Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cuong Vu was born on September 19, 1969 in Saigon, Vietnam and immigrated to Seattle with his family when he was six. At 11 he began to play the trumpet and later received a scholarship from the New England Conservatory of Music.
After graduation, in 1994 Vu moved to New York City and formed the group Ragged Jack with Jamie Saft, Andrew D’Angelo, and Jim Black. Since that time he has worked with Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, Dave Douglas, Myra Melford, Gerry Hemingway, and Mitchell Froom.
While a member of the Pat Metheny Group, he won two Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Jazz Album: Speaking of Now and The Way Up. Cuong worked with Metheny mainly as a trumpeter, but also contributed vocals, guitar and various small percussion.
As an educator, he serves as chair and professor in the jazz studies department of the University of Washington’s School of Music. Trumpeter Cuong Vu has recorded eleven albums as a leader, thirty-three as a sideman, and continues to lead his own band with bassist Stomu Takeishi and drummer Ted Poor.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Jarman was born on September 14, 1937 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. At DuSable High School, he studied drums with Walter Dyett, switching to saxophone and clarinet when he joined the United States Army after graduation. During his time there, he was part of the 11th Airborne Division Band for a year.
After his discharge in 1958, Jarman attended Wilson Junior College, where he met bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut and saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, and Anthony Braxton. These men would often perform long jam sessions at the suggestion of their professor, Richard Wang. Mitchell introduced Jarman to pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, and Jarman, Mitchell, and Maghostut joined Abrams’ Experimental Band, a private, non-performing ensemble, when that group was founded in 1961. The same group of musicians along with Fred Anderson and Phil Cohran went on to found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1965,.
His solo recording career began at this time, putting together a sextet, however, Jarman disbanded the group in 1969 after the passing of two members. He had joined Mitchell, Maghostut and Lester Bowie in the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble which would eventually become known as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The group was known for being costumed on stage for different reasons.
The group moved to Paris in 1969, and lived there for many years in a commune that included Steve McCall, the drummer who went on to form the jazz trio Air. Moving back to Chicago in the 1970s, Joseph lived in a musicians’ building in Hyde Park, with Malachi Favors as his roommate. In 1983, he moved to Brooklyn, New York.
Jarman left the Ensemble until 1993 to focus on his spiritual practice, and didn’t return to music until 1996, releasing two albums and then joining a trio with Myra Melford in Chicago, which would eventually be called Equal Interest.
Along with the saxophone and clarinet, Jarman also played (and recorded on) nearly every member of the woodwind family, as well as a wide variety of percussion instruments. Aside from his work with relatively traditional jazz line-ups, he also composed for larger orchestras and created multimedia pieces for musicians and dancers.
Saxophonist, composer, and poet Joseph Jarman transitioned from respiratory failure at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey on January 9, 2019. He was 81.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Philipp John Paul Wachsmann was born August 5, 1944 in Kampala, Uganda. Influenced greatly by the music of his country he studied violin with Isolde Menges, and music at Durham University, then received scholarships to study violin and composition at Indiana University in Bloomington. He went on to study composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1968 where he also attended courses in modern music given by Henri Pousseur, and, by Pierre Boulez in Basel. He subsequently lectured at Durham University 1969/70 and then moved to London to start a performing career.
He pioneered new sounds using the violin and electronics and can be heard on over 100 LPs/CDs on different labels including ECM, and plays worldwide. He performs with most of the musicians working in modern improvisation related music. He has performed and recorded with the Stellari String Quartet, The Imaginary String Trio but also works as a soloist.
He regularly conducts his own pieces with the London Improvisation Orchestra, including Three Draft Pistons’ for violin and electro-acoustic tape. He also works with film, dance and architecture. For many years he was Director of the Electronic Music Studio at Morley College and currently teaches courses in composition at the City Literary Institute.
Avant-garde jazz/jazz fusion violinist Philipp Wachsmann gives regular workshops in improvised music at various places and which have been a starting place for many of today’s performers, founded his own group Chamberpot, and has worked extensively in the free jazz and electronica idioms.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hamid Drake was born Henry Lawrence Drake on August 3, 1955 in Monroe, Louisiana but his family moved to Evanston, Illinois, when he was a child. There he started playing with local rock and R&B bands, which eventually brought him to the attention of Fred Anderson, an older saxophonist who had also moved to Evanston from Monroe as a child decades before. Drake worked with Anderson from 1974 to 2010 including on his 1979 The Missing Link.
At Anderson’s workshops, he met Douglas Ewart, George E. Lewis and other members of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Percussionist Ed Blackwell had a great influence on Drake, during this period. His flowing rhythmic expressions and interest in the roots of the music drew like-minded musicians together into a performance and educational collective named the Mandingo Griot Society, which combined traditional African music and narrative with distinctly American influences.
During the Seventies he met Don Cherry and with Adam Rudolph toured Europe and worked extensively with him from 1978 until Cherry’s death in 1995. It was during this period where they explored the interior landscape of percussion and shared deeply in Mr. Cherry’s grasp of music’s spiritually infinite transformational possibilities.
By the close of the 1990s, Hamid was widely regarded as one of the best percussionists in jazz and improvised music. Incorporating Afro-Cuban, Indian, and African percussion instruments and influence, in addition to using the standard trap set, Drake has collaborated extensively with top free jazz improvisers, performed world music and reggae during his career.
Drummer and percussionist Hamid Drake, who also plays the tabla, continues to perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jasper van ‘t Hof was born on June 30, 1947 in Enschede, Overijssel, Netherlands. He began studying piano at the age of five. He played in jazz bands at school and by 19 was playing at jazz festivals with drummer Pierre Courbois. In 1969, he became a member of Courbois’ early European jazz rock band Association P.C. with German guitarist Toto Blanke.
In 1974, Van’t Hof founded Pork Pie and teamed up with guitarist Philip Catherine, saxophonist Charlie Mariano, drummer Aldo Romano, and bass guitarist Jean-François Jenny Clark, He went on to join the band Eyeball with saxophonist Bob Malach and violinist Zbigniew Seifert.
Jasper had two bands ~ Face to Face with Danish bassist Bo Stief and saxophonist Ernie Watts; and Pili Pili featuring African singer Angelique Kidjo. He played keyboards with Archie Shepp, although he is best known for his solo piano playing.
As part of Piano Conclave he played with pianists George Gruntz, Joachim Kühn, Wolfgang Dauner, and Keith Jarrett. He has recorded more than four dozen albums as a leader and another nineteen as a sideman. Pianist and keyboardist Jasper Van’t Hof, who is a textural player, comfortably blends impressionistic writing with freer concerns, continues to compose, perform and record.
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