Daily Dose Of Jazz..
Matso Limtiaco was born May 2, 1963 and majored in music education as an undergraduate. After a brief period teaching public school music, he earned his MA in music theory/composition at Washington State University in 1990. After spending six years teaching music at all levels from junior high band to university jazz ensembles, arranging music for groups he led and for a variety of local performers.
Limtiaco gained his first notoriety as a marching band arranger for Washington State University, and then for the University of Washington. Matso quit teaching music full-time and is active as a freelance composer, arranger, and performer in the Seattle area. His baritone saxophone work has anchored the Emerald City Jazz Orchestra saxophone section since 1994, and the band’s two recordings “Alive and Swinging” and “Come Rain or Come Shine” feature his charts.
After spending several years in music education, he left teaching and now works as an independent composer/arranger, with a “day job” as a technical writer for a large manufacturing company. Among jazz arrangers and composers Matso is not the most well-known nor the most prolific but he rapidly established himself as one of the most polished and professional writers anywhere.
Inspire A Young Mind
Jazz In Film
The Film: They Call Me Mister Tibbs!
The Year: 1970
The Director: Gordon Douglas
The Stars: Sidney Poitier, Martin Landau, Barbara McNair, Anthony Zerbe, Edward Asner, Beverly Todd
The Music: Composed by Quincy Jones
The Story: Detective Virgil Tibbs, now a lieutenant with the San Francisco police, is assigned to investigate the murder of a prostitute. A prime suspect is Rev. Logan Sharpe, a liberal street preacher and political organizer, who insists to Tibbs that he was merely visiting the hooker in a professional capacity, advising her spiritually. Tibbs questions a janitor from the victim’s building, Mealie, as well as another man, Woody Garfield, who might have been the woman’s pimp. Suspicion falls on a man named Rice Weedon, who takes umbrage and is shot by Tibbs in self-defense. Tibbs concludes that Sharpe really must be the culprit. Sharpe confesses but requests Tibbs give him some time to complete his work on one last political issue. Told this wouldn’t be possible, Sharpe takes his own life.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Coco Rouzier was born on April 14, 1966 in Washington, DC and began singing as a child by imitating the sounds that came from her mother. She sang in the Concert Choir at Kelly Miller Jr. High School taught her harmony. While working summers in musical theater she learned acting and subsequent immersion into cabaret taught her to and learned to connect intimately with the audience.
While at Howard University, Rouzier won the amateur singing contest and that led her straight to the Apollo Theater in New York City where she performed on “It’s Showtime at the Apollo”. New York City become her home, where she discovered jazz and started to swing with The Jerry Kravat NY Orchestra, now called Tribeca Rhythm.
Coco’s performances have garnered her the labels of a Jazz Diva in France, the Soulful Swinging Songstress in America, and The Jewel in China. She has performed in Norway on some of stages her heroes stood decades before. As yet she has not led her own recording session to showcase her own style she has developed and for the past 15 years. Vocalist Coco Rouzier continues to perform for audiences around the world with a blend of straight-ahead swing, blues and old-school soul.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ryan Kisor was born April 12, 1973 in Sioux City, Iowa and learned trumpet from his father. He started playing in a local dance band, the Eddie Skeets Orchestra, at age ten. By 12 he was taking classical trumpet lessons, met Clark Terry when he was 15 while attending his summer jazz camp, and played with all-star high school bands. In 1990, he won the Thelonious Monk Institute’s trumpet contest at the age of 17, performing against Nicholas Payton and Marcus Printup.
Following this he was signed by Columbia Records and released his first two albums, 1992’s Minor Mutiny and 1993’s On the One. Following this, Kisor entered the Manhattan School of Music and studied under Lew Soloff among others.
He has played in New York with the Mingus Big Band, Michel Camilo Big Band, with Gerry Mulligan, Wynton Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Horace Silver and Walter Blanding. Since 1994 he has been a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, has released fifteen albums as a bandleader and continues to perform and record.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Greg Ruggiero was born on April 11, 1977 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and and studied the guitar as a youth. Then at the age of twenty-seven he decided to make his jazz mark in the clubs of New York City and moved to Brooklyn in 2004. It was just three years later that he released his debut record as a leader “Balance” on the jazz label Fresh Sound New Talent.
As a sideman he has recorded with Luisa Sobral, Mark Turner, Nasheet Waits, Greg Osby, Matt Brewer, Logan Richardson, Nick Halley and Gavin Fallow and has several projects that are still in production. Greg has the honor of featured artist at the Canjazz Festival in Galicia, Spain; taught workshops, recorded two records, and performed in concert.
As an educator he sits on the New School University Applied Music faculty, has taught at the Academy of Creative Education in Los Angeles, California, and has been a guest artist and clinician at the Crossties Jazz Festival hosted by Delta State University in Greenville, Mississippi along with Mulgrew Miller.
Ruggiero was a part of the Jazz of Enchantment radio program and educational series as one of the top 20 Jazz artists associated with his home state of New Mexico, along with Frank Morgan, Bobby Shew, Rob Wilkerson and Matt Brewer. Greg has performed with Matt Brewer, Logan Richardson, and many others.
Of late, Greg has renewed his passion for the jazz standard repertoire leading his trio or quartet. Taking license from the classic vocal performances of Billy Holiday, Nat Cole, Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to name a few, his passion has led the guitarist to release his sophomore project “My Little One”, a collection of original music set to lyrics.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
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