Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nino Frasio was born April 26, 1950 in Milan, Italy and his introduction in music was taken in 1964 as a guitarist and banjoist. He graduated in 1976 from the Universitá degli Studi of Milano and studied with professor Enea Vallesi. Like most eenage players of the time he followed the Beatles craze, playing lead guitar where he also disastrously attempted to sing somewhat understandable English.
In 1969 he joined the Italian cast of Up With People! and played many performances on lead guitar and tenor banjo. Leaving the show in 1971, when he started his day job career, and since then has dedicated himself exclusively to classic jazz. His banjo studies had him discovering the other four string tuning and soon was doubling on tenor and plectrum banjo.
After performing on the national Italian TV network on a broadcast of Musica Insieme, he founded the New Orleans styled Olympia Ragtime Band in 1972. a pure New Orleans style band in which he played banjo. Frasio left the band in the early ’80s and started a busy musical career as a free-lance performer with the many jazz bands active in Northern Italy. By 1973 he was enlisted in the Italian Air Force where he began the study of cornet and tuba. Post discharged he chose to play the tuba.
In 1984 Nino joined the Ambrosia Brass Band as a sousaphonist which gained a wide popularity all over Europe playing marches in the style of the great brass bands of New Orleans. He continued freelancing gigs on banjo and guitar, and participated in a long-lasting series of weekly live radio broadcasts.
In the mid-Nineties Frasio went back to playing classic jazz with a new project called the Odd Fellows New Orleans Quartet & Band. Three years later he joined the Jumpin’ Jazz Ballroom Orchestra on banjo and guitar and the ten piece band played a repertory of classic jazz tunes of the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s.
As he aged Nino slowed down his freelance playing and started to look for his old music pals again to play his banjo in a strict New Orleans style. He went on to become a founding member of the Pegasus Brass Band, which performed at several European jazz festivals. He played regularly with the Milano Rhythm Kings led by Giorgio Alberti, then with the Savannah Serenaders, before joining on guitar the Prefisso02 Orchestra, with its beautiful repertoire of early ’40s Italian swing.
Banjoist Nino Frasio, who also plays guitar, tuba and sousaphone, continues to perform with a series of brass bands and orchestras.
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The Jazz Voyager
The Jazz Voyager is leaving Philly and heading south to Durham, North Carolina for his first visit to the historic landmark, the Hayti Heritage Center. It sits on the campus of North Carolina Central University, an HBCU founded in 1909 and America’s first public liberal arts institution.
The center was named for the independent black community founded shortly after the American Civil War on the southern edge of Durham by freedmen coming to work in tobacco warehouses and related jobs in the city. By the early decades of the 20th century, African Americans prospered due to Jim Crow, owning and operating more than 200 businesses, which were located along Fayetteville, Pettigrew, and Pine Streets, the boundaries of Hayti.
I will be in the audience to witness for a second time the vocal talents of 7 time Grammy Award nominee Nnenna Freelon, who will perform with her bassist John Brown, the North Carolina Central University Jazz Ensemble, directed by Robert Trowers and the Vocal Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Lenora Helm Hammonds, someone I have known for many years, having followed her career as a vocalist and as an educator. She continues to create wonderful accomplishments at NCCU.
The downtown location is at 801 Fayetteville Street 27705. For tickets and more information go to https://notoriousjazz.com/event/jazzmeia-horn-5
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eldon Payne was born in Morristown, Tennessee on April 25, 1957. He graduated cum laude from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville with a B.S. in Business Administration in 1979. Then he moved to Tampa, Florida in the spring of 1980.
Retiring from Delta Air Lines with twenty five years of service in 2008, Eldon performed during that period with the University of Tennessee Campus Band, Tampa Bay Buccaneer Band, Shades of Blue, Boulevard Jazz Orchestra, The Mostly Pops Orchestra, Helios Jazz Orchestra, Cigar City Big Band, Swing Sound Orchestra, Frankie D. New York Orchestra, Clearwater Community Jazz Band, Sun City Center Big Band, George Carroll Big Band, Gulf Bay Big Band, Ten O’clock Big Band, Frank Parsons Band, Ed Geimer Big Band, Encore IV Big Band, and The Sarasota Jazz Project.
Over the course of his career Payne has performed at several Florida clubs and festivals as well as backing the likes of Margo Rey, Denise Moore, Kathy Kosins, Michael Lynche, Bryan Hughes, Lorri Hafer, Chuck Wansley, Whitney James, Alexis Cole and the late Kevin Mahagony.
Trombonist Eldon Payne, who never recorded as a leader, continues to perform and record as a sideman and studio musician.
More Posts: history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Peter Curtis was born on April 24, 1970. His formal education bestowed a Bachelor of Music from Berklee College of Music, a Masters of Music from Yale University, and a Doctor of Music in Classical Guitar Performance and Literature with minor fields in Ethnomusicology and Music History from Indiana University.
He has performed or recorded with Claudia Acuna, Lynn Arriale, Seamus Blake, Don Braden, James Carter, Freddy Cole, Barbra Morrison, Eldad Tarmu and Ron Westray of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Peter has played the top jazz clubs in Los Angeles, California, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and on Black Entertainment Television.
Having been to Europe, Curtis has been on club stages in Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Florence, the Hague, Milan, Paris, Prague and Zurich. With his group, the Peter Curtis Quartet, he recently released his debut album Swing State. His classical chops have sent the guitarist recitals throughout the U.S. and Canada and was awarded the Andres Segovia memorial scholarship from the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Guitarist and composer Peter Curtis, a tenured professor of music at Riverside Community College in Riverside, California, continues to compose, perform and record.
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Jazz Poems
FILLING THE GAP When Bird died, I didn’t mind I had things to do— polish some shoes, practive a high school cha-cha-cha. I didn’t even know Clifford was dead: I must have been lobbing an oblong ball beside the gymnasium. I saw the Lady right before she died— dried, brittle as last year’s gardenia. I let her scratch an autograph. But not Pres. Too bugged to boo, I left as Basie’s brass booted him off the stand in a sick reunion— tottering , saxophone dragging himmlike a stage-hook. When I read Dr. Williams’ poem, “Stormy,” I wrote a letter of love and praise and didn’t mail it. After he died, it burned my desk like a delinquent prescription… I don’t like to mourn the dead: what didn’t, never will. And I sometimes feel foolish staying up late, trying to squeeze some life out of books and records, filling the gaps between words and notes. That is why I rush into our room to find you mumbling and moaning in your incoherent performance. That is why I rub and squeeze you and love to hear your live, alterable cry against my breast. Lawson Fusao Inada
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