Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Spaulding was born July 30, 1937 in Indianapolis, Indiana and started playing bugle while in grade school. He later learned to play trumpet and saxophone and flute. While in high school he studied clarinet and made his professional debut around his hometown in a rhythm and blues band.
After a three-year enlistment in the Army he settled to Chicago in 1957 leading his own groups. It was during this period he joined the Sun Ra Arkestra, making several recordings and remaining through 1959, while furthering his studies of flute at the Chicago Cosmopolitan School of Music. Spaulding subsequently freelanced as a studio musician and occasionally led his own groups before returning to Indianapolis in 1961.
Relocating to New York City in 1963, he recorded extensively for Blue Note Records as a sideman, and led several sessions as a leader for Storyville, Muse, 32 and High Note. He was also a member of the World Saxophone Quartet and recorded with Grant Green, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Lee Morgan, David Murray, Duke Pearson, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders, Wayne Shorter, Stanley Turrentine, Larry Young and others.
As an educator he taught flute as an adjunct professor at Livingston College in New Jersey. Alto saxophonist James Spaulding continues to perform and record.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tanya Kalmanovitch was born in Fort McMurray, Alberta on July 5, 1970 and learned to play the viola as a child and would go on to master the violin. She attended and graduated in 1992 from Juilliard School with a degree in viola performance and soon after debuted her jazz chops with the Turtle Island String Quartet.
Her 2003 debut recording with her quartet Hut Five was hailed by the Montreal Gazette as “an exceptional recording, one of the more engaging recordings heard in some time” and was garnished with a number of stars by DownBeat magazine. Actively performing in New York City since 2004, Tanya has been named “Best New Talent” by All About Jazz New York, while Time Out New York identified her from a small pool of suspects as “the Juilliard-trained violist who’s been tearing up the scene”.
Tanya has performed with Mark Turner, Benoît Delbecq, Mark Helias, Dominique Pifarély, Andy Laster, Tom Rainey, Ernst Reijseger, Mat Maneri, and the Turtle Island String Quartet, Martin Hayes, John Cage and Shujaat Husain Khan. She has travelled frequently to India where she has studied Karnatic music with violinist Lalgudi G. J. R. Krishnan and veena player Karaikudi S. Subramanian while conducting doctoral dissertation research on jazz exotica.
Teaching regularly at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London UK, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag NL, and as a member of the faculty of the department of Creative Improvisation at Boston’s New England Conservatory, she also conducts workshops on improvisation.
She is a founding member of the Brooklyn Jazz Underground, a collective of ten independent bandleaders based in New York City. She is also the Canadian representative to the International Association of Schools of Jazz, a founding member of the Jazz String Caucus of the International Association for Jazz Education, and a mentor to the Sisters in Jazz Program. Violist and violinist Tanya Kalmanovitch now lives in the spaces between modern jazz, classical music and free improvisation as she continues to compose, perform and educate.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Conny Bauer was born Konrad Bauer on July 4, 1943 in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. While in senior high school in 1957 he became interested in modern music and dance genres such as swing, boogie-woogie, blues and rock and roll. He taught himself to play guitar and piano and after graduation while trying to play in several bands was nicknamed “Conny” by his friends.
Recognizing his lack of musical knowledge to become a professional Bauer studied modern dance music from 1964 to 1968 taking up the trombone. In 1968 he left for Berlin to improve his skills with private lessons. From 1969 until 1971 he started his career as guitarist and singer in the band of Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, while doubling as a trombone soloist.
During the second half of the 1970s Bauer became a prominent jazz player in European free jazz, helping to found numerous groups that influenced the development of jazz in East Germany. By 1986 he was touring Japan, went on to direct the National Jazz Orchestra of the former East Germany, worked with artists such as Tadashi Endo, Sheryl Banks, Tony Oxley, Barry Altschul and George Lewis to name a few.
He has recorded two-dozen albums, received the German SWR jazz prize for his solo recordings Hummelsummen, and continues to perform, tour and record.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Lowe was born on June 24, 1943 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. Taking up the tenor saxophonist he was extremely influenced by the first and second waves of free jazz throughout the 1960s. He moved to San Francisco, California to explore the avant-garde jazz scene. While making several visits to New York City he began playing with Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane, recording with the later in 1971.
As a leader he recorded two-dozen albums between 1973 and 2002 working with the likes of Don Cherry, Billy Bang, Jack Walrath, James Carter, Geri Allen, Charnett Moffett, Carlos Ward and numerous others.
Composer and tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe passed away on September 19, 2003 of lung cancer. His legacy was a varied body of recordings and memorable performances and his composition “Spirits in the Field” was performed on Arthur Blythe’s 1977 album The Grip.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eje Thelin was born Eilert Ove Thelin on June 9, 1938 in Jönköping, Sweden. He started his own quintet in 1961 and from 1969 to 1972 he was on the faculty of the Music Academy in Graz, Austria. For the rest of the 1970s, he led his own Eje Thelin Group in Sweden.
By the 1980s he expanded into composition, writing commissioned works for large European orchestras, sometimes featuring himself as soloist. In spite of the attention given to the obvious technical side of his playing, Thelin was also known for his warm approach to traditional ballads, a somewhat retro-romanticism that comes through in his later playing.
An innovator, Eje was widely admired among fellow trombonists for his facile technique, rhythmic intensity and was, perhaps, the first jazz trombonist to translate that technique into the so-called “Sheets of Sound” style that characterized much of the music of tenor saxophonist John Coltrane and, in general, free jazz of the late 1960s and 1970s. He would play with Joachim Kuhn and Don Cherry while leading his own groups.
Trombonist Eje Thelin, one of the strongest trombone voices of modal and free jazz to emerge in the European 60s, passed away on May 18, 1990.
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