Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jaleel Shaw was born February 11, 1978. Growing up in Philadelphia, PA, where he studied with saxophonist Rayburn Wright, Robert Landham, and jazz instructor Lovette Hines while attending the High School for Creative & Performing Arts, Shaw transferring and graduated from George Washington High School. During this period, John Blake and Grover Washington, Jr. also mentored him.
Upon graduating from high school, he received a full four-year tuition scholarship to Berklee College of Music, earned dual degrees in music education and performance Jaleel attended Berklee for four years, received the Billboard Endowed Scholarship for Outstanding Academic and Musical achievement, two Woodwind Dept. Chair Awards, The Outstanding Student Teacher Award, and The Boston Jazz Society Award.
After Berklee, Shaw went to Manhattan School of Music, received his Masters in Jazz Performance and was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition. Jaleel has performed and toured throughout the U.S., Asia, Europe and Australia. The altoist is currently a member of the Roy Haynes Quartet and the Charles Mingus Big Band, performs in various New York clubs, has recorded two albums and leads his own quartet and quintet.
More Posts: saxophone
From Broadway To 52nd Street
Funny Girl opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on March 26, 1964 and entered into the fraternity of blockbuster musicals with 1,348 performances. Jule Styne & Robert Merrill composed the music and from the score came the classic tune People, that became a hit long before it premiered on Broadway performed by Barbra Streisand. Joining her in the cast of players were Sydney Chaplin, Jean Stapleton and Lainie Kazan.
The Story: The early years of Ziegfield Follies star Fanny Brice in which Streisand recreates her Broadway triumph. She reminisces about her life as she wanders back to the days of Keeney’s Music hall, her eventual success and the two men in her life. There’s Flo Ziegfeld, who makes her a star and Nicky Arnstein, a gambler, who she marries. Her career flourishes as Nicky’s gambling and prison sentence destroy her marriage. She sings, roller-skates, cracks jokes, loves & marries a gambler, and tugs at your heart in a tour-de-force performance)
Jazz History: The Sixties was the most tumultuous decade in the history of America and the changes were reflected in jazz. Many musicians were falling under the modal-jazz spell of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, and the free-jazz influence of saxophonist Ornette Coleman; John Coltrane performs in concert as a member of Miles Davis’ group for the last time, riots break out at the Newport Jazz Festival and Max Roach begins to record his Freedom Now! Suite. The country saw John F. Kennedy elected as the youngest President in U.S. history, we lived the Cuban missile crisis, student sit-ins and segregation protests at restaurants, and the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Dave Brubeck lost $40,000 in bookings from a month-long tour of U.S. southern states because he refused to drop African-American bassist Eugene Wright from his group.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gregory Tardy was born February 3, 1966 in New Orleans, Louisiana but was reared in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His interest in music began studying classical clarinet. By high school he excelled in music, winning many awards and scholarships, studying with renowned clarinetists and preparing for a symphony career. Over time he was asked to play saxophone, filling missing gaps in various high school and college ensembles. But it was the prodding of his older brother that made him explore the music of John Coltrane, and decide to follow a jazz path.
Gregory’s passion for the saxophone took over his studies, he moved to St. Louis, played the jazz and blues scene, returned to New Orleans to further study, gigged with the Neville Brothers and ended up in bands led by Nicholas Payton, Jason and Ellis Marsalis. In 1992, Tardy recorded his first solo project “Crazy Love”, was picked up by Elvin Jones Jazz Machine, and moved to New York City.
His performance and recording lists a large array of prominence not limited to Tom Harrell, Dave Douglas, Wynton Marsalis, Jay McShann, Steve Coleman, Betty Carter, James Moody, Ravi Coltrane, Mark Turner, Dewey Redman, Chris Potter, Joe Lovano, Bill Frisell, Rashied Ali and John Patitucci. He has even brought his clarinet out of retirement playing with Andrew Hill, Steve Swallow, Stefan Harris and others.
Tardy continues to explore new territory while keeping in the tradition as he play his own music and perform in many great bands. As an educator he teaches private lessons and facilitates clinics around the world, but always speaking through his horn.
From Broadway To 52nd Street
She Loves Me opened the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on April 23, 1963 and the show ran for 301 performances. Sheldon Harnick penned the lyrics and Jerry Bock composed the music to the tune She Loves Me which has entered into the pantheon of jazz standards. The musical starred Barbara Cook, Daniel Massey, Barbara Baxley and Jack Cassidy.
The Story: Set in Hungary in the late 1930s, the story follows two coworkers George and Amalia who unwittingly meet through a Lonely Hearts column. As the two anonymously write love letters to each other, things don’t go so well at work. Not knowing that they are each other’s pen pal, they constantly fight. Further Georg’s boss, Mr. Maraczek, who thinks George is having an affair with his wife, constantly criticizes George at work. Eventually, the boss realizes that another clerk is having the affair. In the end Georg and Amalia discover that they are each other’s pen pal and they fall in love.
Broadway History: The alternative theatre movement aimed to break these commercial and psychological restraints by bonding spectator and audience and by lessening the theatrical illusion of an imagined space and time. Conventional theatre taught the spectator to lose himself in the fictional onstage time, space, and characters; conversely, alternative theatre relied on the spectator’s complete consciousness of the present. This present is the real time and space shared by the audience and the performers; only when the audience consciously perceives the present can they perceive the theatrical experience as relevant to their lives, and not as escapist fiction. The primary importance of the spectator’s consciousness of the present is that he is an active force in creating the theatrical event rather than a passive observer of a ready-made production.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
Oliver! opened at the Imperial Theatre on January 6, 1963 and ran 774 performances. Lionel Bart wrote the book and the lyrics and composed the music. One of his songs, Where Is Love became a jazz favorite.
The Story: Musical adaptation of Dickens story in which a young Oliver, an orphan in a workhouse, asks for more of the meager gruel from a surprised matron. Punished for beating up another boy who made fun of his dead mother and locked in a coffin but he escapes. Living on the streets of London he is befriended by the Artful Dodger who introduces him to Fagin, a criminal teaching young boys to become pickpockets. The thieving children are manipulated by their leader and mentor Fagin, and the young Oliver, who through circumstances is forced into a life of crime. Greed of the workhouse caretakers leads to Oliver’s ultimate rescue by a kindly old gentleman who realizes Oliver is his great nephew. The musical, as is the book, was a powerful statement on the 19th century poverty, crime and government neglect crying out for social reform.
Jazz History: By the 1960s, most of the legendary clubs were razed or fell into disrepair. The last club there closed its doors in 1968. Today, the street is full of banks, shops, and department stores and shows little trace of its jazz history. The block from 5th to 6th Avenues is formally co-named “Swing Street” and one block west is called “W. C. Handys Place”.
The 21 Club is the sole surviving club on 52nd Street that also existed during the 1940s. The venue for the original Birdland at 1674 Broadway (between 52nd & 53rd), which came into existence in 1949, is now a “gentlemen’s club”. The current Birdland is on 44th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues.
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