Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Yoshiaki Masuo was born in Tokyo, Japan on October 12, 1946. The son of a jazz bandleader and pianist, he grew up surrounded by jazz. Never having any formal training, by the time he was 15 he started playing the guitar and his influences were Wes Montgomery and Grant Green.
Discovered by alto saxophonist Sadao Watanabe in 1967 he joined the group and started his professional career with one of Japan’s leading groups. During the three years he was with the group Masuo was Swing Journal’s reader’s poll #1 guitarist and went on to win it five more times.
A move to New York City in ‘71 saw him playing with Teruo Nakamura, Lenny White, Michael Brecker, Chick Corea, Elvin Jones, Ashford & Simpson and was a member of Lee Konitz’s group. Two years later he joined up with Sonny Rollins and recorded four albums and toured the U.S., Japan and Europe. Forming his own electric fusion group he began recording and touring Japan, the West Coast and played in New York City.
In Soho, New York City he began experimenting with electronic instruments and it turned into a self-titled album Masuo in which he was composer, arranger, engineer and mixer. He produced dozens of albums over the next ten years and his performing was put on hold the deeper he got into producing. By the end of the century he closed his studio in New York.
Guitarist Yoshiaki Masuo returned to performing in 2008, recording two albums in successive years and continues to performa and record.
More Posts: bandleader,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,producer
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mwata Bowden was born on October 11, 1947 in Memphis, Tennessee. He is part of a group known as 8 Bold Souls and frequently engages in collaborations with Tatsu Aoki. He helped establish the Miyumi Project which was a blend of music with different ethnic backgrounds, highlighting contributions from Japanese taiko drumming in the framework of jazz music.
As part of his regular repertoire, Bowden plays a range of saxophones and clarinets, including the E-flat clarinet, B-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, and contrabass clarinet, as well as flute, zamada, and didgeridoo.
As an instructor in improvisational jazz at the University of Chicago teaches young aspiring musicians in the Chicago area. Saxophonist, clarinetist and flutist Mwata Bowden, who is a part of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, continues to perform.
More Posts: bandleader,clarinet,didgeridoo,flute,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone,zamada
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mark Finkin was born to deaf parents in New York City on October 9, 1949 and has been making music since he was five. He started playing at Carnegie Hall at the age of seven and went on to study at Music and Art High School in New York City and later went on to the Midwest to study at The College of Emporia for music. He moved to Maui, Hawaii where he studied composition and piano at The Atlantic University.
Returning to New York City after several years on the island, he recorded with Boris Midney, a Soviet alto saxophonist who took Mark and his group Windmill under his wing. Performing in the New York, New Jersey area he relocated to Florida. While in Florida he honed his craft and recorded and performed with Music of the Spheres who fused laser light and sound to the Miami Space and Transit Planetarium.
Once again Mark returned to New York to settle in Saratoga Springs where he has been performing in and around the Capital district. He has played with Barry Manilow, Alexis Cole, Sherry Saba, Michael Panza, Larry Levine, Mike Wick, Sharron Edwards and Ron Mayfield to name a few.
Finkin’s talent lies beyond jazz as he has written the music for the local production of Popeye Canfield, is the pianist for the inspirational Christian group Revealer, and has played piano at The Lodge in Saratoga Springs for the last six years during the Saratoga, New York racing season.
Pianist Mark Finkin continues to perform, compose and record with Las Manos and his daughter Alexis Cole.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ronald Wayne Laws was born on October 3, 1950 and raised in Houston, Texas. He is the fifth of eight children and started playing the saxophone at the age of 11. He went on to attend Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, for two years.
In 1971 he journeyed to Los Angeles, California to embark upon a musical career. He started performing with trumpeter Hugh Masekela and the following year joined Earth, Wind & Fire, where he played saxophone and flute on their album Last Days and Time. Eighteen months later he decided to become a solo artist. Laws released his debut album Pressure Sensitive on Blue Note Records in 1975.
His first two albums charted on Billboard and by his third album, Friends and Strangers in 1977 was certified gold. Ronnie produced and sang on his sister Debra’s 1981 album Very Special. He would go on to play saxophone through the Eighties on albums by Ramsey Lewis, Sister Sledge, Deniece Williams, Jeff Lorber, Alphonse Mouzon, and Howard Hewett. In the 1990s he recorded with Norman Brown and again with Earth, Wind & Fire.
Saxophonist, flutist and vocalist Ronnie Laws, who has also worked with Guru, Brian Culbertson, and the Crusaders, also influenced Boney James and Norman Brown, and continues to explore the boundaries of his talent.
More Posts: bandleader,flute,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone,vocal
Jazz Poems
ART PEPPER
It’s the broken phrases, the fury inside him.
Squiggling alto saxophone playing out rickets
And jaundice, a mother who tried to kill him
In her womb with a coat hanger, a faltering
God-like father. The past is a bruised cloud
Floating over the houses like a prophecy,
The terrible foghorns off the shore at San Pedro.
Lightning without thunder. Years without playing.
Years of blowing out smoke and inhaling fire,
Junk and cold turkey, smacking up, the habit
Of cooking powder in spoons, the eyedroppers,
The spikes. Tracks on both arms. Tattoos.
The hospital cells at Fort Worth, the wire cages
In the L.A. County, the hole at San Quentin.
And always the blunt instrument of sex, the pain
Bubbling up inside him like a wound, the small
Deaths. The wind piercing the sheer skin
Of a dark lake at dawn. The streets at 5 a.m.
After a cool rain. The smoky blue clubs.
The chords of Parker, of Young, of Coltrane.
Playing solo means going on alone, improvising,
Hitting the notes, ringing the changes,
It’s clipped phrasing and dry ice in summer,
Straining against the rhythms, speeding it up,
Loping forward and looping back, finding the curl
In the wave, the mood in the air. It’s
Splintered tones and furious double timing.
It’s leaving the other instruments on stage
And blowing freedom into the night, into the faces
Of emptiness that peer along the bar, ghosts
Shallow hulls of nothingness, Hatred of God.
Hatred of white skin that never turns black.
Hatred of Patti, of Dianne, of Christine.
A daughter who grew up without him, a stranger.
Years of being strung out, years without speaking.
Pauses and intervals, silence. A fog rolling
Across the ocean, foghorns in the distance.
A lighthouse rising from the underworld.
A moon swelling in the clouds, an informer,
A twisted white mouth of light. Scars carved
And criscrossed on his chest. The memory
Of nodding out, the dazed drop-off into sleep.
And then the curious joy of surviving, joy
Of waking up in a dusky room to a gush
Of fresh notes, a tremoring sheet of sound.
Jamming again. Careening through the scales
For the creatures who haunt the night.
Bopping through the streets in a half-light
With Laurie on his arm, a witness, a believer.
The night is going to burst inside him.
The wind is going to break loose forever
From his lungs. It’s the fury of improvising,
Of going on alone. It’s the fierce clarity
Of each note coming to an end, distinct,
Glistening. The alto’s full-bodied laughter
The white grief-stricken wail.
EDWARD HIRSCH
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
More Posts: book,classic,collectible,history,jazz,library,poet