Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Patrick Dease was born August 25, 1982 in Augusta, Georgia. He attended John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet High School where he studied saxophone and voice. He achieved all-state vocal honors for three consecutive years.
At 17 Michael taught himself to play trombone and was soon invited to join the inaugural class of the Juilliard jazz studies program by Wycliffe Gordon. He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees while at the school. While at Juilliard he won many awards, including the Frank Rosolino Award, J.J. Johnson Award, the Sammy Nestico Jazz Composers Award, ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award, and the Fish Middleton Jazz Competition.[2]
He began his career in Illinois Jacquet’s Big Band in 2002, and has performed as a featured member of the big bands of Christian McBride, Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton, Jimmy Heath, Charles Tolliver and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars. He also performs with small groups led by Claudio Roditi, Rodney Whitaker, Wycliffe Gordon, and David Sanborn. He has toured extensively throughout Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America. In addition to performance, Dease serves as president and producer at his jazz record label, D Clef Records.
Dease conducts master classes and workshops at universities and conservatories around the world, holds the position of Associate Professor of Jazz Trombone at the Michigan State University College of Music. He has held similar positions at Queens College, CUNY, and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City.
Tenor and bass trombonist, composer, producer and educator Michael Dease continues to perform, compose, record and educate.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alphonse “Alphonso” Trent was born on August 24, 1905 in Fort Smith, Arkansas and played piano from childhood, working in local bands in Arkansas through his youth.
He led his first band in the mid-1920s, possibly as early as 1923. In 1924 he played with Eugene Cook’s Synco Six, then took over leadership of the band until 1934. They played mostly in the American South and Midwest, as well as on steamboats.
Despite success in New York around 1930, Trent chose not to work further on the East Coast. He left music in the mid-1930s but returned with another band in 1938. His sidemen included Terrence Holder, Alex Hill, Stuff Smith, Snub Mosley, Charlie Christian, Sweets Edison, Mouse Randolph, and Peanuts Holland.
As a leader he only recorded eight sides: four in 1928, two in 1930, and two in 1933. His small recorded legacy has made him a somewhat obscure figure today, but the sophistication of his arrangements and the precision with which they were executed inspired awe in contemporaries.
Pianist and territory band leader Alphonso Trent, who performed in the biggest and finest hotels in the South, died on October 14, 1959.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack Payne was born John Wesley Vivian Payne on August 22, 1899 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. He is the only son of a music publisher’s warehouse manager and it wasn’t until he was serving in the Royal Flying Corps that he played the piano in amateur dance bands. Towards the end of World War I, he led dance bands for the troops and was part of a voluntary group The Allies Concert Party that performed to wounded soldiers convalescing around Birmingham.
He played with visiting American jazz bands at the Birmingham Palais during the early 1920s, including the Southern Rag-a-Jazz Orchestra in 1922, before moving to London in 1925. He played in a ten-piece band which became the house band at London’s Hotel Cecil. Three years later Payne became the BBC Director of Dance Music and the leader of the BBC’s first official dance band.
After leaving the BBC in 1932 he returned to playing hotel venues and switched labels to Imperial, followed by Rex from 1934. Payne took his band on nationwide tours and made a couple of films, composed and published waltzes, and recorded jazz working with Garland Wilson.
>Returning to the post of Director of Dance Music at the BBC until 1946. Bandleader and composer Jack Payne, who authored two autobiographies, died in Tonbridge, Kent, England on December 4,1969, aged 70.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tom Kennedy was born on August 21, 1960 in St. Louis, Missouri and is the son of a professional trumpet player. He began playing acoustic bass at the age of nine on a double-bass brought home by his older brother, jazz pianist Ray Kennedy. It wasn’t long before he began to perform with such as Freddie Hubbard, James Moody, Nat Adderly, Sonny Stitt and Stan Kenton passing through the Midwest.
Specializing in acoustic jazz until he picked up the electric bass at the age of 17. Soon he was dividing his time between mainstream and progressive jazz fusion. Tom gained a reputation beyond St. Louis and he relocated to New York City, where he quickly found work with multiple groups. He recorded with guitarist Bill Connors and toured with Michael Brecker in the jazz-fusion group Steps Ahead. He went on to have tours and recordings with Tania Maria and Al DiMeola.
In 1998, Kennedy became an integral part of Dave Weckl’s band, a group he toured, composed and recorded with for over nine years. They have continued to perform and record together on various projects for other artists, including Mike Stern, Didier Lockwood, Dave Grusin and Lee Ritenour.
He has recorded six albums as a leader and another twenty as a sideman with Dave Weckl, Bill Connors, Don Grolnick, Ray Kennedy, Al DiMeola, Planet X, Derek Sherinian, and Mike Stern.
Tom has also performed and recorded with top contemporary players Simon Phillips, Steve Gadd, Frank Gambale, Steve Lukather, David Sanborn, Jeff Lorber, Ricky Lawson, Joe Sample, Renee Rosnes and George Garzone and fusion band Planet X.
Double-bass and electric bassist Tom Kennedy, who moved to New York City in 1984 and immersed himself in the hard bop, fusion and swing genres, continues to perform and record.
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Jazz Poems
BIX BEIDERBECKE (1908~1931)
January, 1926
China Boy. Lazy Daddy. Cryin’ All Day.
He dreamed he played the notes so slowly that
they hovered in the air above the crowd
and shimmered like a neon sign. But no,
the club stayed dark, trays clattered in the kitchen,
people drank and kept on talking. He watched
the smoke drift from a woman’s cigarette
and slowly circle up across the room
until the ceiling fan blades chopped it up.
A face, a young girl’s face, looked up at him,
the stupid face of small-town innocence.
He smiled her way and wondered who she was.
He looked again and saw the face was his.
He woke up then. His head still hurt from drinking.
Jimmy ws driving. Tram was still asleep.
Where were they anyway? Near Davenport?
There was no distance in these open fields–
only time, time marked by a farmhouse
or a barn, a tin-topped silo or a tree,
some momentary silhouette against
the endless, empty fields of snow.
He lit a cigarette and closed his eyes.
The best years of his life! The Boring “Twenties.
He watched the morning break across the snow.
Would heaven be as white as Iowa?
DANA GIOIA
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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