, California and spent part of her teenage years in Chile. Upon her return, she move to southern California to attend University of California at Los Angeles where she studied classical flute and voice for a year. Moving to the Silicon Valley area she shifted her educational focus to jazz, studying voice at San Jose State University alongside singer Patti Cathcart of Tuck & Patti, who was a major influence.
Kat spent five years as a lead vocalist for the Bay area salsa band Charanga Nueve, and they opened for the likes of Celia Cruz and Los Van Van of Cuba. But despite all that musical activity, she still had a “day gig” working for the tech giant Cisco Systems. In 2006 she left Cisco to be a full-time singer and concentrate on music exclusively.
That very same year Parra recorded her first solo album, Birds In Flight produced by Bay Area-based trombonist Wayne Wallace on JazzMa Records. After that, she signed with Wallace’s indie label, Patois Records, releasing her second solo album, Azucar de Amor (Sugar of Love) in 2008.
Kat is a flexible and broad-minded jazz vocalist who has very strong Latin leanings but has also been affected by Middle Eastern, Arabic, and North African music as well as greatly influenced by Afro-Cuban jazz. She has also combined jazz with everything from Brazilian samba to Afro-Peruvian music. She plays flute, guitar, and piano, and continues to perform in several different languages, including English, Spanish (which she speaks fluently), Portuguese, French, and Ladino, which is the language of Sephardic Jews and is considered one of the romance languages.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ramiro Flores was born on January 12, 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He began his musical training through the alto saxophone at the age of 11 years. He studied composition at the UCA and saxophone at the National Conservatory, while both played in the band folklorist César Isella, in addition to various projects.
In 1998 he traveled to Boston to continue his studies at Berklee College of Music, where he studied with musicians such as Joe Lovano, George Garzone and Jerry Bergonzi among others. He graduated with a dual major in Film Scoring and Performance in 2002 before moving to New York and continued developing his musical career in this city.
During this period he collaborated with Pedro Giraudo, Mr. Live Big Band, Pablo Ablanedo, The Monkeys, Ryle’s Big Band, Jerry Bergonzi and Slide Hampton. For a period he worked as a show band musician for Carnival Cruise Lines, was a composer for American Music Co. and wrote a book of instruction flute, and recorded for Music Sales Corporation NYC. He began his development as a leader to form his own band and performing his own music in Boston and New York.
Returning to Argentina in 2005, he participated in the projects of the local jazz including Mariano Otero, Ligia Piro, Juan Cruz de Urquiza, Pepi Taveira and Javier Malosetti amongst numerous others. The following year he won “80mundos, and by 2007 he produced and recorded his first CD “Flowers”, for BAU records, in which he collaborated with the likes of Juan Quintero,
That same year in December he received the Clarín Award as the revelation of jazz, voted best soprano saxophonist in 2008 by the newspaper La Nación. Alto saxophonist Ramiro Flores released his sophomore project “Son Dos” and continues to perform.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Neal Caine was born in St. Louis, Missouri on January 11, 1973. Growing up in University City he started out with the Suzuki Method on violin at age three. He heard a lot of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie around the house as a child, inheriting his mother’s passion for jazz and learned music as a native language. He played bass at University City High School until graduating in 1991. He was immersed in the school’s jazz scene and its widely recognized jazz program alongside trumpeter Jeremy Davenport, pianist Peter Martin and saxophonist Todd Williams.
After high school, Caine still played jazz bass as a hobby and he moved to New Orleans he enrolled in Tulane University, majoring in political science and heading towards a law degree. But his love for jazz proved too strong to resist. Soon Caine was playing with the Ellis Marsalis and at gigs around the city with trumpeter Nicholas Payton, saxophonist Donald Harrison and trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis, touring Europe with the later, leaving college in his sophomore year.
A move to New York saw him joining Elvin Jones’ Jazz Machine for four years, followed by a year with Diana Krall and then on to spending the final year of her life with Betty Carter, known for her creativity and nurturing young musicians seeking solo careers. After her passing in 1998, Neal worked on establishing his name in New York and in 2000 Harry Connick Jr. called on him to tour Europe with his big band, which has become his regular gig for half a year.
He was also a frequent presence on the Smalls scene for many years, performing often with regulars Sherman Irby, Gregory Tardy, Charles Owens, Harry Whitaker, Zaid Nasser, Frank Hewitt, and others. These days, he has dual residency between New Orleans and New York City, and is active on both scenes. He’s on a long list of recordings by artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, John Hicks, Wess Anderson, Billy Hart, Oliver Lake, and Harry Connick Jr.
As a composer he has been influenced by the freedom and looseness of Wayne Shorter’s writings. With a long list of sideman gigs behind hem bassist Neal Caine has taken on the role of bandleader, putting a quintet together and releasing his debut recording “Backstabber’s Ball” on the Smalls Records label.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Matthew Clayton was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 10, 1980. Picking up the saxophone at age ten his love of jazz was fueled playing in big bands in middle school when he played lead alto. It was during this time that he began venturing into improvisation. By high school he was a member of the National Grammy All Star High School Jazz Band, played the Village Vanguard, Birdland and Carnegie Hall in New York City. While there he also met and gigged with Grover Washington, Jr. and Al Grey, and was a featured performer at a winter jazz festival in Paris, France.
Matriculating through Yale University, Matthew went on to get his Masters and Ph.D. from Harvard University specializing in ethnomusicology, with an emphasis on the study of jazz. While at Harvard, Clayton directed the Harvard Graduate School Big Band and performed with students from the nearby Berklee College of Music, taught saxophone privately and at the Litchfield Summer Jazz Camp in Connecticut and privately while completing his studies.
Dr. Matthew Clayton is currently on the faculty of the prestigious Nelly Berman School of Music, is the Director of Jazz Combos at the University of Pennsylvania, has released his debut album “On The Move” last year and continues to perform.
Jazz Is Global – Share
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Juul Johansson, better known as Mads Mathias, was born on January 9, 1981 in Silkeborg, Denmark and grew up partly in Tanzania. Growing up in a musical home, his exposure to music began at infancy, picking up the saxophone as his main instrument by age 11. A car accident at seventeen left his right hand injured, losing his index finger and half of two other fingers. Afraid that his days of playing the saxophone were over, he started singing and writing songs instead.
Inspired and influenced by the great jazz vocalists of the past and present from Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra to Harry Connick Jr, and with a deep respect for the crooner tradition, Mathias is nevertheless an original talent with a unique and effortlessly charming vocal delivery and a skill for writing catchy and memorable, stylishly crafted tunes.
Fortunately the rehabilitation of his hand made him able to play the saxophone again and at age 20 he was entered the Rhythmic Music Conservatory, graduating in 2007.From an early age, Mads Mathias was a part of Jutland jazz scene and today is part of the Danish music scene: As a studio musician, he has contributed to several record releases and frequently used live dates.
In 2012 released debut solo album Free Falling which won him a Danish Music Award for “Best New Danish Jazz Artist of the Year”, He also won an Honorable Mention Award at one of the world’s largest songwriting competitions for his song “Fool for Love” and Kvintet with the addition of Espen Laub in addition to critical reviews and airplay on Danish radio.
Besides his own Mads Mathias Orchestra, Mads formed Mads Mathias Kvartet with Peter Rosendal, Regin Fuhlendorf and Morten Ankarfeldt and appears with The Danish Radio Big Band, Tivoli Big Band and Six City Stompers. The vocalist, songwriter and saxophonist continues to perform and record.
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