Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Blaise Siwula was born in Detroit, Michigan on February 19, 1950. Growing up in a working/middle-class black neighborhood. His next-door neighbor practiced saxophone in the afternoon and occasionally allowed him inside to watch him play. He began studying the alto sax at the age of 14, playing in the middle school concert band.
Hearing the John Coltrane album Om in 1969 compelled him to take up the tenor saxophone. He was also influenced by hearing Art Pepper in San Francisco, as well as Ornette Coleman, Sonny Stitt, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Blue Mitchell, Elvin Jones, and Miles Davis in live performances in Detroit in the 1970s. Cecil Taylor’s recordings with Jimmy Lyons were inspirational in a later period along with Ravi Shankar and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the Seventies.
At college on and off for an extended period from 1968 to 1980, he studied theory and composition at Wayne State University, and earned a BFA. His first personal encounter with jazz musicians came around 1971 while living in a hotel near the downtown campus like drummer Doc Watson. Moving to San Francisco, he started playing free improvised music in coffeehouses and writing poetry. After four years in Northern California, he returned to Detroit before heading for Europe in 1989. Working and traveling as a street musician for three months, then returning to the States and settling in New York City.
After periodic explorations of drama, poetry, architecture, and visual art, and quite unable to secure a recording contract initially, he recorded independently produced cassette tapes. He played with Amica Bunker, the Improvisers Collective, and the Citizens Ontological Music Agenda (COMA) series.
During the decade of the 2000s, Blaise composed music scores, played a number of saxophones, clarinets, flutes, percussion and string instruments, and computer-altered sound files as background for improvisation. His many collaborators have included Doug Walker’s Alien Planetscapes, Cecil Taylor’s Ptonagas, William Hooker’s ensembles, Judy Dunaway’s Balloon Trio, Dialing Privileges with Dom Minasi and John Bollinger, Ken Simon, Karen Borca, Jackson Krall, Tatsuya Nakatani, and William Parker, among others.
Avant-garde alto saxophonist, composer and bandleader Blaise Siwula, who has been a part of New York City’s underground jazz scene, continues to performa and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Igor Grigoriev was born on January 24, 1955 in Moscow, Russia and taught himself to play the guitar as a young child, and later obtained his master’s degree from a music institution in Russia. As a young boy in the late sixties, he was interested in the latest music of the time, rock and started his career, gaining fame by playing and touring around the world.
Becoming a band leader of the trio, Roof, with trumpeter Andrew Solovyov, and percussionist Michael Zhukov they recorded on Melodia Records and Leo Records. His group, Asphalt also gained tremendous popularity despite its short life span.
As he developed musically, Grigoriev became interested in Charlie Parker’s work, but in later years the influence of classical composers became evident in his music. Permanently migrating to the United States in 1989 he continued his career, as a classical and jazz musician, but later he became more and more interested in Avant-garde music.
Better known for his 1990s work, he rapidly assimilated the American avant-garde and forged his own, instantly identifiable style. His music of the 1970s and 1980s saw transition from rock to classical to jazz and to avant-garde music. Igor developed methods of simultaneously improvising bass lines, harmony and melodic lines. In his later years, his playing became less predictable and formulaic.
He has recorded a number of solo albums, as well as recording or performing with Stan Getz, Red Callender, Larry Gales, Milcho Leviev, Ira Schulman, Rod Oakes, and many others. Igor and Rod founded OGOGO in 1996, which is one of the most important organizations to perform improvised music. His central focus was free improvisation, though he occasionally appeared in more conventional jazz and classical contexts, such as big band, various ensembles, and string orchestra.
He composed and arranged for a wide range of music genres, did orchestra work for a Russian circus, and arranged music for theatrical plays. As an educator he taught guitar, music history, jazz history, ensembles, and improvisation at Los Angeles Harbor College and Cerritos College in Los Angeles, California. Guitarist, composer, arranger, band leader and educator Igor Grigoriev passed away on September 25, 2010.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Denis Charles was born in St. Croix, Virgin Islands on December 4, 1933 and first played bongos at age seven with local ensembles in the Virgin Islands. Moving to New York City in 1945, he gigged frequently around town and in 1954 began working with Cecil Taylor, and the pair collaborated for the next four years. Following his work with Taylor, he played with Steve Lacy, Gil Evans, and Jimmy Giuffre. He befriended Ed Blackwell, and the two influenced each other.
Recording with Sonny Rollins on a calypso-tinged set, Denis then returned to play with Lacy until 1964. He worked with Archie Shepp and Don Cherry in ‘67 and then disappeared from the jazz scene until 1971. In the 1970s and 1980s he played regularly on the New York jazz scene with Frank Lowe, David Murray, Charles Tyler, Billy Bang, and others, and also played funk, rock, and traditional Caribbean music.
Between 1989~1992 drummer Denis Charles released three albums as a leader before passing away of pneumonia in his sleep on March 26, 1998 in New York City in 1998, four days after a five-week European tour with the Borgmann/Morris/Charles (BMC) Trio, with Wilber Morris and Thomas Borgmann. In 2002 Veronique N. Doumbe released a film documentary Denis A. Charles: An Interrupted Conversation about his life.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paul Bley was born Hyman Paul Bley on November 10, 1932 in Montreal, Quebec. His adoptive parents were Betty Marcovitch and Joe Bley, who owned an embroidery factory. When he was five years old he studied violin, but by seven he took up the piano. He received a junior diploma from the McGill Conservatory in Montreal when he was 11 and at thirteen he formed a band which played at summer resorts in Ste. Agathe, Quebec. His teenage years saw him he played with touring American bands, including Al Cowan’s Tramp Band. In 1949 at the start of his high school senior year, Oscar Peterson asked him to fulfill his contract at the Alberta Lounge in Montreal. The next year he left Montreal for New York City and Juilliard.
The Fifties saw Paul returning to Montreal, establishing the Jazz Workshop and inviting Charlie Parker, he played and recorded with him. Returning to New York City he hired Jackie McLean, Al Levitt, and Doug Watkins to play an extended gig at the Copa City on Long Island. He did a series of trio recordings with Al Levitt and Peter Ind, toured as Lester Young and the Paul Bley Trio, and performed with tenor saxophonist Ben Webster at that time. He then conducted for bassist Charles Mingus on the Charles Mingus and His Orchestra album and in 1953, Mingus produced the Introducing Paul Bley album for his label, Debut Records with Mingus on bass and drummer Art Blakey. A 1954 call from Chet Baker put him with the quintet at Jazz City in Hollywood, California that led to a tour with singer Dakota Staton.
Staying in Los Angeles he evolved his trio into a quintet with young avant~garde musicians Dave Pike, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. Through the Sixties, he worked with Jimmy Giuffre, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, Bill Dixon, Roswell Rudd, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Carla Bley, Michael Mantler, Sun Ra, and others. The Seventies had him and Carol Goss founding the production company Improvising Artists. The label issued Jaco, the debut recording of Pat Metheny on electric guitar and Jaco Pastorius on electric bass, with Bley on electric piano and Bruce Ditmas on drums. The label would release IAI records and videos of Jimmy Giuffre, Lee Konitz, Dave Holland, Marion Brown, Gunter Hampel, Lester Bowie, Steve Lacy, Ran Blake, Perry Robinson, Naná Vasconcelos, John Gilmore, two solo piano records by Sun Ra, and others. Bley and Goss are credited in a Billboard cover story with the first commercial music video.
Through the Eighties and Nineties, he continued to record, tour prolifically through Europe, Japan, South America, and the United States. in 1993 a relative from the New York branch of the Bley family walked into the Sweet Basil jazz club in New York City and informed him that his father was actually his biological parent. In the new millennium, he became a part-time faculty member of the New England Music Conservatory.
His last public performances were in 2010 playing a solo piano concert at the La Villette Jazz Festival in Paris, followed by a duo with Charlie Haden at BlueNote in New York City during a full moon. Pianist Paul Bley passed away of natural causes on January 3, 2016, at home in Stuart, Florida, at the age of 83.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jothan Callins was born October 29, 1942 in Birmingham, Alabama. The third of nine children he received his childhood education in Ensley at Council Elementary School and Western-Olin High School. Obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from Florida A&M University, he subsequently became a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and performed with Max Roach, Milt Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Sun Ra, Cecil McBee, Consuela Lee, George Coleman, Geri Allen, Joseph Jennings, Jeff Watts and many others.
In 1978, Jothan became the first Jazz Artist-In-Residence for the Birmingham Public Schools and helped found the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and City Stages. In 1982, after receiving a fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh, he obtained a Masters’ Degree in Ethnomusicology and Jazz Studies and remained there for five years teaching jazz history. As a prolific, creative artist, Jothan was a performer, composer, arranger, educator, consultant, musical director, and cultural catalyst, who earned the respect and admiration of fans, musicians, and critics throughout the world.
With his band, The Sounds of Togetherness, he toured and performed around the United States and the world. He specialized in Jazz performances and workshops for children and adults. In the ‘90s, Callins founded the Birmingham Youth Jazz Ensemble, Inc. (BYJE), serving as Director until his death. Trumpeter, flugelhornist, electric bassist, and composer Jothan Callins, who was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1979, passed away on April 30, 2005 at Baptist-Princeton Medical Center.
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