Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Nicole Glover was born on July 18, 1991 in Portland, Oregon. Her musical journey began when her father introduced her to improvised music at a young age. She started playing the clarinet at the age of ten, transitioning to tenor saxophone the following year. Her interest and curiosity for music blossomed in high school, becoming involved in a variety of performance groups, both within her school and in the community.

Nicole was chosen to be one of nineteen students from across the nation for the Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, who embarked on a national tour that involved performances with Bobby Watson and Julian Lage, and concluded with a performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival with Wynton Marsalis.

After studying at William Paterson University, in 2011 Nicole returned to Portland where she was invited to record on Esperanza Spaulding’s Grammy-award winning album Radio Music Society. She now performs in multiple groups with multi-instrumentalist George Colligan, as well as her own jazz trio and several other improvisational ensembles, such as, the Alan Jones Storyline Sextet, Thomas Barber’s Spiral Road, and the Kerry Politzer Quintet.

2015 saw Glover releasing her debut album First Record, featuring pianist and trumpeter George Colligan, bassist Jonathan Lakey and drummer Alan Jones. She leads her own trio with bassist Tyrone Allen II and drummer Kayvon Gordon. This was followed with the release of Plays, and HighNote-Savant Records Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

Throughout her musical career, Nicole has performed with Mulgrew Miller, Esperanza Spalding, Kenny Garrett, George Colligan, Geoffrey Keezer, Bennie Maupin, Bobby Watson, Mike Clark, Carl Allen, Kenny Washington, Al Foster, Victor Lewis, Lenny White, Joe Farnsworth, Reggie Workman, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Ben Wolfe, Bill Stewart, Essiet Essiet, Mel Brown, Julian Lage, Obo Addy, Rob Scheps, Red Holloway, Terell Stafford, Helen Sung, Dana Hall, Scotty Barnhart, and Thara Memory, to name a few.

Glover is a member of Ural Thomas and Pain, Artemis led by Renee Rosnes, Ursa Major led by Christian McBride, and has toured with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Tenor saxophonist, bandleader, composer, and educator Nicole Glover, who is on faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and has taught masterclasses and private lessons to students around the world, continues to fit performance in her busy schedule.

More Posts: bandleader,educator,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Brian Priestley was born on July 10, 1940 in Manchester, England and began studying music at the age of eight. In the 1960s he gained a degree in modern languages from Leeds University, while playing in student bands. In the mid-1960s, he began contributing to the jazz press and was responsible for entries in Jazz on Record: A Critical Guide to the First Fifty Years, 1917–1967.

In 1969 he moved to London, England and began playing piano with bands led by Tony Faulkner and Alan Cohen. Priestley helped transcribe Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige, and Creole Rhapsody for Cohen. He formed his own Special Septet featuring Digby Fairweather and Don Rendell. His compositions include Blooz For Dook, The Whole Thing and Jamming With Jools, based on a live broadcast with Jools Holland.

As a broadcaster he worked on the BBC, London Jazz FM, and for BBC Radio London, and influenced the renewed interest in jazz in the 1980s. Priestley taught jazz piano at Goldsmiths College from 1977 until 1993, and has taught jazz history for various other universities and conservatoires over the years.

Priestley has also written biographies of Charles Mingus, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, as well as the book Jazz on Record: A History. He co-authored The Rough Guide to Jazz, as well as contributing to several other reference books, and has compiled and/or annotated more than a hundred reissue compilations.

Writer, pianist and arranger Brian Priestley has lived in Tralee, Ireland since 2006 where he continues playing the piano and presents a show on Radio Kerry.

More Posts: arranger,bandleader,educator,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,writer

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Eric Soleil was born July 9, 1961 on the wind-swept plains of the Kansas prairie and began his musical career in elementary school where he was forced to play the trumpet that was handed down from his older brothers. He infuriated his band instructor by making up his own parts instead of playing the fourth-chair lines intended for him. He also began to compose little pieces on the family’s upright piano. In high school, Eric pursued concert choir and the thespian arts, earning a theater scholarship to college. At 19 years of age, he began studying the electric bass.

Deeply rooted in classical music, he also had an adoration for American jazz, which led to incorporating classic orchestral voices with some neo-Baroque, jazzified idioms that became Jazz-Symphonia. He later played the baritone, french horn, trombone, finally settling on the tuba where he remains an inveterate bass clef performer.

A unique blend of symphonic instruments with jazzy undertones, JasmPhonia is the nom de guerre of Eric, a gifted multi-instrumentalist/composer who utilizes acoustic symphonic voices and midi composition to create a rich mixture of chamber music and Nu-jazz styling. Eric has compiled his first CD, “Ad Astra Per Aspera” (To The Stars Thru Difficulty).

Tubist Eric Soleil continues to pursue a career in music, writing from the keyboard, drums, and bass, and performing his own unique original compositions. He is also continuously developing his skills as an artist, producer, and engineer.

More Posts: bandleader,bass,drums,engineer,history,instrumental,jazz,keyboard,music,producer,tuba

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jyrki Sakari Kukko was born July 8, 1953 in Kajaani, Finlan and started his career in the early 1960s as a singer participating in several singing contests and performing in radio stations, TV programs and other venues. At the age of 7, he began taking piano lessons and soon after started playing guitar and flute, then saxophone. The mid-1960s saw him forming bands, constructing a school band, playing mainly rock and roll, before forming a group of local dance bands.

He embarked his career at sixteen playing with the Kajaani Big Band, Kisu & Uniset, Markku Suominen’s Monopol, Tapiola Big Band, Oulunkylä Big Band, Maarit & Afrikan Tähti, Kalevala, SIMO Big Band, Jukka Tolonen’s band, Heikki Sarmanto’s band, Sensation Band of Addis Ababa, Mahmoud Ahmed’s Ibex Band, Etoile de Dakar, and Espoo Big Band through the Seventies. He founded the group Piirpauke in 1974.

He has performed with Youssou Ndour, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Bob Mose, Lester Bowie, Charlie Mariano, Thad Jones, Paquito d’Rivera, Ted Curson, Walter Bishop Jr., Herbie Hanckock’s HeadHunters, Richie Cole, Juan Carlos Romero, and numerous Finnish musicians.

Working as a studio-musician Kukko performed as a freelancer with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Finnish National Opera. He has composed music for his own bands, EBB, Koiton Laulu and several films and theaters.

Pianist, flutist, guitarist, saxophonist, vocalist and composer Sakari Kukko continues to perform with over forty  countries around the globe.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,flute,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,saxophone,vocal

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Antonio Underwood was born on July 7, 1960 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He matriculated through the Yale School of Music as a Classical Tuba Major, where he was awarded several honors. Graduating in 1987 he has since been a member of the two-time Grammy Award winning McCoy Tyner Big Band.

He began his career playing in NYC clubs at the age of nineteen and has performed alongside Max Roach, Jerry Gonzalez, Julius Preister, Delfeayo Marsalis, Bob Belden, Christian McBride, Cecil Taylor, Cecil Bridgewater, Vincent Herring, Joshua Redman, Javon Jackson, Lester Bowie, John Faddis, Charlie Haden, Eddie Henderson, Billy Harper, and the list goes on.

He has been a cast member of Broadway musicals Juan Darien, Jelly’s Last Jam, One Mo’ Time and Further Mo. Tony’s composition and orchestration credits include recordings by Be Be Winans, Terry Dexter, John Purcell, The World Saxophone Quartet, Anthony Montgomery, among others. Owner of his own published material (380), brass quartets published by TAP Music (Iowa), and Jazz compositions published by ENJA Music, Germany.

Underwood has scored films Rumbling of the Earth and Shadows of the Dead. He has produced tracks for Lisa Fischer, Katreese Barnes, Steve Jordan, and Anthony Jackson. He is the first Black person to be a George Lucas scholar to the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at USC and is a Fulbright Scholar Lecturer in Serbia.

Tubist, composer and lecturer Tony Underwood continues to perform, compose and lecture.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,lecturer,music,tuba