Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cristian Amigo was born on January 2, 1963 in Santiago, Chile and emigrated with his family to the United States as a child. At twelve he began studying music with Joseph Torello in New Haven, Connecticut. Two years later the family moved to Miami, Florida where he began performing professionally with Six Feet Under, a rock band he formed. While attending Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High School he taught classes in guitar to his peers and took courses in music theory, classical guitar and jazz at Miami-Dade Community College.
By the time he turned 17 he was in the music program at Florida State University studying classical guitar. With an Associate of Arts diploma he returned to Miami, began actively performing in recording sessions and original and cover bands while attending music classes at University of Miami. His first recording session at 17 was producer Narada Michael Walden’s We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off.
He moved to Los Angeles, California and earned his bachelor and master degrees and studied jazz with Kenny Burrell and Gary Pratt, and the sitar with Harihar Rao. He studied composition with Wadada Leo Smith. While a university student Amigo made a living as an assistant travel agent, a janitor, a session guitarist, band leader, music producer, film composer, jingle producer, concert producer, music teacher and performed in a number of bands.
He worked as a session guitarist with artists including Hans Zimmer, Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, Les Hooper, Wadada Leo Smith, David Ornette Cherry, John Van Tongeron, Justo Almario, and others.
His awards include the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition, a Senior Fulbright Scholar/Teacher/Artist Award and the Van Leir Fellowship from Meet the Composer. His work has been supported and/or produced by numerous New York organizations, the Danish Arts Council, Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and others too numerous to mention.
Guitarist and composer Cristian Amigo continues to compose, perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Stanley William Tracey was born on December 30, 1926 in Denmark Hill, South London, England. The Second World War disrupted his formal education, and he became a professional musician at the age of sixteen as a member of an Entertainments National Service Association touring group playing the accordion, his first instrument. He joined Ralph Reader’s Gang Shows at the age of nineteen, while in the RAF and formed a brief acquaintance with the comedian Tony Hancock.
Later, in the early 1950s, he worked in groups on the transatlantic liners Queen Mary and Caronia and toured the UK with Cab Calloway. By the mid-1950s, he had also taken up the vibraphone, but later ceased playing it. During the decade he worked widely with leading British modernists, including drummer Tony Crombie, clarinettist Vic Ash, the saxophonist-arranger Kenny Graham and trumpeter Dizzy Reece.
1957 saw Tracey touring the United States with Ronnie Scott’s group, and then became the pianist with Ted Heath’s Orchestra for two years at the end of the Fifties, including a US tour with singer Carmen McRae. Although he disliked Heath’s music, he gained a regular income and was well featured as a soloist on both piano and vibes. He contributed compositions and arrangements that stayed in the Heath book for many years.
He first recorded in 1952 with the trumpeter Kenny Baker, then recorded his first album as leader in 1958, Showcase, for English Decca label and Little Klunk in 1959. From 1960 until about 1967 Stan was the house pianist at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho, London, which gave him the opportunity to accompany many of the leading musicians from the US who visited the club. It is Tracey on piano that film viewers hear behind Rollins on the soundtrack of the Michael Caine version of Alfie. At the same time, he became active in Michael Horovitz’s New Departures project, mixing poetry performances with jazz, where the musicians interacted spontaneously with the words.
The early 1970s were a bleak time for Tracey. He began to work with musicians of a later generation, who worked in a free or avant-garde style. He continued to work in this idiom with Evan Parker at the UK’s Appleby Jazz Festival for several years, but this was always more of a sideline for Tracey, lasting 18 years that the festival existed. Stan formed his own label In the mid-1970s titled Steam, and a number of commissioned suites. These included The Salisbury Suite, The Crompton Suite and The Poets Suite.
He led his own octet from 1976 to 1985 and formed a sextet in 1979 and toured widely in the Middle East and India. He had a longstanding performance partnership from 1978 with saxophonist Art Themen, and his own son, drummer Clark Tracey. He shared the billing with arranger Gil Evans, Sal Nistico and Charlie Rouse. He went on to record over four dozen albums as a leader or co~leader, thirty as a sideman and on two soundtracks over the course of his career.
Pianist and composer Stan Tracey, who received the honor of the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), transitioned from cancer on December 6,
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carlos Zíngaro or Carlos Zíngaro Alves was born December 15, 1948 in Lisbon, Portugal. He studied classical music at the Lisbon Music Conservatory from 1953 to 1965, and during the years 1967/68 he studied pipe organ at the Sacred Music High School and did studies on musicology and electroacoustic music.
During the 1960s, he was a member of the Lisbon University Chamber Orchestra. In 1967 he formed the musical group Plexus. He has performed at music festivals in Europe, Asia and America. He has recorded more than 50 albums under his name or in collaboration with other musicians and composers.
Zingaro was a founding member and director of the Lisbon art gallery Cómicos from 1984 till 1990, and his work has been exhibited, and he was awarded several prizes for his illustration, comics and paintings. Samples of his work can be seen on a number of CD sleeves. Since 2002 he is the founder and president of experimental arts and music association Granular.
Violinist and electronic musician Carlos Zingaro, who is active in free improvisation, continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Allison Philips was born on December 8, 1991 in South Orange, New Jersey. She began playing the trumpet at the age of 9 and began performing regularly since she was fourteen. She went on to receive a BFA in Jazz Performance from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music of New York City and a Masters in Jazz Performance at The Conservatorium Van Amsterdam in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
She has studied under several trumpet luminaries including Laurie Frink, Ingrid Jensen, Chris Jaudes, Tatum Greenblatt, Joe Magnarelli, Jimmy Owens, Ruud Breuls and Jan Oosthof.
From the traditional trio setting to genre-bending explorations via electronics, Allison is always searching for new ground. She has created her own trio, co-leads the DeiCont | Philips Collective, and both groups have toured domestically and throughout Europe and Canada.
She has performed with Sara McDonald’s “NY Chillharmonic”, The Chronometer’s Orchestra, Phil’s Music Lab, Charlie Rosen’s Broadway Bigband, the BVR Flamenco Orchestra, Zulema’s Mambo Queens, and many others.
Trumpeter, bandleader and educator Allison Philips continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Adelhard Roidinger was born on November 28, 1941 in Windischgarsten, Austria into a musician familyand first learned piano, violin and guitar. When he was 16 he started to play double bass. From 1960 to 1967, he studied architecture at the Graz University of Technology, simultaneously studying double bass and jazz composing at the University of Music and Performing Arts.
Since 1969, Roidinger has played double bass with Joachim Kühn, Eje Thelin, and Karl Berger. From 1971 to 1975 he played in Hans Kollers Free Sound, then founded the European Jazz Consensus with Alan Skidmore, Gerd Dudek and Branislav Lala Kovačev. They recorded two albums. A new band, the International Jazz Consensus was formed by him along with Kovačev, Allan Praskin and John D. Thomas. He went on to perform with Harry Pepl and Werner Pirchner, Herbert Joos, Albert Mangelsdorff, Yosuke Yamashita, George Russell, Maria João, Anthony Braxton, Tone Janša and Melanie Bong.
Roidinger started to teach at Anton Bruckner Private University for Music, Drama, and Dance in Linz in Upper Austria. He was the director of its jazz department and the director of the Music and Media Technology department. He wrote lessons for double bass and bass guitar as well as a detailed publication about jazz improvisation and pentatonic scale.
Bassist, composer and computer graphic designer Adelhard Roidinger, who was awarded Ernst Koref Composition Prize for his computer composition Siamesic Sinfonia, transitioned on April 22, 2022 in Vienna, Austria at 88 years old.
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