Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bruce Barth was born September 7, 1958 in Pasadena, California. He started banging on the piano almost before he could walk. By the age of five he started piano lessons though he preferred to play by ear. When he was eight his family moved to New York where he studied piano and musicianship with Tony and Sue LaMagra for the next decade. Turning 15 his older brother Rich gave him his first jazz record, Mose Allison’s Back Country Suite. The young lad fell in love with both the music and the genre and inspired, he taught himself to play jazz by listening to records and imitating his many favorite pianists and horn players.
He went on to study privately with Norman Simmons and Neil Waltzer, and eventually enrolled in New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with Jaki Byard, Fred Hersch, and George Russell. Barth’s first professional recording was Russell’s masterpiece, The African Game, captured live on Blue Note Records. Arriving on the New York jazz scene in 1988, he soon joined tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and their musical collaboration spanned a decade. Shortly thereafter, he toured Japan with Nat Adderley, and toured Europe and recorded with Vincent Herring’s quintet with Dave Douglas.
In 1990, Bruce joined the Terence Blanchard Quintet; the band toured extensively, and also recorded six CDs, as well as several movie soundtracks. In 1992, he played piano on-screen in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. While in Blanchard’s band, he recorded his first two CD’s as a leader, In Focus and Morning Call; both were chosen for the New York Times’ top ten lists.
Throughout his professional life, Bruce has performed and collaborated with Tony Bennett, Steve Wilson, Terell Stafford, Luciana Souza, and Karrin Allyson, David Sanchez, James Moody, Phil Woods, Freddie Hubbard, Tom Harrell, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Art Farmer, Victor Lewis, John Patitucci, Lewis Nash, the Mingus Big Band, Tim Armacost, Scott Wendholt, Dave Stryker, Carla Cook, Paula West, Rene Marie, Luis Bonilla, Doug Weiss, Ugonna Okegwo, Montez Coleman, Dana Hall and Dayna Stephens, among numerous others.
As an educator pianist Bruce Barth is on the jazz faculty of Temple University, has taught at Berklee College of Music, Long Island University, currently gives private lessons to City College University and New School students, and has participated in many workshops, clinics, and seminars in the U. S. and abroad. To date he has performed on over one hundred recordings and movie soundtracks, including ten as a leader, is a Grammy nominated producer, and has served two years on the panel for the U.S. State Department “Jazz Ambassadors” program,. He continues to play solo piano, lead an all-star septet and composed for a variety of ensembles.
Take A Dose On The Road
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eldad Tarmu was born on August 26, 1960 in Los Angeles, California where he began studying drums and percussion. Upon graduating from Tel Aviv University in Israel, he returned to the States and got a master degree in Afro-Latin music from California State University Los Angeles and a master degree in Classical composition from Stony Brook University in New York.
Tarmu established a partnership in 2006 with the American Cultural Centre in Bucharest to improve cultural ties between Romania and the United States and promote American music.]
Eldad has recorded and performed with Poncho Sanchez, Ernie Watts, Taj Mahal, Cybil Shepherd, Freddie Hubbsrd, Billy Higgins, Frank Morgan, and Ron Affif just to name a few. He has performed in over twenty-five countries around the world in various festivals and concert tours, recorded seven albums with his latest mixing jazz, Middle Eastern and strings with chamber ensemble arrangements.
Along with performing vibraphonist Eldad Tarmu keeps his education hat ready as a professor teaching World Music Studies, Intro to Music and African-American Music at Hudson County Community College. In addition he has developed a Latin American Music Studies course for the college and also reaches at SUNY Stony Brook Manhattan. He holds clinics and workshops at festivals and music camps worldwide.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Keith Tippett was born Keith Graham Tippetts on August 25, 1947 in Bristol, England. He attended Greenway Boys Secondary Modern School in Southmead where he studied piano and formed his first jazz band called The KT7 whilst still at school, performing numbers popular at the time by The Temperance Seven. In the late 1960s, he led a sextet with saxophonist Elton Deanon, trumpeter Mark Charig and Nick Evanson on trombone.
By the early Seventies, Tippett formed the big band Centipede that brought together much of a generation of young British jazz and rock musicians. As well as performing some concerts, limited economically by the size of the band, they recorded one double-album, Septober Energy.
Keith, along with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo, put together a formidable rhythm section at the centre of some the most exciting combinations in the country, including the Elton Dean Quartet and the Elton Dean Ninesense. Around the same time, he was also in the vicinity of King Crimson and contributed piano to several of their records and appeared with them on Top of the Pops. His own groups, such as Ovary Lodge, leaned towards a more contemplative form of European free improvisation.
Pianist and composer Keith Tippett has recorded and performed on over 100 albums in variety of settings including duets with Stan Tracey, his wife Julie Tippetts, and solo performances. He continues to perform with the improvising ensemble Mujician and Work in Progress.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tim Hagans was born on August 19, 1954 and grew up in Dayton, Ohio. His early inspiration came from Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Thad Jones. In 1974 he joined the Stan Kenton band with whom he played until 1977, when he then toured with Woody Herman. Leaving for Europe he lived in Malmo, Sweden, which was a hotbed of the European jazz scene. He toured extensively and played with Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Horace Parlan and Thad Jones. He would later dedicate For the Music Suite, a 40-minute piece for jazz orchestra to Jones.
Tim’s first recorded composition, I Hope This Time Isn’t The Last, appears on Thad Jones Live at Slukefter. In 1987 he moved to New York City and has since performed with Maria Schneider, the Yellowjackets, Steps, Secret Society, and Gary Peacock. He has worked extensively with producer and saxophonist Bob Belden on a variety of recordings and live performances, including their ongoing Animation/Imagination project.
As an educator Hagans has taught master classes at universities both stateside and abroad including the University of Cincinnati and Berklee College of Music. He has held the position of Artistic Director and Composer-in-Residence for the Norrbotten Big Band in Lulea, Sweden for which his Avatar Seesions: The Music of Tim Hagans was nominated for a Grammy. He has had several commissions by the NDR Big Band, Jazz Baltica, and the Barents Composers Orchestra.
Trumpeter Tim Hagans has been honored with awards, a featured subject in the documentary Boogaloo Road, a featured soloist on the soundtrack for the film The Score with Marlon Brando, Edward Norton and Robert DeNiro. He currently performs, tours, and records with the Tim Hagans Quartet: Tim Hagans, trumpet; Vic Juris, guitar; Rufus Reid, bass, and Jukkis Uotila, drums.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
George and Ira Gershwin composed S’Wonderful and How Long Has This Been Going On were composed for the 1927 Broadway musical Funny Face by George and Ira Gershwin. S’Wonderful was used in the 1951 musical movie An American In Paris before making its appearance in this film. How Long Has this Been Going On was dropped from the Broadway musical and makes its introduction when Audrey Hepburn sing it in this 1957 movie musical of Funny Face that also starred Fred Astaire in a reprisal of his Broadway role. Although having the same title as the Broadway musical, the plot is totally different and only four of the songs in the stage musical are included. Kay Thompson also stars in a supporting role as Astaire portrays still photographer Dick Avery, loosely based on photographer Richard Avedon.
The Story: Maggie Prescott (Thompson) is a fashion magazine publisher and editor for Quality magazine, looking for the next big fashion trend. She wants a new look to be both “beautiful” and “intellectual”. She and famous fashion photographer Dick Avery want models that can “think as well as they look.” The two brainstorm and come up with the idea to find a “sinister-looking” bookstore in Greenwich Village and discover “Embryo Concepts.”
They put Jo Stockton (Hepburn) in the first shot and toss her out of the store until the shoot ends. Jo wants to go to Paris to hear famed philosopher Emile Flostre speak on empathicalism. Dispatched on an assignment, New York City-based fashion photographer Avery is struck by Jo’s beauty, a shy bookstore employee he’s photographed and he believes has the potential to become a successful model. He gets Jo to go with him to France, where he snaps more pictures of her against iconic Parisian backdrops. In the process, they fall for one another, only to find hurdles in their way.
Joao Gilberto & Lonette McKee/Dexter Gordon
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