Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ornette Coleman was born March 9, 1930 hailing from Fort Worth, Texas where he began performing R&B and bebop on the tenor. He found his way out of Texas taking a job with traveling shows, first Silas Green and then rhythm and blues. After his tenor was destroyed in an attack, Ornette switched to alto that has remained his primary instrument.
From the beginning Coleman was ear was unorthodox, his approach to harmony and chord progression was less rigid than that of bebop musicians who considered him out-of-tune. However there were some who heard the same sound and by the 50s he was making music with Paul Bley, Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, Don Payne, Walter Norris, Shelly Manne and Charlie Haden.
Regarded by some as iconoclastic, others like conductor Leonard Bernstein and composer Virgil Thomson saw his genius and innovation. Ornette became one of the major influences in the free jazz movement and a major player in the genesis of avant-garde jazz. Throughout the sixties and seventies he played with Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Scott LaFaro and Ed Blackwell and introduced brief thematic dissonant fanfares, regular but complex pulse and solos where band mates were able to chime in as they wish.
His friendship with Albert Ayler influenced his development of the trumpet and violin. His evolution continued and subsequent quartets included his son Denardo, Sunny Murray, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, and Dewey Redman. It also forwarded his sojourn into electrified instruments, adopting a jazz-fusion mode fashionable at the time and bringing in such artists as Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. He has brought to his recordings Pat Metheny, Geri Allen, and Joachim Kuhn but seldom appeared as a sideman.
Ornette Coleman is a saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer whose timbre is easily recognized with his keen, crying sound drawing upon the blues. In 2007 he won a Pulitzer for his album Sound Grammar and honored with a Grammy for lifetime achievement He continued to push the envelope with younger musicians from radically different cultures until his passing on June 11, 2015 in Manhattan, New York.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Murray was born on February 19, 1955 in Oakland, California to musical parents, his mother played piano and his father, guitar. He was introduced to jazz while in the Berkeley school system playing alto in the school band. By thirteen he was in a local group called the Notations of Soul, but it was hearing Sonny Rollins that gave him the inspiration to switch from alto to tenor.
Influenced by Stanly Crouch while attending Pomona College, he moved to New York at 20 during the jazz loft era in lower Manhattan. Joining up with Crouch they opened their own loft space called Studio Infinity and Crouch occasionally played drums in Murray’s trio with Mark Dressler.
Murray’s early work was raw filed with multiphonics, extreme volume and upper register forays. By 1976 he recorded his first album “Flowers For Albert” and along with Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and Hamiet Bluiett became a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet. Around the same time Joseph Papp commissioned David for a big band assemblage that enjoyed a modicum of critical success.
Through the 80’s he continued to play with the WSQ, his octet and various small bands, recording mostly for Italy’s Black Saint label, showcasing his rough and unformed talent as a composer. His recording dates became a flurry for the next two decades, leading more sessions than any other contemporary jazz musician. His playing matured and he began relying on the standard jazz repertoire when playing in small combo configurations. Yet by the time he was 40, his relative predictability was offset by his attention to the craft of playing and his inimitable style while his increased skill as a composer. In addition to winning a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Group Performance for Blues for Coltrane: A Tribute to John Coltrane, over the course of his career he has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, received a Bird Award, the Jazzpar Prize and has been named Musician of the Year by Newsday and Musician of the Decade by the Village Voice.
Murray mainly plays tenor saxophone and bass clarinet influenced in the free jazz genre of Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp. He has played with a host of world-renowned musicians, of which he is a member and continues to perform, record and tour.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jeanne Lee was born on January 29, 1939 in New York City. Attending Bard College for dance, she began singing while still a student, formed a duo with classmate Ran Blake and recorded her first album, The Newest Sound Around. Jeanne was to become one of the foremost exponents of free vocal jazz extending her style to include moods that were sensual, somber, and sensitive while expressing standard lyrics as well as scatting.
During the 60’s and 70’s she recorded her distinctively independent and creative style either as a lead artist or a sidewoman for major performers of the jazz avant-garde, Archie Shepp, Anthony Brown, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Enrico Rava, Carla Bley, Cecil Taylor and Mal Waldron to name a few, on independent labels in America and Europe. In 1967, she toured and recorded with her husband and vibraphonist Gunter Hampel.
In 1976 she sang in the spiritual tradition in John Cage’s “Apartment House 1776”, composed for the U.S. Bicentennial. By the 80’s Jeanne was concentrating on composing and performing/recording her original works that often included poetic and dance components.
Jeanne Lee combines acrobatic vocal maneuvers with a deeply moving sound and quality that allows her to alternate between soaring, upper register flights and piercing, emotive interpretations. The extremely precise and flexible Jeanne Lee who easily moved from a song or solo’s top end to its middle and bottom accompanying an instrument, passed away due to complications from cancer on October 25, 2000 in Tijuana, Mexico.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Hutcherson was born January 27, 1941 in Los Angeles, California and studied piano with his aunt as a child. Not enjoying the formality of the training he tinkered with it on his own, especially since he was already connected to jazz through a brother’s high school friendship with Dexter Gordon and a singing sister who later dated Eric Dolphy. But it was hearing Milt Jackson that made everything clicked for Hutcherson during his teen years, working until he saved up enough money to buy his own set of vibes.
He began studying with Dave Pike and playing local dances in a group led by his friend, bassist Herbie Lewis. Parlaying his local reputation into gigs with Curtis Amy and Charles Lloyd in 1960. And joined an ensemble led by Al Grey and Billy Mitchell. A year later he’s in New York at Birdland and ends up staying on the east coast as his reputation of his inventive four mallet playing spread.
Attracted foremost to more experimental free jazz and post-bop, he made early recordings in this style for Blue Note with Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Granchan Moncur, but ironically his debut recording for the label in 1963, The Kicker, not released until 1999, demonstrated his background in hard bop and the blues.
His vibraphone playing is suggestive of the style of Milt Jackson in its free-flowing melodic nature, but his sense of harmony and group interaction is thoroughly modern. Easily one of jazz’s greatest vibraphonists, Bobby Hutcherson helped modernize the vibes by redefining what could be done with it — sonically, technically, melodically, and emotionally. In the process, he became one of the defining voices in the “new thing” portion of Blue Note’s glorious ’60s roster.
Throughout his career Hutcherson has performed or recorded with a who’s who list of avant-garde, free improvisation, modernist post-bop, straight-ahead, mainstream, fusion and bop jazz players on the scene, staying ever current in his message. As a leader he has recorded nearly four-dozen albums for Blue Note, Landmark, Columbia, Cadet, Timeless, Evidence, Atlantic and Verve. Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson maintained his reputation as one of the most advanced masters of his instrument until he passed away on August 15, 2016 in Montara, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenny Wheeler was born Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler and came into this world on January 14, 1930, in Toronto, Canada. He began playing the cornet at the age of 12, becoming interested in jazz in his mid-teens. Spending a year at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, he moved to Britain in 1952 at the age of 22 and found his way into the jazz scene of London playing with Tommy White, Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott.
In the 60’s Wheeler worked with John Dankworth, recording “Windmill Tilter” which is now a collector’s item since the master tapes have been lost. He has also enjoyed being active in free improvisation creating orchestral writing with passages of free improvisation infused in the bi band album “Song For Someone” in 1973 named Album of the Year by Melody Maker magazine in 1975.
Kenny’s lists of recordings or performances are too vast but includes Paul Gonsalves, Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton, Keith Jarrett, Steve Coleman, John Taylor, and Lee Konitz among a host of other notables in jazz.
Highly respected among his peers for his beautiful tone and extensive range on the trumpet and flugelhorn, Wheeler has written over one hundred compositions and is a skilled arranger for small groups and larger ensembles. His compositions blend lyrical melodies with a distinctive and ever changing harmonic palette. He has occasionally contributed to rock music recordings, is the patron of the Royal Academy Junior Jazz course, has been based in the UK since 1950 and remained faithful to the jazz genres of avant-garde, post bop, chamber jazz and free improvisation until his passing on September 18, 2014 at age 84 in London, England.
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