Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Miroslav Ladislav Vitouš was born on December 6, 1947 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He began the violin at age six, switching to piano after about three years, and then to bass at age fourteen. As a young man in Europe, he was a competitive swimmer but one of his early music groups was the Junior Trio with his brother Alan on drums and Jan Hammer on keyboards.
He studied music at the Prague Conservatory and won a music contest in Vienna, Austria in 1966 that gave him a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts which he attended one year before going to Chicago, Illinois to play with trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and flugelhorn pioneer Clark Terry.
When Miles Davis saw him playing in Chicago with Brookmeyerin 1967 and invited him to join his group playing at the Village Gate in New York City. It was with Davis that Vitouš first encountered saxophonist Wayne Shorter, keyboardist Herbie Hancock and the Davis-centric scene that was transforming mainstream jazz from late hard bop into what would be known as jazz fusion.
1968 saw the first of Vitouš’s partnerships with Roy Ayers, and Herbie Mann, Bennie Maupin, and Stanley Cowell. The following year, Vitouš recorded his debut album as a bandleader, Infinite Search for Mann’s Embryo label. He recorded with Larry Coryell’s Spaces with John McLaughlin, Corea, and drummer Billy Cobham.
In 1969 he recorded with Shorter, McLaughlin, Jack DeJohnette, Corea, and Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira. The following year he continued as bandleader as he recorded Purple for Columbia, supported by McLaughlin, Cobham and the keyboardist Joe Zawinul. Then Shorter, Zawinul, and Vitouš formed the founding core of the jazz group Weather Report. Creative differences between him and Zawinul facilitated his departure from the group. Leaving the group he moved on to an illustrious career leading his own band and winning respect as a composer.
Double bassist, bass guitarist and composer Miroslav Vitouš continues his performing, recording and composing to this day.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Henry Basil Mayer was born on October 28, 1930 in Calcutta, Bengal, British India, to an Anglo-Indian father and Tamil mother. After studying with Phillipe Sandre in Calcutta and Melhi Mehta in Bombay, he won a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1952, where he studied composition with Matyas Seiber, as well as comparative music and religion in eastern and western cultures.
He worked for five years as a violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra beginning in 1953 and then with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1958 to 1965. During that period John was also composing fusions of Hindustani classical and Western classical forms fused with jazz undertones. His Violin Sonata was performed by Yehudi Menuhin and his Shanta Quintet was recorded by jazz sitarist Diwan Motihar and Denis Preston’s Lansdowne String Quartet in 1967.
In the 1960s he worked extensively with the Jamaican-born jazz musician Joe Harriott, with whom he formed the group Indo-Jazz Fusions. John also composed for film, and the BBC quiz show Ask the Family. From 1989 onwards he taught composition at Birmingham Conservatoire where he introduced the BMus Indian music course in 1997. He continued to compose concert works for chamber, solo and orchestral projects and record jazz-fusion albums.
Composer and sitarist John Mayer, known primarily for his fusions of jazz with Indian music, was fatally injured when hit by a motorist in North London and died on March 9, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Adam Rudolph was born September 12, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up on the South Side among jazz and blues musicians. In 1988 he met Yusef Lateef, and the two would collaborate and perform together for the next 25 years.
In 1992 Rudolph helped found the band Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures, a group of improvisers He has been the artistic director of and composer for Hu: Vibrational with Hamid Drake, Vashti International Percussion Ensemble and Go: Organic Orchestra. He has performed as half of the Wildflowers Duo with Butoh dance innovator Oguri.
Rudolph has released several albums as leader and has also recorded with musicians Sam Rivers, Omar Sosa, Wadada Leo Smith, Pharoah Sanders, Bill Laswell, Herbie Hancock, Foday Musa Suso, and Shadowfax
Composer and percussionist Adam Rudolph continues performing in the post-bop and world fusion medium.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Will Lee was born September 8, 1952 in San Antonio, Texas. Greatly influenced to pursue music because of his parents, his father played piano, trumpet and the upright bass professionally and his mother sang with big bands. He took up drums after seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, and by the time he was 12 had formed his first band in Miami, Florida.
Due to the great numbers of drummers in Miami, Lee studied French horn for a year before shifting to bass and studying at the University of Miami. He became part of a succession of bands including top 40 bands with names like Chances R, The Loving Kind, Green Cloud and Goldrush.
A move to New York City saw Will selected by trumpeter Randy Brecker to join the jazz-rock group Dreams. He played on the album Imagine My Surprise as a bassist and vocalist. After Dreams disbanded, his career as a session musician flourished, and he toured with many artists. In 1982,he became one of the original members of The World’s Most Dangerous Band, the house band on NBC‘s Late Night with David Letterman.
Bassist Will Lee, who has played in both the jazz, rock and r&b genres, continues his career as a seesion and touring musician and recording artist.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Stanley Marshall was born August 28, 1941 in Isleworth, Middlesex , England and worked with various jazz and rock bands and musicians, among them J. J. Jackson, Allan Holdsworth, Barney Kessel, Alexis Korner, Graham Collier, Michael Gibbs, Arthur Brown, Keith Tippett, Centipede, Jack Bruce, John McLaughlin, Dick Morrissey, Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, John Surman, Charlie Mariano, John Abercrombie, Arild Andersen, and Eberhard Weber’s Colours.
From 1999, he worked with former Soft Machine co-musicians in several Soft Machine-related projects like SoftWare, SoftWorks and Soft Machine Legacy. He toured as a member of the band, which operated under the name Soft Machine again, from 2015 to 2023.
Drummer John Marshall, was a founding member of Ian Carr’s jazz rock band Nucleus, and Eberhard Weber’s Colours, died on September 16, 2023, at the age of 82.
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