Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jacques Pelzer was born in Liège, Belgium on June 24, 1924, and got his inspiration from Benny Carter, then Charlie Parker and Lee Koni. His first exposure to jazz was after World War II when he joined the Bob Shots, a legendary Belgian bop band that included at various time pioneers such as Bobby Jaspar, René Thomas, and Sadi. He also played with other historical figures of Belgian jazz such as pianist/arranger Francy Boland, guitar and harmonica player Toots Thielemans, bassist Benoît Quersin. His work with René Thomas continued for several years, leading to several recordings.
Pelzer’s evolution in the Sixties and Seventies included free jazz and fusion, recorded the soundtrack of the film “Le Départ” with Don Chery, Philip Catherine, and Gato Barbieri. He had three tours of the United States with Chet Baker, resulting in a lasting friendship and musical partnership and ultimately met Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp, Stan Getz, Lee Konitz, Philly Joe Jones and Bill Evans.
The next two decades saw Jacques returning to straight-ahead jazz, acoustic jazz, and bebop standards, modern compositions with an accent on lyricism and expression. Moving back to the studios in 1990 to record his CD Never Let Me Go with his band the Open Sky Unit along with Barney Wilen, Michel Graillier, Eric Legnini as guests. This recording received the Sax Prize for best jazz album of the year 1991.
Three magnificent Belgian jazz musicians, guitarist Philip Catherine, bassist Philippe Aerts, and drummer Bruno Castellucci joined for his final album Salute To The Bandbox. Alto and soprano saxophonist and flutist Jacques Pelzer passed away on August 6, 1994 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pierre Favre was born June 2, 1937 in Le Locle, Switzerland and originally was a self-taught drummer. He went on to study classical composition and immersed himself in the diverse percussion music of the wider world, particularly those of India, Africa, and Brazil. Gradually he consolidated all of this new information in the “sound-color poems” he was writing for his Singing Drums group.
He recorded the album Singing Drums for ECM in 1984 with Paul Motian, Fredy Studer, and Nana Vasconcelos. Over the course of his career, Pierre has recorded twenty-nine as a sideman working with John Surman, Tamia, Michel Godard, Mal Waldron, Paul Giger, Jiří Stivín, Michel Portal, Samuel Blaser, the ARTE Quartett, Barre Phillips, Irene Schweizer, Philipp Schaufelberger, Manfred Schoof, Joe McPhee, Dino Saluzzi, London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Stefano Battaglia, Furio Di Castri, Paolo Fresu, Jon Balke, Denis Levaillant, Yang Jing, and Andrea Centazzo.
As a leader, drummer and percussionist Pierre Favre has recorded seven albums and continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Shake Keane was born Ellsworth McGranahan Keane on May 30, 1927 in Kingstown, St. Vincent, West Indies into a family that loved music and books. He attended Kingstown Methodist School and St. Vincent Grammar School. He was taught to play the trumpet by his father Charles and gave his first public recital at the age of six. When he was 14 years old, Keane led a musical band made up of his brothers. In the 1940s, with his mother Dorcas working to raise six children, the teenager joined one of the island’s leading bands, Ted Lawrence and His Silvertone Orchestra.
During his early adulthood in St. Vincent, his principal interest was literature, rather than the music for which he would become better known. Dubbed “Shakespeare” by his school friends, on account of his love of prose and poetry. This nickname was subsequently shortened to “Shake”, which name he came to use throughout his adult life. He published two books of poetry in the early Fifties L’Oubili and Ixion, while still in St. Vincent.
Emigrating to Great Britain in 1952 he worked on BBC Radio’s Caribbean Voices, reading poetry and interviewing fellow writers and musicians. He also began playing the trumpet in London nightclubs, working in a number of styles including cabaret, highlife, soca, mento, calypso, and jazz. From 1959 he committed more fully to jazz, spending six years as a member of pioneering alto saxophonist Joe Harriott’s band. The group was the first in Europe and one of the first worldwide, to play free jazz, and Keane contributed mightily to the band’s artistic success, thanks to his fleet and powerful improvisatory skills on trumpet and flugelhorn.
He also made a small handful of records under his own name, but these were usually light jazz. In 1966 he left Britain to settle in Germany and became a featured soloist with the Kurt Edelhagen Radio Orchestra, and also joined the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band.
Setting aside his musical career, he returned to St. Vincent in 1972 taking up a government position as director of culture, where he remained in the post until 1975. He then became an educator as his main profession, while continuing to write poetry. In the early 1980s, Shake moved to New York City, settling the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn which became his base but found a second home in Norway.
He returned full-time to music in 1989 when he rejoined Michael Garrick and his old bandmates Coleridge Goode and Bobby Orr for a tour in honor of Joe Harriott. In 1991 Keane appeared in a BBC Arena documentary with the Jamaican poet Linton Kwesi Johnson.
In the 1990s, he remained based in Brooklyn, but found a second home in Norway, where he worked most extensively. He contributed music to Norwegian television and stage productions for the next few years, also touring the country playing jazz. It was while preparing for one such tour that he became ill, and subsequently, trumpeter and poet Shake Keane passed away from stomach cancer on November 11, 1997 in Oslo, Norway.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Giuseppi Logan was born on May 22, 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who taught himself to play piano and drums before switching to reeds at the age of 12. At the age of 15 he began playing with Earl Bostic and later studied at the New England Conservatory. In 1964 he relocated to New York and became active in the free jazz scene.
Giuseppi played alto and tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, piano and oboe. He collaborated with Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and Bill Dixon before forming his own quartet made up of pianist Don Pullen, bassist Eddie Gómez and percussionist Milford Graves. After Pullen’s departure, pianist Dave Burrell joined the group. A member of Byard Lancaster’s band, he also toured with and appeared on recordings by Patty Waters. He recorded two albums for the ESP-Disk record label and later appeared on an album by Roswell Rudd on the Impulse! label.
Beset with personal problems, Logan vanished from the music scene in the early 1970s and for over three decades his whereabouts were unknown. In 2008 he was filmed by a Christian mission group just after he had returned to New York City after years in and out of institutions in the Carolinas. Around this same time filmmaker Suzannah Troy made the first of many short films of Logan practicing in his preferred hangout, Tompkins Square Park. Subsequently, he was the subject of a major piece by Pete Gershon in the spring 2009 edition of Signal to Noise Magazine, which detailed the events surrounding Logan’s “comeback” gig at the Bowery Poetry Club in 2009.
The same year he performed with a group in NYC as part of the RUCMA performance series. Later in the year he appeared in the short documentary film Water in the Boat by David Gutiérrez Camps, where his music improvisations formed the soundtrack of the film. In 2010 Giuseppi began recording again and released an album announcing his return to music on Tompkins Square Records with Matt Lavelle, Dave Burrell, Warren Smith and Francois Grillot. This group performed a concert in Philadelphia with Dave Miller playing for Warren Smith at the Ars Nova Workshop. He went on to record six songs with a group of younger experimental musicians.
Around 2011 he was shot and ended up in a home in Far Rockaway, Queens. Still living in New York and performing as a street musician, reedist Giuseppi Logan passed on April 17, 2020 at a nursing facility in Far Rockaway, Queens from COVID-19.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Diego Maroto was born on May 9, 1968 in Mexico City, Mexico. He started taking private lessons in 1985 from Larry Roussell and Alfonso Martinez. He enrolled in the Universidad Iberoamericana in 1987 and the following year joined a jazz workshop at Escuela Superior de Musica where he learned improvisation, arrangement, and composition. He went on to continue private lesson and became an active member of the IAJE, participating in several workshops.
2004 saw Diego putting together a sextet and recording his first album as a leader titled Mundo Paralelo and later in the year shared the stage with Antonio Sanchez at Dizzy’s Club at Lincoln Center. The following year he formed a trio with Gabriel Puentes on drums and Jorge Luri Molina on upright bass and spent the next couple of years performing at festivals, clubs, and paying tribute to Mexican jazz musicians.
As an educator, Maroto has been giving lessons, clinics, and seminars at including Tonica in Guadalajara, Jal alongside saxophonist Donny McCaslin. He is currently in post-production on his soon to be released album Diego Maroto Band Live at the Black Horse.
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