Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Eric Ross was born on May 14, 1948 in Carbondale, Pennsylvania and began studying piano at the age of seven under Jean Krantz-Thomas. Ten years later he started to write his own compositions and in the late 1960s and early 1970s he studied guitar and attended the electronic music composition course with Charles Dodge at Columbia University.

1972 saw him finishing college and beginning his career as a musician by playing and working in recording studios. Three years later Eric began playing the theremin and the following year he played his music exclusively, allowing him to develop it as a voice in his compositions. In 1982 he released his first album, Songs for Synthesized Soprano, and performed in concert at the Lincoln Center in New York.

He has performed throughout the United States and toured Europe, in addition to performing on radio, television and film. For over twenty years Eric’s ensemble featured John Abercrombie, Larry Coryell, Andrew Cyrille, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Youseff Yancy, Lydia Kavina, and Robert Dick, among others.

Along with his wife Mary, the couple created memorable multimedia performances that intertwined music with images, video projections, and dance. As an educator he has lectured on the theremin, piano, guitar, and electronic music at colleges, universities and schools in the USA and Europe.

Pianist and guitarist Eric Ross, who also plays synthesizers and is a master of the theremin, continues to blend classical, jazz, serial and avant-garde in his performances.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jim Douglas was born Robert James Elliot Douglas on May 13, 1942 in Gifford, East Lothian, Scotland. He played drums in his youth before switching to guitar and in his teens he accompanied clarinettist Pete Kerr.

As part of a Dixieland band, he performed in Germany in 1960 and soon after Jim began playing with Alex Welsh. In 1971 he appeared on the album Freddy Randall and His Famous Jazz Band. Other than Kerr and Welsh, he worked with Alan Elsdon, Lennie Hastings, Ed Polcer, and Keith Smith.

Douglas wrote and self-published a semi-autobiographical book, Tunes, Tours and Travel-itis – Eighteen Years of Facts, Faces and Fun with the Alex Welsh Band. He followed this up three years later with Teenage to Travel-itis – Growing Up in a World of Jazz. The sequel chronicles his adventures in the Jazz world before and after his time with the Alex Welsh Band.

Guitarist, banjoist, and author Jim Douglas, who played with Red Allen, Earl Hines, and Ruby Braff from 1962 until 1981 while in the Welsh band, continues to perform.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ronnie Foster was born May 12, 1950 in Buffalo, New York and was attracted to music at the age of four. Attending Public School 8, then Woodlawn Jr. High for a year, he took music more seriously from his early teens while at McKinley Vocational High School for two years, and having his first professional gig aged fifteen, playing in a strip club. He spent his final year at Lafayette High School. The only formal musical instruction he received was a month of accordion lessons.

Foster initially performed with other local musicians before moving to New York City with his own band, and acquired a publishing company. He has performed as a sideman with a wide range of musicians, frequently working with guitarist George Benson and playing on the guitarist’s album Breezin’.

He has played organ with Grant Green, Grover Washington, Jr., Stanley Turrentine, Roberta Flack, Earl Klugh, Harvey Mason, Jimmy Smith, and Stevie Wonder. His music Mystic Brew has been sampled by A Tribe Called Quest and J. Cole.

Organist Ronnie Foster, who is also a record producer, continues to perform, record.

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Jazz Poems

SNOW

I cannot help noticing how this slow Monk sol

seems to go somehow with the snow that is coming down this morning

how the notes and the space accompany

its easy falling on the geometry of the ground, on the flagstone path, the slanted roof, and the angles of the split rail fence

as if he had imagined a winter scene

as he sat at the piano late one night at the Five Spot playing “Ruby My Dear”.

Then again, it’s the kind of song

that would go easily with rain or a tumult of leaves,

and for that matter it’s a snow

that could attend an adagio for strings, the best of the Ronettes, or George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

It falls so indifferently

into the spacious white parlor of the world, if I were sitting here reading in silence, reading the morning paper or reading Being and Nothingness not even letting the spoon touch the inside of the cup, I have a feeling the snow would ever go perfectly with that. BILLY COLLINS  

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Glenn Paul Zottola was born in Port Chester, New York on April 28, 1947. He started playing jazz professionally in 1960.

Glenn is known for his work with Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, and Bob Wilber, and has accompanied a broad range of vocalists, including Mel Tormé, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and Joe Williams.

He has recorded over 50 albums with Butch Miles, Bob Wilber, Mousey Alexander, Steve Allen, Phil Bodner, George Kelly, Peggy Lee, George Masso, George Masso, and Maxine Sullivan, among numerous others.

In 1988, was a featured soloist at the 50th anniversary of Benny Goodman’s Carnegie Hall Concert. In 1995, Zottola was bandleader on the Suzanne Somers daytime TV talk show at Universal Studios.

Trumpeter and saxophonist Glenn Zottola, who has recorded twenty-two albums as a leader, continues to perform and record.

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