Requisites

On March 12, 16 and 30, 1965 four men walked into the recording studio at Atlantic Records and laid down the tracks that would become Sing Me Softly Of The Blues. Produced by Arif Mardin, this Art Farmer Quartet album was released that same year. It is just 34 minutes and 50 seconds long and Farmer’s twentieth album and his 4th recording for Atlantic.

The album is comprised of just six songs: Sing Me Softly of the Blues (Carla Bley) – 6:44, Ad Infinitum (Bley) – 6:21, Petite Belle (Traditional) – 4:08, Tears (Pete LaRoca) – 5:45, I Waited for You (Walter Gil Fuller) – 5:55 and One for Majid (LaRoca) – 5:57.

The quartet personnel are: Art Farmer/flugelhorn, Steve Kuhn/piano, Steve Swallow/bass and Pete LaRoca/drums.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Kim Rene Nalley was born November 14, 1971 in San Francisco, California but was raised in New Haven, Connecticut in a musical family that includes jazz drummer and photographer Reggie Jackson and R&B guitarist-vocalist Earl Whitaker. She received piano lessons from her great-grandmother and originally pursued classical voice, studying drama and opera at the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. She went on to study classical music at Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

At Holy Cross, Nalley sang with the power rock combo The Limit, which featured Crusader musicians Garrett Scott Flynn, Steve Guerette, Jim Januzzi, Allan Harper and Anthony O’Donnell. Switching to jazz shortly after moving to San Francisco, while attended UC Berkeley, she sang in the Cal Big Band, as well as receiving a See’s Candy’ Scholarship for Outstanding Musicianship.

Kim performed weekly at the Alta Plaza and director Michael Tilson Thomas discovered and recorded her in concert and hired her to sing a program of Gershwin tunes with the San Francisco Symphony. She began performing with the Johnny Nocturne Band for the Rounder/ Bullseye label, went on national and international tours, relocate to Switzerland, but returned to save the club Jazz at Pearl’s from going out of business.

Citing the Little Rascals and Bug Bunny cartoons as her seminal jazz influences, jazz and blues singer, actress, historian and former Jazz at Pearl’s club owner Kim Nalley, known for her powerful 3½ octave range, scatting, r&b, spirituals and folk guitar, continues to perform and record.

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Requisites

Soaring is an album recorded in 1973 by trumpeter Don Ellis and released on the MPS label. The album features Hank Levy’s composition which provided the title for, and was the title song for the 2014 film Whiplash. The film stars Miles Teller, J. K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, and Melissa Benoist and depicts the relationship between an ambitious jazz student (Teller) and an aggressive, abusive instructor (Simmons).

Four of the eight tracks are composed by Ellis and include Whiplash, Sladka Pitka by Milcho Leviev, The Devil Made Me Write This Piece, Go Back Home composed by Sam Falzone, Invincible, Image of Maria, Sidonie by Alexej Fried and closes out with Nicole.

Twenty multi-instrumentalists and four arrangers comprised the orchestra that brought this session to life playing a myriad of instruments, making it one for the collection. They are Don Ellis, Fred Seldon, Vince Denham, Sam Falzone, Gary Herbig, Jack Caudill, Bruce Mackay, Gil Rathel, Sidney Muldrow, Mike Jamieson, Ken Sawhill, Doug Bixby, Jay Graydon, Milcho Leviev, Dave McDaniel, Ralph Humphrey, Ron Dunn, Lee Pastora, Earle Corry, Joel Quivey, Renita Koven, Pat Kudzia, Alexej Fried and Hank Levy.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Raul Pineda was born on November 5, 1971 in Havana, Cuba.  As a young boy, he scoured his neighborhood for anything that could be used to create drums. He used metal rods driven into the ground to support used cooking oil cans, and formed drumsticks from the branches of orange trees. He was influenced by the local rumbero street bands, and at the urging of his musician grandfather, Nefer Miguel Milanés, he went on to study classical percussion for several years. He then immersed himself in Afro-Cuban music.

By 19, Raul was performing and recording with some of the leading Cuban ensembles and bandleaders, including Sentisis, and pianist Chucho Valdés. Over the next several years, international tours and Grammy-nominated recordings brought Raul to the music world’s attention as one of Cuba’s most influential young drummers. He blends a drum kit with percussion instruments, such as, the left foot cowbell.

Staying busy playing and recording with several bands and artists, since 2000, he has been playing with the Afro-Cuban-jazz-funk-rock band TIZER and with Latin superstar Juan Gabriel. Between the two bands he will have toured Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Dubai, Barbados, Aruba, Santiago de Chile, South Africa, Russia and South Korea.

Drummer Raul Pineda has garnered three Grammy nominations and a 2000 Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Performance with the Chucho Valdés Quartet album, Live at the Village Vanguard. He continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Gabrielle Goodman was born on October 23, 1964 in Baltimore, Maryland and raised in a musical family. Her mother was a classical singer and her father was a jazz trombonist. She attended Peabody preparatory school and briefly Oberlin College before transferring to the Peabody Institute Conservatory, where she studied until graduating in 1990 under the direction of Alice Gerstl Duschak and Gordon Hawkins.

As a protege of Roberta Flack she began her international performance career as a backing singer for the singer in the mid-1980s and continued to tour and record with the legend for several years opening for Miles Davis, Ray Charles, the Crusaders and among others in Japan, Switzerland and Brazil.

Her first break as a solo recording artist came when she was lead singer on producer Norman Connors 1988 album Passion on Capitol Records. She later recorded two albums Travelin’ Light and Until We Love on the JMT/Verve label with German producer Stefan Winter that feature her with Kevin Eubanks, Christian Mcbride, Gary Bartz, Gary Thomas, and Terri Lyne Carrington. Gabrielle has gone on to work with Walter Beasley, David Bunn, Tony Bunn, Patrice Rushen, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Michael Bublé, Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige, Freddie Jackson, Brian Ferry, Chaka Khan and the late George Duke.

As an educator she has held the position of associate professor of voice at Berklee College of Music and in-between vocalist Gabrielle Goodman continues to record and perform.  

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