Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Laura Kahle was born on January 20, 1979 in Michigan but her family moved to Australia as a baby where she lived until 2004. She received her Bachelor of Music in jazz trumpet with the great John Hoffman and a Master of Music Studies in Composition @ the QLD Conservatorium of Music.
Moving to New York in 2004 she found herself working with the Danish Radio Big Band in Copenhagen, arranging the music of Jeff “Tain” Watts and Michael Brecker. She recorded “Downstream” was recorded in 2004 with a ten-piece ensemble from Brisbane, “West End Composers Collective”.
In 2006 she had two arrangements premiered by Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra featuring Jeff “Tain” Watts in Rose Hall, New York City. In 2007 she arranged the music of Gil Evans for the Branford Marsalis Septet, and performed in the Allen Room in New York City. By 2011 she recorded “Circular” and continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Magnarelli was born in Syracuse, New York on January 19, 1960. He first started playing music at age 12 with guitar and trumpet lessons, but had a knack for picking out songs on the piano by ear. His early performance experience, from elementary through high school, came via playing the trumpet and guitar in church. Later, while attending Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, he was the pianist and choir director at the Central Baptist Church.
Mags, as he was known, went on to get his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from the State University of New York in Fredonia in 1986, and that year, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in music. Becoming a regular on the New York and international jazz scene, by 1987 he was touring and recording with Lionel Hampton and Brother Jack McDuff, and was soon seen playing with Toshiko Akiyoshi, Glenn Miller Orchestra, Harry Connick Jr. and the Hard Bop Quintet.
In 1990, Joe was a semifinalist at the Thelonious Monk International Trumpet Competition in Washington, DC. He made his debut as a leader on the Cris Cross label in 1994 with “Why Not”. He followed that excellent album with three others on the label, “Always There”, “Mr. Mags” and “Hoop Dreams”. Joe currently has nine records out as a leader, and has played on numerous jazz labels as a sideman.In 2003-2006, Mags performed with the great Latin jazz conguero Ray Barretto’s New Sextet.
Joe recorded on Ray’s “Time Was, Time Is” (O+ Music), which was nominated for a Grammy. His list of sideman gigs is too long to list but a few are the Vanguard Orchestra, Jane Monheit, Jon Hendricks, Jimmy Cobb, Louis Hayes, Alvin Queen, Dado Maroni, Marty Sheller, Tom Harrell Big Band, The Carnegie Hall Orchestra, Don Sebesky, John Pizzarelli, Aretha Franklin, Rosemary Clooney, Joe Williams, Michael Feinstein, and the Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Trumpeter Joe Magnarelli is currently an adjunct professor of music at the Juilliard School of Music and Rutgers University, and he also conducts clinics and master classes around the world.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oli Bott was born January 16, 1974 in Hofheim am Taunus, Germany. He learned his trade on the vibraphone first in his native town under the tutelage of drummer Detlef Biedermann. Subsequent study in music was at the Berklee College of Music in Boston with Gary Burton, Bob Brookmeyer, Phil Wilson, Greg Hopkins, John LaPorta and Hal Crook, completing in 1996 with a diploma in Jazz Composition.
As a freelance musician in Berlin he has received several grants from the Berlin Senate and composition commissions for his own jazz orchestra. Bott’s awards include the NDR music prize for jazz directors, 1st prize at the Leipzig Improvisation competition, the Europ Jazz Contest and the Wayne Shorter Award.
Vobraphonist Oli Bott is currently active as a musician in various bands. In addition to his work as a composer and conductor for his twelve-headed “Oli Bott Orchestra”, he is also leads a quartet “Vibratanghissimo”. It is a project with original compositions as well as those by Astor Piazzolla, originally composed for bandoneon. They are now being reinterpreted on the vibraphone, part of the repertoire of this group. With his partner, guitarist Thomas Wallisch, he also performs his own compositions on “Thomas Wallisch & Oli Bott Duo”.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kat Parra was born on January 13, 1962 in San Francisco, California and spent part of her teenage years in Chile. Upon her return, she move to southern California to attend University of California at Los Angeles where she studied classical flute and voice for a year. Moving to the Silicon Valley area she shifted her educational focus to jazz, studying voice at San Jose State University alongside singer Patti Cathcart of Tuck & Patti, who was a major influence.
Kat spent five years as a lead vocalist for the Bay area salsa band Charanga Nueve, and they opened for the likes of Celia Cruz and Los Van Van of Cuba. But despite all that musical activity, she still had a “day gig” working for the tech giant Cisco Systems. In 2006 she left Cisco to be a full-time singer and concentrate on music exclusively.
That very same year Parra recorded her first solo album, Birds In Flight produced by Bay Area-based trombonist Wayne Wallace on JazzMa Records. After that, she signed with Wallace’s indie label, Patois Records, releasing her second solo album, Azucar de Amor (Sugar of Love) in 2008.
Kat is a flexible and broad-minded jazz vocalist who has very strong Latin leanings but has also been affected by Middle Eastern, Arabic, and North African music as well as greatly influenced by Afro-Cuban jazz. She has also combined jazz with everything from Brazilian samba to Afro-Peruvian music. She plays flute, guitar, and piano, and continues to perform in several different languages, including English, Spanish (which she speaks fluently), Portuguese, French, and Ladino, which is the language of Sephardic Jews and is considered one of the romance languages.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ramiro Flores was born on January 12, 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He began his musical training through the alto saxophone at the age of 11 years. He studied composition at the UCA and saxophone at the National Conservatory, while both played in the band folklorist César Isella, in addition to various projects.
In 1998 he traveled to Boston to continue his studies at Berklee College of Music, where he studied with musicians such as Joe Lovano, George Garzone and Jerry Bergonzi among others. He graduated with a dual major in Film Scoring and Performance in 2002 before moving to New York and continued developing his musical career in this city.
During this period he collaborated with Pedro Giraudo, Mr. Live Big Band, Pablo Ablanedo, The Monkeys, Ryle’s Big Band, Jerry Bergonzi and Slide Hampton. For a period he worked as a show band musician for Carnival Cruise Lines, was a composer for American Music Co. and wrote a book of instruction flute, and recorded for Music Sales Corporation NYC. He began his development as a leader to form his own band and performing his own music in Boston and New York.
Returning to Argentina in 2005, he participated in the projects of the local jazz including Mariano Otero, Ligia Piro, Juan Cruz de Urquiza, Pepi Taveira and Javier Malosetti amongst numerous others. The following year he won “80mundos, and by 2007 he produced and recorded his first CD “Flowers”, for BAU records, in which he collaborated with the likes of Juan Quintero,
That same year in December he received the Clarín Award as the revelation of jazz, voted best soprano saxophonist in 2008 by the newspaper La Nación. Alto saxophonist Ramiro Flores released his sophomore project “Son Dos” and continues to perform.
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