Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dale Bruning was born on November 8, 1934 in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. During the 1940s and 1950s he spent time living, working and recording in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. During his tenure in the United States Navy from 1953-57, he was a guitarist and arranger, but when called upon he also played piano, bass, vibes, and percussion.
Leaving the military in 1957 he studied at Temple University, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in psychology. He took as many music classes as he could. Concurrently, he studied music and guitar with Dennis Sandole.
1961 saw him as the leader of the house band for The Del Shields Show, a television variety program. In 1964, he and his family moved to Denver. A broken glass accident in 1988 that deeply cut his wrist nearly ended his performing career. Practicing through the pain during the rehabilitative process was rewarded, and Dale has become an even stronger performer.
Equaled by his talent in composing, arranging and educating, during his 65 plus years of private teaching, he has expressed the joy of jazz to more than 1000 students, and has been featured in numerous magazines.
Guitarist, composer, arranger, author and educator Dale Bruning, who lived in Longmont, Colorado from 1994-2017 and now resides in Thornton, Colorado, continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Willem Breuker was born on November 4, 1944 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. During the mid-1960s, he played with percussionist Han Bennink and pianist Misha Mengelberg. He co-founded the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) with which he regularly performed until 1973. He was a member of the Globe Unity Orchestra and the Gunter Hampel Group.
In 1974 Willem led the 10-piece Willem Breuker Kollektief, which performed jazz in a theatrical and often unconventional manner, drawing elements from theater and vaudeville. They toured Western Europe, Russia, Australia, India, China, Japan, the United States, and Canada. In 1974, he founded the record label BV Haast. Beginning in 1977, he organized the annual Klap op de Vuurpijl (Top It All) festival in Amsterdam.
Haast Music Publishers, which he also operated, published his scores. In 1997, he produced with Carrie de Swaan Componist Kurt Weill, a 48-hour, 12-part radio documentary on the life of Kurt Weill. In 1999, BV Haast published the book Willem Breuker Kollektief: Celebrating 25 Years on the Road, which includes two albums.
Bandleader, composer, arranger, saxophonist, and clarinetist Willem Breuker, who was knighted with the Order of the Netherlands Lion, died from lung cancer on July 23, 2010 in Amsterdam.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Henry Basil Mayer was born on October 28, 1930 in Calcutta, Bengal, British India, to an Anglo-Indian father and Tamil mother. After studying with Phillipe Sandre in Calcutta and Melhi Mehta in Bombay, he won a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1952, where he studied composition with Matyas Seiber, as well as comparative music and religion in eastern and western cultures.
He worked for five years as a violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra beginning in 1953 and then with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1958 to 1965. During that period John was also composing fusions of Hindustani classical and Western classical forms fused with jazz undertones. His Violin Sonata was performed by Yehudi Menuhin and his Shanta Quintet was recorded by jazz sitarist Diwan Motihar and Denis Preston’s Lansdowne String Quartet in 1967.
In the 1960s he worked extensively with the Jamaican-born jazz musician Joe Harriott, with whom he formed the group Indo-Jazz Fusions. John also composed for film, and the BBC quiz show Ask the Family. From 1989 onwards he taught composition at Birmingham Conservatoire where he introduced the BMus Indian music course in 1997. He continued to compose concert works for chamber, solo and orchestral projects and record jazz-fusion albums.
Composer and sitarist John Mayer, known primarily for his fusions of jazz with Indian music, was fatally injured when hit by a motorist in North London and died on March 9, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roger Wolfe Kahn was born on October 19, 1907 in Morristown, New Jersey, into a wealthy German Jewish banking family. He began studying the violin aged six and is said to have learned to play eighteen musical instruments before starting to lead his own orchestra in 1923, at the age of only 16. His interest in music led the ten year old to buy a ukulele with instructions on how to play. The ukulele turned his mind toward violins, pianos, banjos and jazz orchestras.
By sixteen he rejected college, formed his own booking agency and organized a paying band. He installed it at the Knickerbocker Grill in New York. Self-taught, he could play every instrument in the outfit, and his favorite instruments were the piano and saxophone. By the time he reached nineteen, he had eleven orchestras on his books that played in resorts and hotels from Newport, Rhode Island to Florida. His success enabled him to pursue his passion for composing music and aviation.
Kahn appeared in a short film, hired many famous jazz musicians and singers of the day to play and sing in his band, especially during recording sessions. They were Tommy Dorsey, Morton Downey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Artie Shaw, Jack Teagarden, Red Nichols, Libby Holman, Gertrude Niesen, Franklyn Baur, Dick Robertson, Elmer Feldkamp and Gene Krupa.
Early on in his career he made several recordings under the name Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Hotel Biltmore Orchestra. He and his Orchestra recorded four takes of the song Rhythm Of The Day for Victor Records and for some reason Victor chose not to release any of them. Undeterred, he wrote the song Following You Around, and arranged the score of his stage musical Rhapsurdity and Hearts and Flowers.
During his career Roger made recordings for Victor, Brunswick and Colubia records, fronted several fashionable New York night clubs and owned several clubs, one beingLe Perroquet de Paris, opened in New York in November 1926 with a five-dollar cover charge. In 1938, the Kahn Orchestra reformed to perform a special one-off concert, in what could have been the Kahn Orchestra’s last concert.
Roger Wolfe Kahn, who was a composer, bandleader and an aviator, died of a heart attack in New York City on July 12, 1962.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billy Novick was born on Long Island, New York on October 12, 1951 and began playing clarinet at age eight. He picked up the saxophone at fifteen, and began playing club dates and concerts around the New York area. By 1973 he joined the David Bromberg band. After leaving the band, he started touring and making regional appearances as a sideman with a series of pop performers, including Leon Redbone, Jonathan Edwards, and Martha and the Vandellas.
While rehearsing for a dance performance in 1976, Novick was introduced to the innovative guitarist Guy Van Duser, and the two began a collaboration that continues to flourish. He joined the New Black Eagle Jazz Band, and continues to perform with them. He has appeared on more than thirty-five of the band’s recordings.
With jazz as his first love, Billy has always had an eclectic sensibility and enjoys being able to play a wide range of musical styles. He has performed with blues greats Robert Junior Lockwood, Willie Dixon, Ruth Brown, Duke Robillard, Scott Hamilton, Milt Hinton, Herb Pomeroy, Dave McKenna, Dorothy Donegan and Butch Thompson. He has recorded with a wide variety of artists including Maria Muldaur, Tex-Mex star Freddy Fender, Celtic performers Robbie O’Connel and Aine Minogue, and even rock legend J. Geils.
Internationally recognized as a musician, performer, arranger and composer, he has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Asia, and has made spotlight appearances at numerous festivals.
Clarinetist Billy Novick, who has been featured as a sideman on over two hundred and fifty recordings and as a composer, arranger or studio musician has appeared in more than 100 film scores, television shows and commercials, continues to compose, arrange, perform and record.
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