Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lester Bowie was born on October 11, 1941 in the historic village of Bartonsville in Frederick, Maryland however he grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of five he started studying the trumpet with his father, a professional musician and grew up playing with Little Milton, Albert King, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex and Rufus Thomas. In 1965, he became Fontella Bass’s musical director and husband and co-founded the Black Artists Group (BAG) in St Louis.
In 1966, Bowie moved to Chicago, worked as a studio musician, meeting Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell became a member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). In 1968, he founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago and was a member of Jack DeJohnette’s New Directions Quartet. Lester lived and worked in Jamaica and Africa, recording with Fela Kuti.
In 1984, he formed Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, a nonet demonstrating jazz’s links to other forms of popular music, covering songs by Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson Marilyn Manson and the Spice Girls along with more serious material. His New York Organ Ensemble featured James Carter and Amina Claudia Myers.
Although seen as part of the avant-garde, Bowie embraced techniques from the whole history of jazz trumpet, filling his music with humorous smears, blats, growls, half-valve effects, and so on. He had an affinity for reggae and ska, appeared on the Stolen Moments: Red, Hot + Cool compilation in support of the Aids epidemic in the African American community that Time Magazine named Album of the Year.
Throughout his career trumpeter Lester Bowie took an adventurous and humorous approach to music. He passed away of liver cancer on November 8, 1999 and was posthumously inducted into the Down Beat Hall Of Fame in 2000. The following year the Art Ensemble of Chicago recorded Tribute To Lester.
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Daily Dose OF Jazz…
Amos Leon Thomas Jr was born on October 4, 1937 in East St. Louis, Illinois. He studied music at Tennessee State University and went on to become the vocalist for Count Basie and others in the Sixties. In 1969, Leon released his first solo album for the prestigious Flying Dutchman label, however, an earlier album he recorded still remains unreleased.
Thomas is best known for his work with Pharoah Sanders, particularly the 1969 song “The Creator Has a Master Plan” from the Karma album. His most distinctive attribute was that he often broke out into yodeling in the middle of a vocal, developed after he fell and broke his teeth before a show. This style influenced singers James Moody and Tim Buckley.
Thomas toured and recorded as a member of the band Santana in 1973 but was largely forgotten until a resurgence of interest in soul jazz and several of his tracks have been sampled in hip-hop and down-tempo records. Leon Thomas, jazz singer, often in the avant-garde genre, died of heart failure on May 8, 1999.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Samuel Carthorne Rivers was born September 25, 1923 in Enid, Oklahoma, the son of a gospel musician who sung with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Silverstone Quartet which exposed a young Sam to music at an early age. By 1947 he was in Boston studying Alan Hovhaness at the Boston Conservatory.
Active in jazz since the early 1950s, by the end of the decade he was performing with then 13 year-old drummer Tony Williams. In the mid Sixties he held a short-lived tenure with Miles Davis, producing the album Miles In Tokyo. He went on to sign with Blue Note leading four dates, his first being Fuschia Swing Song and contributing many more as a sideman.
A multi-instrumentalist, Rivers who plays soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano, is also a composer. Rooted in bebop and equally adept at free jazz he has performed and recorded with the likes of Quincy Jones, Herb Pomeroy, Tadd Dameron, Jaki Byard, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Andrew Hill, Larry Young and many others.
The 70s saw the rise of the loft era and Rivers ran RivBea in New York’s NoHo district where numerous performance lofts emerged. He continued to perform and record for a variety of labels including several albums for Impulse Records, two big band albums for RCA Victor, and joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band near the end of the trumpeter’s life.
With a thorough command of music theory, orchestration and composition, Rivers has been an influential and prominent artist in jazz music. He performs regularly with his RivBea Orchestra and Trio and is currently recording new works. Sam Rivers, who played soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano in the avant-garde and free jazz arenas, passed away on December 26, 2011 in Orlando, Florida at age 88.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ken Vandermark was born September 22, 1964 in Warwick, Rhode Island but grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. Mostly a self-taught musician, the saxophonist studied intermittently under George Garzone in the early 80s. He performed and led groups while in high school and at McGill University in Montreal, graduated in 1986.
Returning to Boston Ken co-led the groups Lombard Street, Mr. Furious and Barrage Double incorporating “suite forms” into his arrangements and composing pieces dedicated to other Boston bands, thus, developing broad, free-ranging charts as his signature especially in large ensemble settings.
Vandermark moved to Chicago in 1989 and has performed or recorded with many musicians such as Fred Anderson, Joe Morris, Fredrik Ljungkvist and Yakuza to name a few. He first gained widespread attention working with the NRG Ensemble from 1992 to 1996, went on to co-lead DKV Trio, Free Fall, Territory Band, the Vandermark Five and some six more groups, collaborated with Joe Harriott, released his album Furniture Music in 2002 marking his debut as an accomplished soloist and has since concentrated on his own compositions.
A fixture on the Chicago music scene Vandermark plays tenor and baritone saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet and has received critical praise for his performing multilayered compositions that typically balance intricate orchestration with passionate improvisation. He was awarded a 1999 MacArthur Fellowship, won the Cadence magazine poll for Best Artist and Best Recording. He continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Andrew Hill was born June 30, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois and took up the piano at the age of thirteen, and was encouraged by Earl Hines. He studied informally until 1952. While a teenager he performed in rhythm and blues bands and toured with jazz musicians, including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.
Hill first recorded as a sideman in 1954, but made his reputation recording as a leader for Blue Note from 1963 to 1970, featuring important post-bop musicians including Joe Chambers, Richard Davis, Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Woody Shaw and Tony Williams.
Hill is recognized as one of the most important innovators of jazz piano in the 1960s but rarely worked as a sideman after the 1960s, preferring to play his own compositions, which may have limited his public exposure.
As an educator he held positions at Portland State University, held residencies at Colgate University of Hamilton, Wesleyan University, University of Michigan, University of Toronto, Harvard University and Bennington College.
Returning to New York City in 1990, composer and pianist Andrew Hill, whose unique idiom of chromatic, modal and free improvisation, made his final public appearance on March 29, 2007 at Trinity Church. Suffering from lung cancer during his later years he died in his home on April 20, 2007. In May 2007, he became the first person to receive a posthumous honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.
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