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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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Neal Caine was born in St. Louis, Missouri on January 11, 1973. Growing up in University City he started out with the Suzuki Method on violin at age three. He heard a lot of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie around the house as a child, inheriting his mother’s passion for jazz and learned music as a native language. He played bass at University City High School until graduating in 1991. He was immersed in the school’s jazz scene and its widely recognized jazz program alongside trumpeter Jeremy Davenport, pianist Peter Martin and saxophonist Todd Williams.
After high school, Caine still played jazz bass as a hobby and he moved to New Orleans he enrolled in Tulane University, majoring in political science and heading towards a law degree. But his love for jazz proved too strong to resist. Soon Caine was playing with the Ellis Marsalis and at gigs around the city with trumpeter Nicholas Payton, saxophonist Donald Harrison and trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis, touring Europe with the later, leaving college in his sophomore year.
A move to New York saw him joining Elvin Jones’ Jazz Machine for four years, followed by a year with Diana Krall and then on to spending the final year of her life with Betty Carter, known for her creativity and nurturing young musicians seeking solo careers. After her passing in 1998, Neal worked on establishing his name in New York and in 2000 Harry Connick Jr. called on him to tour Europe with his big band, which has become his regular gig for half a year.
He was also a frequent presence on the Smalls scene for many years, performing often with regulars Sherman Irby, Gregory Tardy, Charles Owens, Harry Whitaker, Zaid Nasser, Frank Hewitt, and others. These days, he has dual residency between New Orleans and New York City, and is active on both scenes. He’s on a long list of recordings by artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, John Hicks, Wess Anderson, Billy Hart, Oliver Lake, and Harry Connick Jr.
As a composer he has been influenced by the freedom and looseness of Wayne Shorter’s writings. With a long list of sideman gigs behind hem bassist Neal Caine has taken on the role of bandleader, putting a quintet together and releasing his debut recording “Backstabber’s Ball” on the Smalls Records label.
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