Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kurt Elling was born November 2, 1967 in Chicago, Illinois who first became interested in music through his father and growing up sang in choirs and played various musical instruments. As a child he listened to Tony Bennett, learned counterpoint from the motets of Bach and sang in his high school choir. He played violin, French horn, piano and drums but wasn’t exposed to jazz until he attended college listening to Dave Brubeck, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock and Ella Fitzgerald among others. He went on to pursue a master’s in philosophy of religion but left one credit short to pursue a career as a jazz vocalist.
Kurt began to perform around Chicago in basement clubs and jam sessions, scat singing and improvising his own lyrics while working day jobs to survive. He started listening to the minimalism and emotion of Chet Baker and to Mark Murphy exposing him to the poetry of Jack Kerouac. He recorded a demo in the early 90s that resulted in signing with Blue Note and the subsequent releasing of seven albums with the label.
He has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards, winning Best Vocal Jazz Album for 2009’s Dedicated To You. He often leads the Down Beat critics poll and has been awarded the Prix Billie Holiday from the Académie du Jazz. Elling is a baritone with a four-octave range, a writer, and composer who performs vocalese. Kurt Elling has sung and recorded with Bob Belden, Joanne Brackeen, Oscar Brown, Jr., Orbert Davis, Jon Hendricks and Bob Mintzer to name a few. Since 1995, he has collaborated with pianist, composer, and arranger and musical director Laurence Hobgood, regularly leading a quartet.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Russell Gunn was born October 20, 1971 in Chicago, Illinois but grew up in East St. Louis when his family moved when he was nine. His interest in music led Russell to the trumpet and at Lincoln high school he joined the band where his cousin Anthony Wiggins, the band’s featured trumpeter, and the band director fueled his musical interest. Gunn spent two years at Jackson State University on a full music scholarship, moved back to East. St. Louis, freelancing and working odd jobs. While performing at Cicero’s in St. Louis in 1993 saxophonist Oliver Lake happened to hear the young trumpeter, and immediately invited him to perform at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
This was followed by a fortuitous appearance at a 4am jam session at the Blue Note where Denis Jeter, an assistant to Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center, heard and recommended him for the third trumpet chair in Marsalis’ Blood on the Fields. Receiving rave notices for his work with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Russell started earning recognition as one of the most dynamic and exciting musicians of his generation. Continuing to freelance with Lake and various other top jazz artists, Gunn began leading his own groups and in 1994 and issued his first recording for the legendary Muse record label, “Young Gunn”.
Always fascinated with hip-hop Russell suffered undue criticism from the neo-conservative jazz mainstream for his culture style of dress, however, Russell’s virtuoso abilities and command of all musical styles from funk to the avant-garde evidenced a serious new talent on the scene. His eclectic musical approach had him collaborating with Cee-Lo, Maxwell, D’Angelo, Ne-Yo, Branford Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
With a singular style that incorporates the influences of masters like Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, and the underrated Booker Little, Gunn has continued to gain recognition for his own music through touring and well-received albums, including the Grammy-nominated Ethnomusicology, Vol. 1 and Ethnomusicology Vol. 2.
Understanding his range means listening as he interprets the standards on Mood Swings, putting on a twist as he Plays Miles Davis, challenging the parameters of freedom in jazz with his latest Ethnomusicology project “Return Of Gunn Fu” or his requiem with Love Stories. Trumpeter Russell Gunn continues to compose, record, perform, tour worldwide and push the jazz envelope with his groups “Bionic” and “Electrik Butterfly”.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roy Anthony Hargrove was born October 16, 1969 in Waco, Texas to parents who discovered his musical abilities as a young child. He received trumpet lessons and was greatly influenced by David “Fathead” Newman when Ray Charles’ band played at his junior high school. By high school his jazz potential was discovered by Wynton Marsalis during a visit to Dallas’s Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He went on to spend a year at Berklee College of Music in Boston but was regularly found at jam sessions in New York and finally transferred to the New School there.
He first recorded with saxophonist Bobby Watson followed by the group “Superblue” with Watson, Mulgrew Miller and Kenny Washington. He released his first solo album “Diamond In The Rough” on Novus/RCA and followed with four more releases. In 1993 he was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and composed “The Love Suite: In Mahogany”. Hargrove went on to record “Family” in 1995, and then, experimenting with other musicians, as part of a trio, the album Parker’s Mood, in 1995 with bassist Christian McBride and pianist Stephen Scott.
Roy has played with a host of stellar musicians including Shirley Horn, Joe Henderson, Stanley Turrentine, Johnny Griffin, Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Herbie Hancock and Wynton Marsalis. He has stretched his limits performing and collaborating with D’Angelo, Common, Erykah Badu, Worldwide Underground and played on the film album Like Water For Chocolate.
Hargrove won two Grammy Awards, one being in 1998 for the album Habana with the Afro-Cuban band he founded, “Crisol”. He is also the leader of the progressive group “RH Factor” which combines elements of jazz, funk, hip-hop, soul and gospel and has also ventured into big band with his latest album “Emergence”. Trumpeter Roy Hargrove continues to compose, arrange, perform and tour until he passed away on November 2, 2018 in Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mark Whitfield was born October 6, 1966 in Syosset, New York and graduated from Boston’s Berklee College of Music, studying composition, arranging and all styles of guitar performance. Upon graduation he returned to New York embarking on a career that afforded him the opportunity to collaborate with many artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Clark Terry, Jimmy Smith, Carmen McCrae, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Jack McDuff, Betty Carter, Shirley Horn, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, Burt Bacharach, Joe Williams, Wynton Marsalis, Bradford Marsalis, Stanley Turrentine and his greatest teacher and mentor George Benson.
The New York Times dubbed Whitfield “The Best Young Guitarist in the Business” and in 1990 Warner Bros. released his debut, “The Marksman”. The success of this release has led to a recording career that has produced 14 projects as a leader and collaborations with Sting, D’Angelo, Mary J. Blige, Chaka Khan, John Mayer, Jill Scott, Roy Hargrove, Diana Krall, Lauryn Hill, Sy Smith and Chris Botti.
In 2005, Whitfield accepted the invitation to join the faculty at Berklee, teaming up with Joe Lovano, Ralph Peterson, Danilo Perez, and Terry Lynn Carrington as “Artists in Residence”. While maintaining a teaching schedule the guitarist performs, tours worldwide and records, his latest project being “Songs of Wonder”, with two projects in the works with Christian McBride and Nicholas Payton.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert L. Hurst III was born on October 4, 1964 in Detroit, Michigan and began his early music studies playing the guitar before concentrating on the bass. In 1985 he began working with Out Of The Blue and adding such jazz luminaries and contemporaries as Tony Williams, Mulgrew Miller, Harry Connick Jr., Geri Allen, Russell Malone, Terence Blanchard, Pharaoh Sanders, Sting, Carl Allen and Steve Coleman among others to his roster.
From 1986 to 1991 Hurst played in Wynton Marsalis’s ensemble, played with Branford Marsalis in the early nineties, and debuted as a leader in 1993 recording “Robert Hurst Presents” that reached #13 on the Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart. He has won four Emmy and five Grammy awards and directed, arranged and composed while a member of The Tonight Show Band.
He has scored original music for the films The Wood and Brown Sugar; performed music for Ocean’s 11, Ocean’s 12, Ocean’s 13, and on the Good Night, and Good Luck the soundtrack featuring Dianne Reeves, in which she won the Jazz Vocal Grammy in 2008. His recent recordings with Kenny Garrett and Diana Krall were each nominated for a 2007 Grammy.
No stranger to education Hurst has been involved with the Education of Jazz and Jazz History, receiving the Presidential Scholarship from President Ronald Reagan. He currently holds a position of Associate Professor teaching jazz bass at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and holds a seat with the Board of Directors for the John Coltrane Foundation.
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