Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward L. Wilkerson Jr. was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on July 27, 1953. Over the course of his career he has associated himself with medium-to large-scale projects and has been a major presence in Chicago, Illinois’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), teaching and serving a term as president.
The AACM collective has been a nurturing force for Wilkerson and has informed much of his work. He was an original member of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble formed by percussionist Kahil El’Zabar and remained with the group from 1976 until 1997. Though he recorded on three albums with the group he was becoming more involved in leading his own projects. His most ambitious project, Shadow Vignettes, was initiated in 1979 with 25 musicians and incorporated dance, poetry, and visual arts. The ensemble’s influences include the big band work of Muhal Richard Abrams, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Sun Ra.
Wilkerson’s best-documented octet as a leader is 8 Bold Souls, a series of concerts that led Wilkerson to establish the group as a working band. They have released four albums, 8 Bold Souls, Sideshow, Ant Farm, and Last Option. Their music is influenced by the small groups of Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford, but leaves room for adventurous experimentation.
In addition to his work with the preceding groups he has played with the AACM Big Band, Roscoe Mitchell, Douglas Ewart, the Temptations, Chico Freeman, the late Geri Allen, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Muhal Richard Abrams, Aretha Franklin, and George Lewis.
Wilkerson has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the Community Arts Assistance Program, and has been cited in numerous music polls.
Saxophonist, clarinetist, pianist, composer, arranger and educator Ed Wilkerson Jr., who has recorded 14 albums and two soundtracks, continues to teach composition at the AACM School of Music and explore the realms of jazz from his base in Chicago.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Günter Lenz was born July 25, 1938 in Frankfurt am Main. He first taught himself guitar and studied with Carlo Bohländer, playing jazz in the clubs of the U.S. Army from 1954 onwards. During national service in 1959/1960 he switched to the bass.
In 1961 Albert Mangelsdorff picked him up as a member of the Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet. Since then Lenz has also become a member of the hr-jazz ensemble, for which he arranged and composed. 1965 saw him working in the Krzysztof Komeda Quintet, recording the album Astigmatic. Three years later he was playing with Joachim Kühn and Aldo Romano in a band led by Barney Wilen at the Berlin Jazz Days. With The German All Stars he toured internationally in 1969 and 1971.
He played with the George Russell Sextet, and with a band led by Leon Thomas. This allowed him to collect big band experience. During the 1970s he was a member of the Kurt Edelhagen Big Band and with Peter Herbolzheimer Rhythm Combination & Brass. He would go on to be engaged for their concert tours and record productions by Chet Baker, Coleman Hawkins, Oliver Nelson and Benny Bailey, as well as German musicians such as Eugen Cicero, Horst Jankowski and Volker Kriegel.
Dipping into the blues field in 1972 Günter played with Lightning Hopkins. The mid-1970s saw Lenz joining drummer Peter Giger in Clarinet Contrast, an avant garde band around the clarinetists Perry Robinson, Theo Jörgensmann, Bernd Konrad and Michel Pilz. As a member of the Manfred Schoof Quintet he recorded for ECM/Japo.
In the late 1970s Günter founded his combo, Günter Lenz Springtime, an international jazz-fusion band with members as Bob Degen, Claus Stötter, Frank St. Peter, Johannes Faber, Leszek Zadlo and Joe Nay. He recorded as part of the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra. In 1991 he recorded “Life at the Montreux Music Festival” in trio-formation with Uli Lenz and Allen Blairman
Lenz created orchestral arrangements for Plácido Domingo, and from 2001 to 2006 as a professor he taught bass at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. During that period of education he received the Hesse state Jazz prize awarded by the State Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts Udo Corts.
Bassist Günter Lenz continues to perform, compose, arrange and educate.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dan Peter Sundland was born in Oslo, Norway on July 15, 1986 and grew up in Børsa, a village outside Trondheim, Norway. He started playing bass at age 14 and studied with bass players Andreas Bergsland and Mattis Kleppen. He was a member of Middle-Norwegian Youth Big Band and went on to become a member of the S. Møller big band.
Attending Sund Folk College from 2005 to 2006 he then attained a bachelor’s degree in jazz performance at NTNU Music Institute in Trondheim in 2010. He went on to get his European Jazz Masters degree (EUJAM) at NTNU Music Institute with exchange to Berlin Jazz Institute in 2012 and Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2013.
Active in the jazz and improvisation scenes in Norway and Berlin, Germany he has set himself apart by his expressive, wide ranging playing techniques, including cello-like bowing and a varied palette of percussive colours. Has been featured with musicians including Jim Black, John Hollenbeck, Axel Dörner, Tobias Delius, Hans Hulbækmo, Hanna Paulsberg, Eirik Hegdal, John Pål Inderberg and Tor Haugerud.
His discography includes compositional work for his own eleven-piece Elevenette, the Berlin based improvising quartet Home Stretch and sideman work and collective groups including Lina Allemano’s Ohrenschmaus, Simon Kanzler’s hardcore opera and singer-songwriter Port Almond.
Electric bassist and composer Dan Peter Sundland, who has led Trondheim Improvisation Orchestra together with Peder Simonsen, continues to compose, perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Stephans was born in Miami, Florida on June 9, 1945. He has performed and recorded with artists including Dave Liebman, Bennie Maupin, Joe Lovano, Bob Brookmeyer, Don Menza, and Alan Broadbent.
Stephans’ first solo recording, Om ShalOM, was critically lauded in 2007 by UK critic Tom Barlow as an album of the year in the December 2007 – January 2008 issue of Jazzwise.
He has received multiple composition grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1974, this association afforded him the opportunity to write the large ensemble composition Shapes and Visions for vibraphonist Karl Berger, which was performed at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
In his role as a poet Michael has been published in The Note and Inscape, and received the Rachael Sherwood Poetry Prize by the English department at Cal State Northridge. He is the author of Experiencing Jazz: A Listener’s Companion, and Experiencing Ornette Coleman: A Listener’s Companion.
He is a professor who has taught at Pasadena City College, the University of Miami, and Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Drummer Michael Stephans continues to pursue his career in jazz.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marshall Belford Allen was born in Louisville, Kentucky on May 25, 1924. During World War II he enlisted in the 92nd Infantry Division and was stationed in France. He studied alto saxophone in Paris, France and played in Europe with Art Simmons and James Moody.
Best known for his mastery of explosive, jarring, chaotic sound effects on the alto saxophone, the opportunity came to create a long association with Sun Ra, with whom he performed almost exclusively from 1958 to Ra’s death in 1993. Marshall recorded with Paul Bley in 1964 and Olatunji during the mid-1960s.
Since Sun Ra death Allen has led the Arkestra and has recorded two albums. Allen often appeared in New York-area collaborations with bassist Henry Grimes, and participated in the Innerzone Orchestra with Francisco Mora Catlett, Carl Craig and others in an appreciation of Sun Ra’s music.
In 2022, the building at 5626 Morton Street known as the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra was listed as a historic landmark in the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. Free and avant-garde jazz alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who also plays flute, oboe, piccolo, and EWI, at the age of 99 continues to live at the Institute, which has been his home since 1968.
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