Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Sofia Ribeiro was born on March 18, 1978 in Lisboa, Portugal. She graduated with a degree in jazz performance from “Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo do Porto”, did a one year exchange program in Barcelona at “Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya”, and another one on scholarship at Berklee College of Music. She also received a master’s degree in jazz performance from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and went on to study for one year at the “Conservatoire National Superieur de Paris”.

Ribeiro has recorded five CDs in duo and quartet settings, performed children’s music written for books, has toured throughout Europe performing at the Sunset Jazz Club, Jamboree, Silesian Jazz Festival as well as the Kennedy Center and Berklee Performance Center among others.,

Sofia has taken 1st prize at the international competitions “Crest Jazz Vocal” in France, 1st prize at the international competition for singing musicians “Voicingers” in Poland, and 2nd prize at the “Brussels International Young Jazz Singers Competition”, and was a part of the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Vocalist and composer Sofia Ribeiro has developed strong and emotional performances blending elements of jazz, Brazilian and Portuguese music within her charming and powerful sound. She continues to perform, record and tour.

Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share

More Posts: vocal

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Travis Shook was born on March 10, 1969 in Oroville, California and started learning to play the piano at age seven. His family moved to Olympia, Washington when he was ten, spending his adolescent years in the Pacific Northwest. For a period of time he played rock guitar but soon realized jazz improvisation was his passion. At eighteen he enrolled at William Patterson College and studied under Mabern. After graduating he returned to Washington and joined bassist Buddy Catlett’s band where he learned a lot about the history of jazz.

In 1991 he won the Jacksonville Festival’s Great American Piano Competition that led to a contract with Columbia Records/Sony Music. Two years later he moved to New York City and recorded his debut with a quartet that included tony Williams and Bunky Green. Though receiving critical acclaim both in the U.S. and France for this first effort, it was a short-lived relationship when Sony purged a large percentage of the Columbia jazz roster upon acquiring the label in 1993.

After spending some time in obscurity after being attacked by New York Times critic Peter Watrous who criticized one of his performances, he entered a dark period in his life: alcoholism. A year later he got picked up by Betty Carter and went on tour through Europe, but he sunk deeper and added drugs to his plate of demons. Unemployable, he dropped out of the public eye for a number of years. Travis met, moved in with and ultimately married jazz singer Veronica Nunn who helped him overcome his demons and since 1998 he has been sober.

In 1999 Shook and his wife started their own record label, Dead Horse Records, which has released four recordings to date. Over the years he has performed with Reggie Workman, Eddie Harris, Joe Lovano, toots Thielemans, Rufus Reid, Chuck Israels, Ernestine Anderson, Branford Marsalis, Benny Golson and Clifford Jordan as well as Sonny Simmons, Michael Franks, Gino Vanelli, Bob Hope and Chris Botti among others.

His influences were Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner, Duke Ellington, Harold Mabern, Herbie Hancock and Bill Evans but also John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Elvin Jones.Pianist Travis Shook continues to perform and record while building the catalogue of Dead Horse Records.

Jazz Is Global – Share

More Posts: piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Liam Sillery was born in Northvale, New Jersey, a suburb across the river from New York City on February 28, 1972. Introduced to music and the trumpet at an early age by his uncle, also a trumpet player, he considers himself fortunate to have been surrounded through the years by fine teachers and musicians.

Matriculating through the undergraduate program at the University of South Florida was most significant as he studied with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. Before going on to attend the Manhattan School of Music, he performed as a freelance musician. Once in New York at the Manhattan School, he studied with Ccil Bridgewater, Dave Liebman, Phil Markowitz, Joan Stiles, Mark Soskin, and Garry Dial.

In 2004 Liam released his first recording as a leader, Minor Changes, followed by his sophomore project On The Fly with the Dave Sills Quartet in 2006. The next summer he recorded a third CD, Outskirts, in which he moved away from his traditional style to explore freer material. Pursuing his expansion of style and knowledge of his instrument he combines textures, rhythms and sonorities to the details and intricacies of his playing.

Trumpeter and composer Liam Sillery has performed with is quintet at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam and continues to play in and around metropolitan New York City.

Give The Gift Of Knowledge

More Posts: trumpet

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joey Calderazzo was born on February 27, 1965 in New Rochelle, New York and was inspired by a friend who lived next door, to began his piano studies at age seven. Progressing rapidly in a house where other family members were also playing drums and singing, by the time he turned 14 he was the youngest member of his brother Gene’s rock band. When the other, significantly older band members enrolled at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and switched their allegiance to jazz, he set aside his passions for the Beatles and Led Zeppelin for that of Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner.

He met Michael Brecker at a clinic, and in 1987 the saxophonist was introducing him to the jazz world as part of the touring quintet. After playing on two tracks of Brecker’s1988 album Don’t Try This At Home, Brecker produced Calderazzo’s first disc, In the Door for Blue Note. Not only did Brecker record on the project, he brought along saxophonists Jerry Bergonzi and Branford Marsalis.

Joey has maintained a strong relationship over the years with Brecker and Marsalis having taken the piano chair post Kenny Kirkland in the later’s Buckshot LeFonque. He has played with Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, Bruce Gertz, John Patitucci and Jeff “Tain” Watts to name a few. He has released

Calderazzo assumed his role as sideman and composer on a number of Marsalis recordings contributing to Contemporary Jazz, Footsteps Of Our Fathers,Romare Bearden Revealed, Eternal and the DVD A Love Supreme, Live In Amsterdam. As a leader he has released more than a dozen compact discs such as his Secrets, Amanecer, Trio Live and his latest release Going Home, as well as several co-leader projects.

Pianist and composer Joey Calderazzo continues to perform as a solo pianist, as leader of his trio, and as a member of the Branford Marsalis Quartet.

Take A Dose On The Road

More Posts: piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Wayne Escoffery was born on February 23, 1975 in London, England. He and his mother emigrated to the U.S. in 1986 and settled in New Haven, Connecticut. At age eleven he joined The New Haven Trinity Boys Choir and began taking saxophone lessons from Malcolm Dickinson. By sixteen, he had left the choir and engaged in a more intensive study of the saxophone in New York City at the Jazzmobile, the Neighborhood Music School and the ACES Educational Center for the Arts, both in New Haven.

During his senior year in high School, he attended the Artists Collective, Inc. in Hartford, Connecticut. While there he met Jackie McLean who founded the jazz program at The Hartt School, that Escoffery would ultimately attend under scholarship. He went on to matriculate through the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the New England Conservatory in Boston. During this time, he toured with Herbie Hancock and performed and studied with several jazz greats. In 1999, he graduated with a Masters degree and moved to New York to begin his professional career.

Since 2000, Wayne has been working in New York City with Carl Allen, Eric Reed, Mingus Big Band, Ralph Peterson, Ben riley, Ron Carter, Rufus Reid, Bill Charlap, Bruce Barth, Jimmy Cobb, Eddie Henderson, Mary Stallings, Cynthia Scott, Nancie Banks, Laverne Butler and his wife, Carolyn Leonhart.

Tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery has released nine albums to date and in addition, he collaborates with his wife, continues to perform with his own quartet and quintet, the Tom Harrell Quintet, Abdullah Ibrahim’s Akaya and Jazz At Lincoln Center and others.

Jazz Is Global – Share

More Posts: saxophone