Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Pete Levin was born December 20, 1942 in Brookline, Massachusetts and his first instrument as a teenager was a French horn. He studied at Boston University and received a master’s degree from Juilliard School of Music in New York City. In the early 1970s he joined the Gil Evans Orchestra as a French horn player. At the time, he was experimenting with synthesizers. Over time Gil Evans incorporated his synthesizer sound into the compositions and his role changed to a full-time keyboardist for the next fifteen years. Leaving the Gil Evans Orchestra he followed with an eight-year association with Jimmy Guiffre.

Levin plays the Hammond organ, clavinet and moog synthesizer. He has produced several albums as a bandleader and has released a collaborative album with his brother, bassist Tony Levin, as a tribute to and styled after the works of Oscar Pettiford and Julius Watkins. He has performed for film and television scores including Missing In Action, Lean On Me, Silver Bullet, Red Scorpion,, The Color of Money, Maniac, Spin City, America’s Most Wanted and Star Trek.

He has worked with Carla Bley, Brubeck Brpthers, Hiram Bullock, Jimmy Cobb, Billy Cobham, Willie Colon, Miles Davis, Rachelle Ferrell, Bryan Ferry, Gregory Hines, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Band, Annie Lennox, Chuck Mangione, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mullligan, Salt-n-Pepa, David Sanborn, John Scofield, Wayne Shorter, Paul Simon, Lew Soloff, Vanessa Williams and Lenny White among others.

He was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for writing the official military band arrangement of the U.S. Infantry song. Jazz keyboardist and horn player Pete Levin continues to perform, record and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Billie Davies was born on December 10, 1955 in Bruges, West Flanders, Belgium. An autodidact and naturally talented she was surrounded by music from birth as her mother played the best in jazz and classical music. From the age of ten she was singing in choirs until her voice changed around the age of 22.

A few years later Davies would embark on learning to play the drums and became a professional jazz musician shortly after declining Max Roach’s invitation to attend Berklee College of Music. Her music is an improvisational conversation between musicians and musical instruments.

Billie has played with Leroy Vinnegar, John Handy, Joe Fuentes, Saul Kaye, Michael Godwin, Lee Elfenbein, Drew Waters, Pierre Swärd, Tom Bone Ralls, Manny Silvera, Oliver Steinberg, Daniel Coffeng, Adam Levy and has appeared all over the world.

Drummer, composer, director, arranger and bandleader Billie Davies has been honored as Jazz Artist of the Year at the Los Angeles Music Awards, drums in rhythms of jazz, cool jazz, Avant jazz and avant-garde and continues to mold it into her own neo-humanistic expressionist jazz.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tim Armacost was born on December 8, 1962 in Los Angeles, California. He began his musical training on clarinet in Tokyo at the age of eight but by sixteen he had switched to tenor saxophone, and was working in big bands around Washington. His turning point into a jazz career came at eighteen when he returned to Los Angeles and met his two primary teachers, Bobby Bradford and Charlie Shoemake. Through them he learned the fundamentals of melody and harmony, and was exposed to the giants of modern jazz, who would give shape to his early development.

Armacost graduated Magna Cum Laude from Pomona College in 1985, moved to Amsterdam later that year, established himself on the jazz scene, learned fluent Dutch and became the head of the Sweelinck Conservatory’s saxophone department. After seven years of performing, teaching and recording in Europe, he headed for India. There he studied under table master Vijay Ateet. He would go on to perform with Indian jazz and classical musicians and at festival.

Fluent in Japanese, Tim has studied as an exchange student at Waseda University, and has performed with Terumasa and Motohiko Hino, Fumio Karashima, Nobuyoshi Ino, Fumio Itabashi, Shingo Okudaira, Benisuke Sakai, Kiyoto Fujiwara, and Yutaka Shiina.

Moving to New York in 1993 he established himself and released his first two albums Fire and Live at Smalls. With his quartet, the cooperative group Hornz in the Hood with fellow saxophonists Craig Handy and Ravi Coltrane he continues to perform as well as with Ray Drummond’s “Excursion Band,” and co- leads the Brooklyn Big Band with Craig Bailey.

Tenor saxophonist Tim Armacost has performance and recording credits alongside Al Foster, Jimmy Cobb, Kenny Barron, Tom Harrell, Billy Hart, Victor Lewis, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Ray Drummond, Roy Hargrove, Paquito D’Rivera, Claudio Roditi, Bruce Barth, Dave Kikoski, Don Friedman, Lonnie Plaxico, Robin Eubanks, Charlie Shoemake, Pete Christlieb, Randy Brecker, Akira Tana, Valery Ponomarev, the Maria Schneider Orchestra, and the David Murray Big Band. He continues to tour throughout East and West Europe, Japan, India, and the United States.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Johnny Mbizo Dyani was born on November 30, 1945 and grew up in the township of Duncan Village in East London, South Africa. In the early 1960s, the bassist was a member of South Africa’s first integrated jazz band, The Blue Notes with trumpeter Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana on alto saxophone, Nikele Moyake on tenor saxophone, Chris McGregor on piano, and Louis Moholo on drums. Though the first integrated band they had to flee South Africa In 1964 to seek musical and political freedom.

In 1966, Dyani toured Argentina with Steve Lacy’s quartet and recorded  with Lacy and Moholo The Forest and the Zoo. He moved to Copenhagen, Denmark in the early 70’s, and about ten years later to Sweden and recording many albums under his own name. He recorded with Dolar Brand aka Abdullah Ibrahim, Don Cherry, David Murray, Joseph Jarman, Clifford Jarvis, Don Moye, Han Bennik, Brotherhood of Breath, Mal Waldron, Pierre Dorge, Jukka Syrenius, Leo Smith and numerous others.

After his death of double bassist and pianist Johnny Dyani on October 24, 1986 in West Berlin, Germany, the remaining members of The Blue Notes reunited to record a moving tribute album, entitled Blue Notes for Johnny.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Dr. Michael White was born on November 29, 1954 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is a classically trained clarinetist who began his jazz musical career as a teenager playing for Doc Paulin’s Brass Band in New Orleans. He was a member of an incarnation of the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band.

Kid Sheik Colar, discovered him after hearing him onstage performing in Jackson Square in the French Quarter. He began working with the musician regularly following the encounter. A staunch jazz traditionalist, he can be heard on Wynton Marsalis’s 1989 album The Majesty of the Blues. Wynton also appears on White’s 1990 album titled “Crescent City Serenade”, along with Wendell Brunious and Walter Payton.

Michael has led several bands in the New Orleans area, and has accompanied various artists on other recording projects. Since 1979 he has played in the Young Tuxedo Brass Band. During the 1980s he led a band called The New Orleans Hot Seven.

In 1981, White founded The Original Liberty Jazz Band with the express intent of preserving the musical heritage of New Orleans. They perform an end-of-year concert at the Village Vanguard every year since the early 1990s, and in  2006 with former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton in attendance they performed at Tulane University commencement.

Putting on his education cap Michael is also a college professor who formerly taught Spanish, now teaches African-American Music at Xavier University, holds the Rosa and Charles Keller Endowed Chair in the Humanities of New Orleans Music and Culture. As a continuing component of his performances he also serves as guest director at several Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts relating to traditional New Orleans jazz.

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