Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Daniels was born on October 19, 1941 in New York City and grew up in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn. He became interested in jazz as a teenager when impressed by listening to the recordings of the musicians accompanying singers, such as Frank Sinatra. Eddie’s first instrument was the alto saxophone, started on clarinet at 13 and later received his Masters in Clarinet from Julliard. By 15 he would add the Newport Jazz Festival Youth Competition to what would become a long list of credits. By the time he entered college, he was playing alto, clarinet and adding tenor saxophone to his arsenal.
Daniels has led a variety of bands from small combos to orchestras and has toured worldwide, recorded and appeared on television. Since the 1980s he has focused mainly on the clarinet and in 1989 he won one of many Grammy awards for playing on the Roger Kellaway arrangement of “Memos From Paradise”.
Over the course of his career he has captured Down Beat Magazine’s International Critics New Star on Clarinet Award, played and recorded with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard, George Benson, Joe Farrell, Johnny Hammond, Richard Davis, Yusef Lateef, Airto Moreira and Don Patterson Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. Clarinetist Eddie Daniels, who also plays saxophone, flute and piccolo, performs commissioned classical compositions, has revolutionized the blend of classical and jazz and continues to tour and record.
From Broadway To 52nd Street
Plain And Fancy opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on January 27, 1955 and ran for 461 performances. Albert Hague & Arnold B. Horwitt composed the music and the show starred Richard Derr, Shirl Conway, Will Able, Gloria Marlowe, Fletcher Rodgers and Barbara Cook. Bea Arthur was an understudy and Carol Lawrence was in the chorus. A favorite jazz tunes came from this musical was Young And Foolish.
The Story: New York City sophisticates Dan King and Ruth Winters travel to Bird-In-Hand in the Amish country of Lancaster County, PA to sell a piece of property to Jacob Yoder, who in turn intends to present it to his daughter Katie and her intended Ezra as a wedding gift. While there, they become involved with local villagers, including Hilda Miller, who mistakes Dan’s kindness for romantic overtures. Ezra’s banished brother Peter returns to claim the hand of his childhood sweetheart, Katie.
Broadway History: Previously, regardless of the size of the venue, a theatre was not considered Off-Broadway if it was within the “Broadway Box” (extending from 40th to 54th Street, and from west of Sixth Avenue to east of 8th Avenue, and including Times Square and 42nd Street. The contractual definition changed this to encompass theatres meeting the standard, which is beneficial to these theatres because of the lower minimum required salary for Actors’ Equity performers at Off-Broadway theatres as compared with the salary requirements of the union for Broadway theatres. Examples of Off-Broadway theatres within the Broadway Box are the Laura Pels Theatre and the Snapple Theater Center..
A number of Off-Broadway musicals have had subsequent runs on Broadway. These have included musicals such as Hair, Godspell, A Chorus Line, Little Shop of Horrors, Rent and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to name a few. Other productions such as Stomp, Blue Man Group and Altar Boyz have run for several years Off Broadway. The Fantasticks, the longest running musical in theatre history, spent its original 42-year run Off Broadway.
Sponsored By
www.whatissuitetabu.com
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nancy Kelly was born on October 12, 1950 in Rochester, New York and at the age of four began studying piano, clarinet, drama and dance with private instructors, and voice at the Eastman School of Music. By sixteen she formed a combo and performed in clubs around Rochester.
The early Seventies saw her joining a rock band as lead singer and touring the East coast and Midwest. She enjoyed the freedom of improvising and soon gravitated to jazz, once again forming her own group. Gaining a reputation she began performing on the West coast, the Far East and Europe and regularly performs in New York City at the Blue Note, Birdland and Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center.
Nancy has appeared on the stages of numerous jazz festivals, sung with symphony orchestras, and has been named “Best Female Jazz Vocalist” twice in the Down Beat Readers’ Poll. He debut cd “Live Jazz” reached #11 on the Billboard charts, followed by three ore with “Born To Swing” and “Well Alright” featuring tenor saxophonist Houston Person.
A four-year stint at Jewels Jazz club in Philadelphia between 1982 – 86 helped to revitalize jazz in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Subsequently jazz musicians Al Cohn, Jack McDuff, Etta Jones, Shirley Scott and Joey DeFrancesco became favorites of audiences bringing together students and professional people.
Nancy Kelly continues to perform and swing with her signature smoky, take-no-prisoner, back to the roots style delivering authentic expression of real emotion.
More Posts: vocal
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cecil Bridgewater was born on Oct. 10, 1942 in Urbana, Illinois and studied music at the University of Illinois. Along with his brother Ron, they formed the Bridgewater Brothers Band in 1969. In 1970 he played with Horace Silver following this stint with a Thad Jones/Mel Lewis association from 1970 to 1976. During this period of the Seventies he married Dee Dee Bridgewater and played with Max Roach starting a decades-long association.
Cecil recorded his debut album “I Love Your Smile” in 1992, has enjoyed playing the sideman on some two dozen recordings with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Randy Weston, Charles McPherson, Joe Henderson, Roy Brooks, Abdullah Ibrahim and Sam Rivers; and has composed works premiered by the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra and Meet the Composer.
Bridgewater has become a great supporter of The Jazz Foundation of America in their mission to save the homes and the lives of America’s elderly jazz and blues musicians including musicians that survived Hurricane Katrina. Cecil performed at the 2008 Benefit Concert, “A Great Night in Harlem” at the World Famous Apollo Theater. He continues to perform while currently teaching as adjunct faculty at Manhattan School of Music, New School, William Patterson and The Julliard School.
More Posts: trumpet
From Broadway To 52nd Street
The Pajama Game drew back the first curtain at the St. James Theatre on May 13, 1954 and ran a record 1063 performances catapulting the show into the register of blockbuster musicals. Eddie Foy Jr., John Raitt, Janis Paige and Shirley MacLaine starred in the musical with music written and composed by Richard Adler & Jerry Ross. Jazz has had the privilege to give the song Hey There perpetual encores.
The Story: Adapted from the Broadway play, it’s a story of Sid, a workshop superintendent who must deal with a union demand for a 7.5-cent raise at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory. A strike is imminent and Babe the leader of the grievance committee leads the fight. However Sid is attracted to Babe and ensues a course of romance but is deflected. With slowdowns and machinery breakdowns promoting her cause, Sid reluctantly fires her. However he is convinced there is merit to Babe’s championship of the union and plots to get a peek at the books kept by Gladys.
Taking Gladys out to a nightclub Sid wheedles the keys from her but before he can leave the two are discovered by Babe. Sid gets a look at the books, sees that the boss has already tack on the 71/2 cents to production but has keeping the profits for himself. Sid confronts the boss, gets him to agree to the raise, goes to the union rally to bring the news and peace to his love life. Finally accepting her feelings for Sid, she falls for him. Everyone goes out to celebrate at Hernando’s Hideaway.
Jazz History: The free jazz movement, coming to prominence in the late ’50s, spawned very few standards. Free jazz’s unorthodox structures and performance techniques are not as amenable to transcription as other jazz styles. However, “Lonely Woman”, a blues by saxophonist Ornette Coleman, is perhaps the closest thing to a standard in free jazz, having been recorded by dozens of notable performers.
Free jazz is an approach to the music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz composers varied widely, the common feature was a dis-satisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s. Each in their own way, free jazz musicians attempted to alter, extend, or break down the conventions of jazz, often by discarding hitherto invariable features chord changes or tempos. While usually considered experimental and avant-garde, free jazz has also oppositely been conceived as an attempt to return jazz to its “primitive”, often religious roots, and emphasis on collective improvisation.
Sponsored By
www.whatissuitetabu.com