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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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Giorgio Gaslini was born on October 22, 1929 in Milan, Italy and began performing aged 13 and recorded with his jazz trio at 16. In the 1950s and 1960s, Gaslini performed with his own quartet. He was the first Italian musician mentioned as a “new talent” in the Down Beat poll and the first Italian officially invited to the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1976-77. He collaborated with leading American soloists, such as Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Max Roach, but also with the Argentinian Gato Barbieri and Frenchman Jean-Luc Ponty.
Adapting the compositions of Albert Ayler and Sun Ra for solo piano, issued on the Soul Note label, he also composed the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte, The Night, in 1961. In the early Seventies, he was the first holder of jazz courses at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome.
As to contemporary music, he composed symphonic works, operas and ballets represented at the Scala Theatre in Milan and other Italian theatres. In addition from 1970 to 1977 he scored nine films, including Your Hands On My Body, Cross Current, and Kleinhoff Hotel. From 1991 to 1995, Gaslini composed works for Carlo Actis Dato’s Italian Instabile Orchestra.
Pianist, composer and conductor Giorgio Gaslini passed away on July 29, 2014 at age 84 in Borgo Val di Taro, Parma, Italy, where he had been living for years together with his longtime wife and fourteen dogs and cats.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fred Hopkins was born on October 11, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in a musical family, listening to a wide variety of music from an early age. Attending DuSable High School, he studied music under Walter Dyett, who became well-known for mentoring and training musicians. Originally inspired to learn the cello, without one at the school Dyett steered him to the bass. After graduating from high school, while working at a grocery store he was encouraged to pursue music more seriously.
Hopkins soon began playing with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, where he was the first recipient of the Charles Clark Memorial Scholarship, and studying with Joseph Gustafeste, principal bassist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the time, as well as picking up piano duo gigs. He also began playing with Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, with whom he made his debut recording in 1970 Forces and Feelings. At that point he started becoming more serious about improvisation, playing with Muhal Richard Abrams’s Experimental Band and other related groups.
The early 1970s saw him forming a trio called Reflection with saxophonist Henry Threadgill and drummer Steve McCall. In 1975, he left Chicago, moved to New York City, regrouped with Threadgill and McCall, renamed their trio Air, and went on to tour and record extensively. He also joined the AACM, immersed himself in New York’s loft scene. Over the following decades, he increasingly gained recognition, gigging with Roy Haynes.
He performed and recorded with Muhal Richard Abrams, Hamiet Bluiett, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Arthur Blythe, Oliver Lake, David Murray, Diedre Murray, and Don Pullen, as well as with various groups led by Threadgill. Moving back to Chicago in 1997, he continued to perform, tour, and record with a wide variety of musicians. Double bassist Fred Hopkins passed away on January 7, 1999 at age 51 of heart disease at the University of Chicago Hospital.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Douglas Ewart was born on September 13, 1946 in Kingston, Jamaica and emigrated to the United States in 1963. Settling in Chicago, Illinois he became associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1967, studying with Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell. He served as that organization’s president from 1979 to 1986.
Douglas recorded eight albums as a leader and has performed or recorded fifteen with J. D. Parran, Muhal Richard Abrams, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran, Anthony Davis, Robert Dick, Von Freeman, Joseph Jarman, Amina Claudine Myers, Roscoe Mitchell, James Newton, Rufus Reid, Wadada Leo Smith, Cecil Taylor, Richard Teitelbaum, Henry Threadgill, Hamid Drake, Don Byron, Malachi Favors Maghostut, Muhal Richard Abrams, Spencer Barefield, Tani Tabbal, Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Joëlle Léandre, Bernard Santacruz, Michael Zerang, Chico Freeman, Dennis González, Yusef Lateef, Adam Rudolph,
In 1992 he collaborated with Canadian artist Stan Douglas on the video installation Hors-champs which was featured at Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. The installation features Ewart in improvisation of Albert Ayler’s Spirits Rejoice with musicians George Lewis, Kent Carter, and Oliver Johnson.
Douglas Ewart has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1990 and plays sopranino and alto saxophones, clarinets, bassoon, flute, bamboo flutes, panpipes, and didgeridoo; as well as Rastafarian hand drums.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phillip Sanford Wilson was born on September 8, 1941 in St. Louis, Missouri and was a third-generation musician. His grandfather, Ira Kimball, was a riverboat percussionist on the Mississippi to New Orleans.
His recording debut was with Sam Lazar, noted for having one of the first interracial bands in the St. Louis area. After moving to Chicago, Illinois he became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and performed with the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
He joined up with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1967 at a time when the band membership changed greatly, including an added horn section. He recorded three albums with the group. Wilson’s song Love March, written with Gene Dinwiddie, was performed at Woodstock and released in 1970 on the live album from the festival.
Wilson, along with Dinwiddie and fellow former Butterfield Band member Buzz Feiten, formed the jazz-rock band Full Moon in the early 1970s. They recorded a self-titled album which is considered one of the finest early examples of jazz fusion. He was part of the loft jazz scene in 1970s New York City, worked as a session musician for Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee and with Jimi Hendrix at the Cafe Au Go Go and Generation Club in 1968. They recorded with The Last Poets, Fontella Bass, Olu Dara, David Murray, Anthony Braxton, and Carla Bley. He worked extensively with Lester Bowie. In 1985, along with Bill Laswell co-produced the album Down by Law under the group name Deadline.
He recorded four albums as a leader and as a sideman recorded twenty-one albums with Hamiet Bluiett, Lester Bowie, Anthony Braxton, Paul Butterfield, Julius Hemphill, Sam Lazar, Frank Lowe, Roscoe Mitchell, and David Murray.
Drummer Phillip Wilson, while pursuing his musical career, was stalked and murdered in New York City on March 25, 1992. As a result of America’s Most Wanted television program, Marvin Slater was convicted for premeditated murder in 1997 and sentenced to 33 1/3 years in state prison. The reason for his murder has never been revealed.
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