Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Irene Aranda was born in Jaén, Andalucía, Spain on September 2, 1980 and started to play piano at age seven under the guidance of her maternal grandparents. She graduated from the Conservatory of Music in Granada and complimented her classical training by attending piano performance and composition classes with Gerardo López Laguna, Guillermo González, Fernando Puchol, Pilar Bilbao, Antonio J. Flores and Javier Darías, among the most notable.
She was self-taught in jazz and free improvisation, she later studied with Peter Zack, Eduard Simons, Chano Domínguez, Nikky Illes, Mike Ph. Mosman, Greg Hopkins, David Pastor, Jordi Farrés Tomás, Pete Churchill, Perico Sambeat, Tony Reedus, etc.
Her first work as a leader, Interfrequency 23 7, brought her great critical acclaim which led her to participate in numerous festivals. Since her debut release in 2007 she has released six more albums.
Freed from stereotypes, Irene has gone on to perform and collaborate with Paolo Fresu, Toots Thielemans, Maria Pia De Vito, Baldo Martínez and Bojan Z among others. Aranda has played with Don Malfon, Brandon López, Markus Breuss, Johannes Nästestjö, Samuel Blasser, Germán Díaz, Agustí Fernández, Joanna Mattrey, Lucía Martínez, Javier Carmona, Núria Andorrà, Marc Egea and numerous others.
Pianist, improviser, composer Irene Aranda continues to swim against the stream of pianists with her creativity and exploration in her music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bronisław Suchanek was born August 30, 1948 in Bielsko-Biała, Poland. During his studies at the Secondary Music School he was a member of the Andrzej Zubek Quartet and from 1967 to 1971 he studied at the Academy of Music. In 1969, while still a student, he began collaborating with Tomasz Stańko’s quintet and recorded two albums and were among the first musicians to inaugurate the first Music Workshop in Chodzież, Poland.
He made his debut on the music scene playing in the Silesian Jazz Quartet, which he co-founded with pianist Andrzej Zubek, trumpeter Bogusław Skawina, Jerzy Jarosik on flute and saxophone, and drummer Kazimierz Jonkisz.
At the end of 1972, Bronisław went with the Klan Band to Finland where he took part in a concert as part of the Helsinki Festival and presented the premiere of free-jazz and rock. In 2016, GAD Records released an album titled Live Finland 1972 with a recording of this concert. In the 1970s he was a member of the Polish Radio Jazz Studio Orchestra.
He has performed and recorded both in Poland and abroad with American jazz musicians such as Don Cherry and Rick Stepton. In the second half of the decade he emigrated to Sweden, where he played in the Swedish Jazz Radio Group. He operated in Scandinavia for over a dozen years, collaborating with the bands Sound of Flowers and Birka.
The 1980s saw him giving concerts and recording albums in Germany and Austria with different formations. In 1995 Suchanek moved to the United States where he taught at the Maine School of Music and played in the Woody Herman Big Band and the Artie Shaw Orchestra.
He recorded an album titled Sketch in Blue in a duet with Dominik Wania. In 2010 he recorded an album titled Jerzy Wasowski Songbook together with Bogdan Hołownia, Jerry Veimola and Joe Hunt. He collaborated with the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra.
Double bassist Bronisław Suchanek, who was awarded the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, continues to perform and record in the free jazz and straight-ahead mediums.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Denman Maroney was born on July 25, 1949 in Durfort-et-Saint-Martin-de-Sossenac, Occitanie, France. He went on to receive his Bachelor of Arts from William College and his Masters of Fine Arts in composition and piano from the California Instute of the Arts.
He plays what he calls hyperpiano involves stopping, sliding, bowing, plucking, striking and strumming the strings with copper bars, aluminum bowls, rubber blocks, plastic boxes and other household objects. This is sometimes done with one hand while the other hand is used to play the keys.
He received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work and worked on a new soundtrack to go with German horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. As an educator he held a position of adjunct professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey in 2010 and is currently at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Pianist and composer Denman Maroney continues to explore and create music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lembit Saarsalu was born July 8, 1948 in Roosna-Alliku, Estonia. He started playing jazz at an early age. He debuted at the Tallinn International Jazz Festival at the age of 16. He worked for many years in the State Philharmonic of the Estonian SSR , where as a paid musician he gave numerous concerts both at home and abroad. In the 1980s, Saarsalu devoted himself completely to jazz.
For decades, he has led local and international ensembles. He worked in a duo with Leonid Vintskevich, started a new international jazz festival Rainbow Jazz with music producer Merle Kollom and a competition for young musicians in Tartu.
As an educator Saarsalu introduced jazz in schools and has performed together with Olav Ehala and other well-known Estonian musicians for more than 40,000 students. Since the fall of 2016, he has been working as a saxophone and ensemble teacher in the rhythm music department of the Tartu Music School.
In the 1980s Eesti Televisioon made two films about Lembit, he has performed on Finnish and Spanish television and has made numerous recordings, numbering 200 recordings for Estonian Radio. His style ranges from blues and swing to free forms of jazz.
He has been repeatedly chosen as the best tenor saxophonist, awarded the annual prize of the Sound Art Endowment Fund of the Estonian Cultural Capital.
Saxophonist , bandleader and composer Lembit Saarsalu, who has been called the saxophone king and the calling card of Estonian jazz, continues to perform, compose and teach.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur Doyle was born June 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama and was inspired to play music as a child after watching Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington on television. During his high school years, he began listening to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, and picked up gigs as a saxophonist. While still a teenager, he played with saxophonist Otto Ford, trumpeter Walter Miller and in R&B and blues groups.
After graduating high school, Doyle attended Tennessee State University in Nashville, receiving a degree in Music Education. While there he played with trumpeter Louis Smith and singers Gladys Knight and Donny Hathaway. He briefly went to Detroit, Michigan to play with hard bop trumpeter Charles Moore. He gravitated toward free jazz after playing at a Black Panthers festival.
Moving to New York City in 1968, Doyle worked with Sun Ra and Bill Dixon, and met and befriended saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and guitarist Sonny Sharrock. The following year, he recorded with Noah Howard and while in the city he met drummer Milford Graves, who encouraged him to pursue his natural affinity for pure sound. In 1977 he recorded his debut album Alabama Feeling, his first as a leader. He began playing with guitarist Rudolph Grey, and in 1980 along with Grey and drummer Beaver Harris, they became known as The Blue Humans and recorded Live NY 1980.
At around this time, Arthur began struggling with anxiety issues, and moved to Endicott, New York, where he worked as a counselor. In 1981, he moved to Paris, France where he began an association with multi-instrumentalist Alan Silva and his Celestrial Communication Orchestra, and participated in the recording of the album Desert Mirage in 1982. The following year, while in France, he was accused of rape and imprisoned. Maintaining his innocence he was pardoned and released in 1988 and during his time in prison, he wrote over 150 songs and assembled what he called the Arthur Doyle Songbook.
In the early Nineties Doyle returned to the United States, moving back to Endicott, and restarted his involvement in music. He resumed his association with Grey, playing at CBGB and releasing Arthur Doyle Plays and Sings from the Songbook Volume One on Grey’s Audible Hiss label. Over the next decade, he played and recorded with drummers Hamid Drake, Sabu Toyozumi, and Sunny Murray, among others, and formed The Arthur Doyle Electro-Acoustic Ensemble.
Saxophonist, bass clarinetist, flutist, and vocalist Arthur Doyle, who was best known for playing what he called free jazz soul music, died on January 25, 2014 in his hometown.
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