Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Chris White was born Christopher Wesley White on July 6, 1936 in Harlem, New York and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1956 he graduated from City College of New York, and in 1968 from the Manhattan School of Music. Continuing his education six years later he earned his Master of Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1994, he did postgraduate Advanced Computer Study at Berklee College of Music.
An occasional member of Cecil Taylor’s band in the 1950s, he was credited on the 1959 Love for Sale album. From 1960 to 1961 he accompanied Nina Simone and subsequently he was a member of Dizzy Gillespie’s ensemble until 1966.
He founded the band The Jazz Survivors and was a member of the band Prism. Throughout his career he collaborated with Billy Taylor, Eubie Blake, Earl Hines, Chick Corea, Teddy Wilson, Kenny Barron, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Billy Cobham.
Bassist, arranger, producer and educator Chris White, who was on the creative arts and technology faculty at Bloomfield College in New Jersey, died on November 2, 2014.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur Doyle was born June 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama and was inspired to play music as a child after watching Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington on television. During his high school years, he began listening to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, and picked up gigs as a saxophonist. While still a teenager, he played with saxophonist Otto Ford, trumpeter Walter Miller and in R&B and blues groups.
After graduating high school, Doyle attended Tennessee State University in Nashville, receiving a degree in Music Education. While there he played with trumpeter Louis Smith and singers Gladys Knight and Donny Hathaway. He briefly went to Detroit, Michigan to play with hard bop trumpeter Charles Moore. He gravitated toward free jazz after playing at a Black Panthers festival.
Moving to New York City in 1968, Doyle worked with Sun Ra and Bill Dixon, and met and befriended saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and guitarist Sonny Sharrock. The following year, he recorded with Noah Howard and while in the city he met drummer Milford Graves, who encouraged him to pursue his natural affinity for pure sound. In 1977 he recorded his debut album Alabama Feeling, his first as a leader. He began playing with guitarist Rudolph Grey, and in 1980 along with Grey and drummer Beaver Harris, they became known as The Blue Humans and recorded Live NY 1980.
At around this time, Arthur began struggling with anxiety issues, and moved to Endicott, New York, where he worked as a counselor. In 1981, he moved to Paris, France where he began an association with multi-instrumentalist Alan Silva and his Celestrial Communication Orchestra, and participated in the recording of the album Desert Mirage in 1982. The following year, while in France, he was accused of rape and imprisoned. Maintaining his innocence he was pardoned and released in 1988 and during his time in prison, he wrote over 150 songs and assembled what he called the Arthur Doyle Songbook.
In the early Nineties Doyle returned to the United States, moving back to Endicott, and restarted his involvement in music. He resumed his association with Grey, playing at CBGB and releasing Arthur Doyle Plays and Sings from the Songbook Volume One on Grey’s Audible Hiss label. Over the next decade, he played and recorded with drummers Hamid Drake, Sabu Toyozumi, and Sunny Murray, among others, and formed The Arthur Doyle Electro-Acoustic Ensemble.
Saxophonist, bass clarinetist, flutist, and vocalist Arthur Doyle, who was best known for playing what he called free jazz soul music, died on January 25, 2014 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tony Oxley was born on June 15, 1938 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. A self-taught pianist by the age of eight, he first began playing the drums at seventeen and was taught by Haydon Cook. While playing evening gigs with local dance bands at night, he was sacked from his regular job, at a cutlery-making company, for falling asleep.
During his National Service from 1957 to 1960 with the Black Watch military band he studied music theory and improved his drumming technique. After leaving the army he became a member of a dance band playing for passengers on the Queen Mary and made several trips to New York. When on shore leave Tony visited clubs and heard Philly Joe Jones, Horace Silver, Art Blakey. From 1960 to 1964 he led a quartet which performed locally back home.
1963 saw Oxley playing Saturday afternoon gigs with other aspiring young jazz musicians and working with Gavin Bryars and guitarist Derek Bailey, in a trio known as Joseph Holbrooke. Moving to London, England in 1966 he became house drummer at Ronnie Scott’s, where he accompanied visiting musicians such as Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz, Charlie Mariano, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, and Bill Evans until the early 1970s. He was a member of bands led by Gordon Beck and Mike Pyne.
As a sideman he appeared on the John McLaughlin 1969 album Extrapolation and formed a quintet with Bailey, Jeff Clyne, Evan Parker, and Kenny Wheeler, releasing the album The Baptised Traveller. Tony helped found Incus Records with Bailey and others and Musicians Cooperative. The label would go on to release more than 50 albums, received a three-month artist-in-residence job at the Sydney Conservatorium in Australia and joined the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and collaborated with Howard Riley.
Oxley wwent on to join saxophonist Alan Skidmore’s quintet, tutor at the Jazz Summer School in Barry, South Wales, and form the band Angular Apron, and start the Celebration Orchestra He toured and recorded with Anthony Braxton, and began a working relationship with Cecil Taylor. Over the next few decades he joined several bands, recorded a series of albums and ventured into electronic and acoustic percussion music.
Free improvising drummer and electronic musician Tony Oxley died on December 26, 2023.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eric Ross was born on May 14, 1948 in Carbondale, Pennsylvania and began studying piano at the age of seven under Jean Krantz-Thomas. Ten years later he started to write his own compositions and in the late 1960s and early 1970s he studied guitar and attended the electronic music composition course with Charles Dodge at Columbia University.
1972 saw him finishing college and beginning his career as a musician by playing and working in recording studios. Three years later Eric began playing the theremin and the following year he played his music exclusively, allowing him to develop it as a voice in his compositions. In 1982 he released his first album, Songs for Synthesized Soprano, and performed in concert at the Lincoln Center in New York.
He has performed throughout the United States and toured Europe, in addition to performing on radio, television and film. For over twenty years Eric’s ensemble featured John Abercrombie, Larry Coryell, Andrew Cyrille, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Youseff Yancy, Lydia Kavina, and Robert Dick, among others.
Along with his wife Mary, the couple created memorable multimedia performances that intertwined music with images, video projections, and dance. As an educator he has lectured on the theremin, piano, guitar, and electronic music at colleges, universities and schools in the USA and Europe.
Pianist and guitarist Eric Ross, who also plays synthesizers and is a master of the theremin, continues to blend classical, jazz, serial and avant-garde in his performances.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Matt Bauder was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan on May 3, 1976 and attended the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas and earned a bachelor of fine arts in jazz and contemporary improvisation at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
From 1999 to 2001 he lived in Chicago, Illinois where he was a part of the city’s modern jazz and improvised music scene. Matt attended graduate school at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut studying under Anthony Braxton and received a master’s degree in composition. He lived in Berlin, Germany for a year, then moved to New York City in 2005.
In 2003, Bauder released his debut album, Weary Already of the Way, on 482 Music. His sophomore album in 2007 was the first album from his long-form improvisational jazz trio Memorize the Sky, featuring Bauder on saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet and percussion, Zach Wallace on bass, vibraphone and percussion, and Aaron Siegel on drums and percussion. The band released two more albums in 2008 and 2010.
His next trio, Hearing Things, had the saxophonist leading JP Schlegelmilch on organ and Vinnie Sperrazza on drums. Never limiting himself to one genre, Bauder’s next venture formed the doo-wop jazz group White Blue Yellow & Clouds, covering songs by the Beach Boys, The Flaminogos and The Mystics.
His Brooklyn-based jazz quintet Day in Pictures released two albums on Clean Feed Records, in which heplayed tenor saxophone and composed the songs on both albums. Matt has since performed as part of the Arcade Fire’s touring lineup, played saxophone and clarinet on Will Butler’s debut album Policy, and has played in the Broadway production of Fela!
Ever busy, saxophonist Matt Bauder continues to perform, compose and collaborate on numerous projects across genres.
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