Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tony Vella was born on April 4, 1937 in Terrasini, a Sicily commune in the metropolitan city of Palermo, Itlay. In 1957 he gained immense experience working with big and small configurations. In Italyhe was the main arranger, for numerous important record houses.

From 1972 he dedicated his efforts to cultural activities and the formation of young talents holding theory courses, and practical instrumental and ensemble music applied to jazz music. By 1975 Tony participated in the Pescara the Jazz Festival with the New Jazz Society of Palermo, the only Italian group invited to perform along with the Zoot Sims Quartet, Antony Braxton, Elvin Jones Quintet, Red Norvo Trio, Chet Baker Quartet, Charles Mingus Group, Roland Kirk Quintet and Don Cherry Organic Music Theatre.

Three years later he formed and directed L’Orchestra in collaboration with the Reinhardt Center for their concert season. Organized by the Associazione Siciliana Amici della Musica and introduced to Auditorium SS. Salvatore of Palermo.

In the Eighties Vella was a partr of the Messina Jazz Meeting with the Brass Group Big Band, as orchestra director and arranger. With the band he has collaborated with international musicians Archie Shepp, Hernie Wilkins, Mel Lewis, Sam Rivers, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Paolo Lepore, Franco Cerri, and Danilo Terenzi.

The next decade he established The Tony Vella Fusion Jazz Band entirely composed from young Sicialian musicians. A big band, modeled on some of the great American orchestras like Quincy Jones. The Fusion Jazz Band presented remarkable arrangements of a repertoire that includes Brazilian and popular jazz. They accompanied singers Beppe Vella, Gaetano Riccobono, and Tony Piscopo, as well as numerous musicians such asCalderone Ignazio, Aldo Oliveri, Benedetto Modica, Giovanni Mazzarino, Sergio Munafò, Aldo Messina, and Sebastiano Alioto, among others.

Pianist, organist, composer, arranger and orchestra director Tony Vella continues to perform, conduct and record.

More Posts: arranger,composer,director,history,instrumental,jazz,music,organ,piano

Jazz Poems

CREPUSCULE WITH NELLIE

For Ira

Monk at the Five Spot

late one night.

Ruby my Dear, Epistrophy.

The place nearly empty

Because of the cold spell.

One beautiful black transvestite

alone up front,

Sipping his drink demurely.

The music Pythagorean,

one note at a time

Connecting the heavenly spheres,

While I leaned against the bar

surveying the premises

Through cigarette smoke.

All of a sudden, a clear sense

of a memorable occasion…

The joy of it, the delicious melancholy…

This very strange manbent over the piano

shaking his head, humming…

Misterioso.

Then it was all over, thank you!

Chairs being stacked up on tables,

their legs up.

The prospect of the freeze outside,

the long walk home,

Making one procrastinatory.

Who said Americans don’t have history,

only endless nostalgia?

And where the hell was Nellie?

CHARLES (DUŠAN) SIMIĆ

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

More Posts: book,classic,collectible,history,jazz,library,poet

Jazz Poems

FOR ART BLAKEY AND  THE JAZZ MESSENGERS For the sound we revere we dub you art as continuum as spirit as sound of depth here to stay In my young years I heard you bopping and weaving messages I  could only walk to where wood mates with skin I would have dubbed you godhead but your sound rolled and pealed I am the drumhead even though Blue Note don’t care nothing bout nothing but profit How you sound is who you are where your ear leans moaning or bopping from the amen corner of chicken and dumpling memories and places In my young years I would have dubbed you something strange as god of opiate heaven of brutal contact of bible and rifle memories But the drumhead rolled my name: How you sound is who you are like drumsound backing back to root roosting at the meeting place the time that has always been here Even here where wood mates with skin on wax to make memory, to place us even in this hideous place pp-ppounding pp-ppounding the ss-ssounds of who we are even in this place of strange and brutal design KEORAPETSE KGOSITSILE | 1938~2018

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

More Posts: book,classic,collectible,history,jazz,library,poet

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Herbert Joos was born on March 21, 1940 in Karlsruhe, Germany. He learned trumpet first by self-study and then by a private teacher. He studied double bass from 1958, but then turned to flugelhorn, baritone horn, mellophone, and alphorn.

Since the mid-1960s, he has been a member of Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe, from which the group Fourmenonly was created with Wilfried Eichhorn and Rudolf Theilmann. Afterward, he was a member of various modern and free jazz formations with Bernd Konrad, Hans Koller, Adelhard Roidinger and Jürgen Wuchner among others. He played at festivals and in the Free Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden of the SWF at a flugelhorn workshop with Kenny Wheeler, Ian Carr, Harry Beckett and Ack van Rooyen and made a name for himself with his solo recording, The Philosophy of the Flugelhorn in 1973.

He led his own wind trio, quartet and orchestra. He achieved more recognition in the 1980s as a member of the Vienna Art Orchestra, which he influenced. Since the 1990s he has participated in the SüdPool project. He has appeared as a duo with Frank Kuruc as well as in Patrick Bebelaar’s groups, for Michel Godard, Wolfgang Puschnig, Clemens Salesny and Peter Schindler. He also played with the Orchestre National de France.

In 2017, he was awarded the Jazzpreis Baden-Württemberg for his life’s work. Instead of a speech after the laudations, he thanked in a short phrase, and played a concert with a sixteen piece orchestra.

Herbert Joos, who produced drawings, book illustrations and paintings, died on December 7, 2019 after surgery in a Baden-Baden, Germany hospital.

More Posts: flugelhorn,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trumpet

Jazz Poems

COLTRANE, SYEEDA’S SONG FLUTE

FOR M & P.R.

When I came across it on the 

piano it reminded me of her, 

because it sounded like a 

happy, child’s song.

COLTRANE

To Marilyn, to Peter,

playing, making things : the walls, the stairs,

the attics, bright nests in nests;

the slow, light, grave unstitching of lies,

opening, stinking, letting in air

you bear yourselves in, become your own mother

and father,

you own child.

You lying closer.

You going along. Days.

The strobe-lit wheel stops dead

once, twice in a life: old fashioned rays:

and then all the rest of the time pulls blur,

only you remember it more, playing.

Listening here in the late quiet you can think

great things of us all, I think wwe will all, Coltrane,

meet speechless and easy in Heaven,our names

known and forgotten, all dearest, all come

giant-stepping

out into some wide, light, merciful mind..

John

Coltrane, 40, gone

right through the floorboards,

up to the shins, up to the eyes,

closed over,

Syeeda’s happy child’s song

left up here, playing.

JEAN VALENTINE

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

More Posts: book,classic,collectible,history,jazz,library,poet