Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Swallow was born on October 4, 1940 in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. As a child he studied piano and trumpet before turning to the double bass at age 14. While attending a prep school, he began trying his hand in jazz improvisation. In 1960 he left Yale, settled in New York City and played with Jimmy Giuffre’s trio with Paul Bley.
After joining Art Farmer’s quartet in 1964, Swallow began to write. It is in the 1960s that his long-term association with Gary Burton’s various bands began. The early 1970s saw him switch exclusively to electric bass guitar, preferring the 5-string.
Steve became an educator in 1974 for two years teaching at the Berklee School of Music. In ‘78 he became an essential and constant member of Carla Bley’s band, toured extensively with John Scofield in the early 1980s, has returned to this collaboration several times over the years.
Bassist Steve Swallow has consistently won the electric bass category in Down Beat magazine’s Critics and Readers yearly polls since the mid-80s. Having grown a catalogue of some five-dozen albums as a leader and sideman, he continues to compose, perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Gilmore was born on September 28, 1931 and grew up in Chicago, Illinois but didn’t start playing the clarinet until age 14. While in the Air Force in the late Forties he took up the saxophone, then pursued a musical career, playing briefly with pianist Earl Hines before encountering Sun Ra in 1953.
For the next four decades, Gilmore recorded and performed almost exclusively with Sun Ra. Thought to have the makings of stardom like Rollins or Coltrane, the latter taking informal lessons from Gilmore in the late 50s and partially inspired by his sound on “Chasin’ The Trane”.
By 1957 he was co-leading a Blue Note date with Clifford Jordan titled Blowing In From Chicago, that is regarded as a hard bop classic with Horace Silver, Curley Russell and Art Blakey. In the mid-1960s John toured with the Jazz Messengers, participated in recording sessions with Paul Bley, Andrew Hill, Pete LaRoca, McCoy Tyner and a handful of others. In 1970 he co-led a recording with Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece, however his main focus throughout remained with the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Gilmore was devoted to Sun Ra’s use of harmony, which he considered both unique and a logical extension of bebop. He was the Arkestra’s leading sideman and soloist, performing with fluency and tone on straight-ahead post bop sessions and abstractly capable of long passages based exclusively on high-register squeals. Though his fame was shrouded in the relative anonymity as a member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra, he led the band after Ra’s death up until his own passing of emphysema in 1995.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joel Harrison was born on July 27, 1957 in Washington D.C. In the Sixties he became enamored with the inventive guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix and John McLaughlin. By his twenties, after graduating from Bard College, he hitchhiked across America exploring the rich diversity contained between its coasts.
Joel’s musical style encompasses a melding of jazz, classical, country, rock and world influences as the composer, arranger, songwriter, vocalist and bandleader stretches from concert hall to jazz club and the occasional dive bar. Finding inspiration from music too often barred from admission into the jazz consciousness, he continues his exploration into the reinterpretations of Miles Davis, Charles Ives, Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac and Hank Williams.
He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a two-time winner of the Jazz Composer’s Alliance Composition Competition, 1st Place at the Percussive Arts Society worldwide competition, and has received grants from Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, the Flagler Cary Trust, NYSCA, and the Jerome Foundation.
With a string of albums under his belt in a variety of genres, guitarist Joel Harrison has played and recorded with an impressive list of collaborators that includes Christian Howes, Donny McCaslin, Nels Cline, David Binney, Norah Jones, Dave Liebman, Uri Caine, Jamey Haddad, and Dewey Redman. He continues to compose, record, perform and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George E. Lewis was born July 14, 1952 in Chicago, Illinois. He began his musical journey playing the trombone but graduated from Yale University with a degree in philosophy. In 1971 he became a member of AACM, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
The trombonist, composer and pioneer of computer music has recorded over two dozen albums as a leader and co-leader and some 40 as a sideman working with the likes of Muhal Richard Abrams, Gil Evans, Conny Bauer, Roscoe Mitchell, Count Basie and Anthony Braxton to name a few. He was also frequently a member of the ICP Orchestra (Instant Composer’s Pool).
As an educator in the 1970s, he succeeded Rhys Chatham as the music director of The Kitchen, a performance space in Greenwich Village, has served as a professor at Columbia University, the University of California – San Diego, and has received a MacArthur Fellowship.
Trombonist George Lewis has performed at festivals and venues throughout America and Europe, has authored a book-length history of the AACM, titled A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, and continues to be active of the jazz and experimental music scene.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Lowe was born on June 24, 1943 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. Taking up the tenor saxophonist he was extremely influenced by the first and second waves of free jazz throughout the 1960s. He moved to San Francisco, California to explore the avant-garde jazz scene. While making several visits to New York City he began playing with Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane, recording with the later in 1971.
As a leader he recorded two-dozen albums between 1973 and 2002 working with the likes of Don Cherry, Billy Bang, Jack Walrath, James Carter, Geri Allen, Charnett Moffett, Carlos Ward and numerous others.
Composer and tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe passed away on September 19, 2003 of lung cancer. His legacy was a varied body of recordings and memorable performances and his composition “Spirits in the Field” was performed on Arthur Blythe’s 1977 album The Grip.
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