Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Peter Cincotti was born July 11, 1983 in New York City. The singer, songwriter and pianist started playing a toy piano at the age of three and attended the Horace Mann School. While in high school, he regularly performed at clubs throughout Manhattan and performed at the White House.

At the 2000 Montreux Jazz Festival he won an award for a rendition of Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night In Tunisia” and in 2002 Peter reached No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional jazz Charts, the youngest solo artist to do so to date.

Cincotti appeared in a small role and contributed to the soundtrack of the 2004 Bobby Darin biopic Beyond The Sea, had a small role as the Piano Player in Spider-Man 2, and his song “December Boys” is featured in the 2007 film of the same name.

His self-titled debut album is a compilation of traditional jazz songs, while his second album, “On The Moon” featured some of the artist’s own songs, that was followed by his third “East of Angel Town”. Combining pop, jazz, rock and dance, Peter created his fourth studio album, “Metropolis” and released worldwide in the spring of 2012.

That same year, Peter and his sister Pia Cincotti wrote and produced an original full-length musical titled “How Deep Is The Ocean?” that debuted at The New York Musical Theater Festival to sold out audiences in New York. He continues to perform, compose, record and tour.


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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ivie Anderson was born on July 10, 1905 in Gilroy, California. From age nine to thirteen, she attended St. Mary’s Convent and studied voice. At Gilroy grammar and high school, she joined glee club and choral society. She also studied voice under Sara Ritt while in Nunnie H. Burroughs Institution in Washington, DC.

Ivie’s career officially started around 1921 when she first performed in Los Angeles, California. From 1922 to 1923, she was brought to New York City by joining a pioneering African-American musical revue Shuffle Along. By 1924 and 1925, she had already performed in various locations such as Cuba, the Cotton Club in New York City and in Los Angeles with the bands of Paul Howard, Curtis Mosby and Sonny Clay.

1928 saw Anderson singing in Australia with Clay’s band, starred in Frank Sebastian’s Cotton Club in Los Angeles and soon after, she finally began touring in the States as a solo singer.

With a sweet, clear singing voice, she was a popular attraction with Ellington’s band. Over Ellington’s long career as bandleader, his indifference toward vocalists changed with the hiring of Anderson, who was generally considered the best vocalist he ever employed.

Her outstanding performance of “Stormy Weather” in the movie short Bundle of Blues in 1933 was only eclipsed by the later and far better known version sung by Lena Horne. She also appeared as a singer in the Marx Brothers movie “A Day At The Races” in 1937 and the same year in Hit Parade of 1937 as Ivy Anderson.

Suffering from asthma for years, jazz vocalist Ivie Anderson passed away on December 28, 1949.


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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Frank Wright was born on July 9, 1935 in Grenada, Mississippi but grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. In his youth he started his musical career playing electric bass with Bobby “Blue” Bland, B. B. King and R&B bands in Memphis and Cleveland. But it was his meeting of Albert Ayler that he switched to the tenor saxophone, embraced the free jazz movement and moved to New York City in the mid-60s.

During this decade he played with some of the biggest names in avant-garde jazz including briefly with John Coltrane. He also made his first recordings as a leader for the ESP label but not finding an appreciative audience, Frank moved to Europe and spent the remainder of his life there.

Wright recorded for a few small labels, performed free jazz with expatriate American musicians and the European leaders of the avant-garde, and returned to the U.S. occasionally to perform with Cecil Taylor and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Tenor and soprano saxophonist and bass clarinetist Frank Wright, known for his frantic style, passed away on May 17, 1990.


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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Kendrick Scott was born July 8, 1980 in Houston. His initial encounter with the drums was in church, where his family was involved in the music ministry. Attending Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, garnering several awards, most notably the IAJE Clifford Brown/Stan Getz Fellowship.

Upon graduation from high school in 1998, Kendrick matriculated through Berklee College of Music under scholarship. Since graduating in 2002,Scott has performed with the Jazz Crusaders, Pat Metheny, Joe Lovano, Kenny Garrett, Dianne Reeves, Lizz Wright and Terence Blanchard among others. He also was a member of the Berklee-Monterey Quartet from 1999 to 2007.

Scott’s debut recording with his group Oracle recorded The Source in 2006, including pianists Aaron Parks and Robert Glasper, guitarist Lionel Loueke, vocalist Gretchen Parlato and others. He also performed with the Terence Blanchard Quintet on the twice Grammy nominated album A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina) in 2007, celebrated the Monterey Jazz Festival’s 50th anniversary and embarked on a 22-state tour with the 50th Anniversary MJF All-Star Band features the leaders of the past, present and future with Blanchard, James Moody, Benny Green, Derrick Hodge and Nnenna Freelon. In 2010 he released his sophomore leader project “Reverence” and in 2013 “Conviction”. He continues to perform, record and tour.


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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Henry (Hank) Mobley was born on July 7, 1930 in Eastman, Georgia but was raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Early in his career, he worked with Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach, and then took part in one of the landmark hard bop sessions, alongside Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Doug Watkins and Kenny Dorham, resulting in the release of Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers and the Jazz Messengers. When they split in ’56, Hank and Silver continued their collaboration in the 50s.

During the 1960s, he worked chiefly as a leader, recording over 20 albums for Blue Note Records between 1955 and 1970 and playing many of the most important hard bop players such as Grant Green, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Clark, Wynton Kelly and Philly Joe Jones, along with a particularly productive partnership with Lee Morgan. He spent a brief time with Miles Davis in 1961 replacing John Coltrane.

Hank was a major voice on tenor saxophone, known for his melodic playing, is widely recognized as one of the great composers of originals in the hard-bop era, with interesting chord changes and room for soloists to stretch out.

He was forced to retire in the mid-1970s due to lung problems and although he worked two engagements at the Angry Squire in New York City in ‘85 and ‘86 in a quartet with Duke Jordan. He recorded as a leader for Blue Note, Prestige and Savoy record labels leaving history thirty-two albums and another fifty-six sitting in the sideman seat.

A few months later tenor saxophonist and composer Hank Mobley, who soared in the hard bop and soul jazz genres with his laid-back, subtle and melodic delivery, passed away from pneumonia on May 30, 1986.


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