Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patrick Bruce Metheny was born August 12, 1954 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a suburb southeast of Kansas City. At 15 he won a Down Beat scholarship to a one-week jazz camp, taken under the wing of guitarist Atilla Zoller and met Jim Hall and Ron Carter In NYC. Following high school graduation in 1972, he briefly attended the University of Miami, was quickly offered a teaching position but moved to Boston, accepting a teaching assistantship at Berklee College of Music with vibraphonist Gary Burton, making his name as a teenage prodigy.
In 1974, Metheny gained notoriety playing two sessions with Paul Bley and Carol Goss’ Improvising Artists label along with bassist Jaco Pastorius. He entered the wider jazz scene in 1975 when he joined Gary Burton’s band and his musical momentum carried him rapidly to the point that he had soon written enough material to record his debut album “Bright Size Life” with Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses.
One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz and New Age musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and ’80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group, is involved in side projects, and has released notable solo, trio, quartet and duet recordings. He has worked with musicians such as Jim Hall, Dave Holland, Roy Haynes, Toninho Horta, Gary Burton, Joni Mitchell, Chick Corea, Pedro Aznar, Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Haden, John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette, Herbie Hancock, Bill Stewart, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau and many others.
His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, post-bop, new age, Latin jazz and jazz-fusion. He has been voted Guitarist of the Year by the Down Beat Magazine Readers Poll several times, was granted the Miles Davis Award by the Montreal International Jazz Festival, has amassed an impressive catalogue of 97 albums as a leader, collaborator or sideman, has three gold albums and has received 20 Grammy Awards.
Guitarist Pat Metheny has been touring for more than 30 years, playing between 120-240 concerts a year.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
Miss Liberty brought to the stage its star Eddie Albert at the Imperial Theatre on July 15, 1949. The show ran for three hundred and eight performances with music composed by Irving Berlin. The song “You Can Have Him” became a jazz standard.
The Story: In 1885, New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett assigns novice reporter Horace Miller to find the woman who served as Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s model for the Statue of Liberty. In the artist’s Paris studio, Miller sees a photograph of Monique DuPont and mistakenly believes she was the one. Bennett arranges for her and her grandmother to accompany Horace back to New York City, where she becomes a media darling. When rival publisher Joseph Pulitzer discovers it was Bartholdi’s mother who actually posed for him, he exposes Monique as a fraud in his New York World. She faces deportation until a sympathetic Pulitzer comes to her rescue, paving the way for her to plan a future with Horace, who jilts his American girlfriend Maisie Doll in favor of the French beauty.
Jazz History: As the widely performed bebop or hot jazz began to wane in some sectors of the country, cool jazz began to emerge by the early 1950s. “Cool” was used to describe a kind of toned-down jazz. Later the term became associated with a number of white musicians who relocated to California where they could get day gigs at movie studios, unlike black musicians, while playing jazz at night. In this form it was called West Coast jazz. For white players to represent a kind of cool jazz is ironic since the idea of coolness has its roots in Black culture. Cool jazz contrasts with hot jazz in that it has limited vibrato, restrained timbre, stable dynamics, melodic calm, sophisticated harmonies that tempered the blues idiom.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack DeJohnette was born August 9, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois and studied drums and piano. He first became known as a member of Charles Lloyd’s band, along with pianist Keith Jarrett. He played with Bill Evans in 1968 on the acclaimed Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival and from 1969 to 1972 played with Miles Davis.
The 70s saw Jack recording for Milestone/Prestige and ECM appearing widely on ECM also as a sideman. Since then he has recorded for MCA, Blue Note and Kindred Rhythm. He led several groups since the early-1970s, including Compost, a jazz-rock group that produced two albums; then went on to lead sessions that produced the albums “Directions”, “New Directions” and “Special Edition”.
He has worked with a host of jazz lions to numerous to list but suffice it say they range from Eddie Gomez to Dave Holland to Arthur Blythe, David Murray and Chico Freeman. He is a dazzling improviser and a clear stylistic successor of Roy Haynes, and two of the greatest drummers of the 1960s, Tony Williams and Elvin Jones.
Since 2003, Jack has been part of Trio Beyond with organist Larry Goldings and guitarist John Scofield that paid tribute to The Tony Williams Lifetime Trio and he also appears as a member of the Bruce Hornsby Trio. He has been nominated for several Grammy Awards and in 2009 DeJohnette received the Grammy for Best New Age Album “Peace Time”. He has been awarded an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for his significant lifetime contributions to the enrichment of jazz and the further growth of the art form.
Jack DeJohnette successfully incorporates elements of free jazz and world music while maintaining the deep grooves of jazz and R&B drummers. His exceptional experience of time and style, combined with astounding improvisational ingenuity, make him one of the most highly regarded and in-demand drummers. He also occasionally appears on piano, on his own recordings and has built a catalogue too immense to cite as he continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Airto Moreira was born in Itaiopolis, Brazil on August 5, 1941 into a family of folk healers but was raised in Curitiba and Sao Paulo. Showing an extraordinary talent for music at a young age, he became a professional musician at age 13, and his first landmark recording was “Quarteto Novo” with Hermeto Pascoal in 1967. Shortly after, he followed his wife Flora Purim to the U. S., settling in New York City.
Airto began playing regularly with jazz musicians in the city beginning with the bassist Walter Booker and through him began playing with Joe Zawinul, who in turn introduced him to Miles Davis. At this time Miles was mounting the seminal fusion recording Bitches Brew to which Airto became a part of.
After two years with Miles, Airto joined Miles alumni Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Miroslav Vitous forming Weather Report and recording their self-titled debut album. He left Weather Report and joined Chick Corea’s new band Return To Forever, drumming on the debut Return To Forever and Light As A Feather, commonly regarded as fusion classics.
Airto has played with many of the greatest names in jazz including Cannonball Adderley, Lee Morgan, George Benson, Donald Byrd, Paul Desmond, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, John McLaughlin, Astrud Gilberto, Keith Jarrett and George Duke just to name a few. He also has played with symphonic orchestras and as a solo percussionist, and during live performances often includes a samba solo, where he emulates the sound of an entire band using just a single pandeiro.
In addition to jazz concerts and recordings, Airto has composed and contributed music scores to both television and film including Apocalypse Now and Last Tango In Paris. The drummer and percussionist has taught at UCLA and the California Brazil Camp and collaborated with his wife Flora and P.M. Dawn on “Non-Fiction Burning” for the Aids benefit album Red Hot + Rio produced by the Red Hot Organization.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
Kiss Me Kate opened its doors at the New Century Theatre on December 30, 1948 and was the second musical to be lauded as a blockbuster with a run of 1077 performances. Alfred Drake, Patricia Morrison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang were the stars of the show, who sung the music composed by Cole Porter, So In Love and From This Moment On, which became jazz standards. The musical won the very first Tony Award for Best Musical presented in 1949.
The Story: While cast members of a revival of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew celebrate another opening, another show, the show’s stars, Fred & Lilli, celebrate their first anniversary of their divorce. They reminisce about better times. Fred sends Lilli a bouquet, leading her to believe he is still in love with her. Misunderstanding leads to argument between the two. Meanwhile, one of the cast members signs Fred’s name to his gambling debt. Goons arrive to collect and Fred convinces them to make Lilli perform. Debt is voided on a technicality. Fred & Lilli make up over the course of the evening and recognize they do still love each other)
Broadway History: In 1880, a stretch of Broadway between Union Square and Madison Square was illuminated by Brush arc lamps, making it among the first electrically lighted streets in the United States. By the 1890s, the portion of Broadway from 23rd Street to 34th Street was so brightly illuminated by electrical advertising signs, that people began calling it “The Great White Way.” When the theater district moved uptown, the name was transferred to the Times Square area.
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