Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anthony Tillmon Williams was born of African, Portuguese, and Chinese descent on December 12, 1945 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied with drummer Alan Dawson at an early age, and began playing professionally at the age of 13 with saxophonist Sam Rivers. Saxophonist Jackie McLean hired Williams when he was 16.
At 17 Williams gained attention when he joined Miles Davis in what was later dubbed Davis’s Second Great Quintet. A vital element of the group, his playing helped redefine the role of the jazz rhythm section through the use of polyrhythms and metric modulation.
He recorded his first two albums as leader at nineteen for the Blue Note label, Life Time in 1964) and Spring in 1965.. He also recorded as a sideman for the label including, in 1964, Out to Lunch! with Eric Dolphy and Point of Departure with Andrew Hill.
By 1969, he had formed his trio, the Tony Williams Lifetime, with John McLaughlin on guitar and Larry Young on organ. Lifetime was a pioneering band of the fusion movement. Disbanding the group, in 1975 he put together a band he called The New Tony Williams Lifetime, featuring bassist Tony Newton, pianist Alan Pasqua, and English guitarist Allan Holdsworth, which recorded two albums for Columbia Records..
In mid-1976, Tony reunited with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter. Freddie Hubbard replaced Miles Davis who was in the midst of a six-year hiatus. The resulting record was later released as V.S.O.P. and the group toured for several years and produced a series of live albums released under the name V.S.O.P. or V.S.O.P.: The Quintet.
1979 saw Williams, McLaughlin and bassist Jaco Pastorius united for a one-time performance at the Havana Jazz Festival. This trio came to be known as the Trio of Doom. In 1985, returning to Blue Note he released six albums through 1993, playing his compositions almost exclusively ubtil he left Blue Note for the final time.
He lived and taught in the San Francisco Bay Area, was one of the pioneers of jazz fusion, and was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1986. On February 20, 1997 he checked into Seton Medical Center in Daly City, California, suffering from stomach pain. Three days later, while recuperating from gallbladder surgery, drummer Tony Williams passed away of a heart attack at 51 on February 23, 1997.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Laurie Haines Reese was born on December 3, 1961 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A sojourn to Miami, Florida she studied at the University of Miami~Coral Gables, earning a Bachelor in Music Performance, then a Master of Music Performance degree from the University of Southern California~Los Angeles, she studied the advanced classical cello repertoire with Eleanor Schoenfeld.
She played both classical & jazz, performing regularly with Ira Sullivan & Strings Attached. She also free-lanced extensively, playing in various symphony orchestras, doing studio work and working with a string quartet & a flute quartet.
Following her graduate work in Los Angeles, she went to Maui to work full-time as a professional musician. While there, she co-founded a trio called Chamber Jazz Maui, along with Jazlynn Woods & Tim O’Hara, that performed a variety of repertoire “from Bach to Beatles.” From there, she spent six months in Seattle, before heading back home to Pennsylvania where she has remained and co-founded The Reese Project with her husband Tom reese..
Adept and equally comfortable in the recording studio and on stage, Laurie has been performing professionally since she was seventeen years old. She has been nominated for a Grammy and recorded with several bands. Cellist Laurie Reese continues her session work..
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary Winston Boyle was born November 24, 1941 in Patna, Bihar, India. He attended the Leeds College of Music in the early 1960s and then joined the folk-rock band Eclection. He also played in The Echoes, Dusty Springfield’s band in the mid-1960s, and recorded with Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll.
In the early 1970s he worked as a session musician with musicians Keith Tippett, Mike Gibbs, Mike Westbrook, Stomu Yamashta, Bert Jansch and Norma Winstone.
In 1973, Boyle founded the jazz fusion band Isotope with bassist Jeff Clyne, keyboardist Brian Miller and drummer Nigel Morris. This line-up gigged around the United Kingdom extensively. Fusion guitarist Gary Boyle continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Django Bates was born Leon Bates on October 2, 1960 in Beckenham, Kent, England where he attended Sedgehill School. While at this school, for six years he also attended the Centre for Young Musicians in London, England, where he learned trumpet, piano, and violin. In 1977 he studied at Morley College. The following year he enrolled at the Royal College of Music to study composition but left after two weeks.
He founded Human Chain in 1979 and, in the 1980s, he rose to prominence in a jazz orchestra called Loose Tubes. In 1991, Django started the 19-piece jazz orchestra Delightful Precipice. He also assembled the Powder Room Collapse Orchestra and created Circus Umbilicus, a musical circus show. As a sideman he was a member of Dudu Pukwana’s Zila, Tim Whitehead’s Borderline, Ken Stubbs’s First House, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, Sidsel Endresen, and in the bands of George Russell and George Gruntz.
As an educator, he has tutored at the Banff Centre jazz program, and was appointed Professor of Rhythmic Music at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Bates was appointed visiting professor of jazz in 2010 at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the next year was appointed Professor of Jazz at HKB Bern Switzerland.
He has performed with Michael Brecker, Tim Berne, Christian Jarvi, Vince Mendoza, David Sanborn, Kate Rusby, and Don Alias. Pianist, keyboardist, tenor hornist Django Bates continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rabih Abou-Khalil ربيع أبو خليل, was born August 17, 1957 in Beirut, Lebanon and studied the oud at the Beirut Conservatory with oudist Georges Farah. After moving to Munich, Germany at 21, he studied classical flute at the Academy of Music under Walther Theurer.
Combining elements of Arabic music with jazz, rock, or classical music, he has earned praise as a world musician years before the phrase became a label. Along with Tunisian oud virtuosos Anouar Brahem and Dhafer Youssef, he has helped establish the oud as an important instrument of Ethno jazz and world fusion.
Among other musicians, Abou-Khalil has worked with ARTE Quartett, Alexander Bălănescu, Luciano Biondini, Milton Cardona, Sonny Fortune, Michel Godard, Joachim Kühn, Howard Levy, Charlie Mariano, Ricardo Ribeiro, Steve Swallow, Kenny Wheeler. He has recorded for ECM, Enja, MMP, Granit, and World Village record labels.
Rabih has hosted the 13 part documentary television series Visions of Music, that explores the blending of jazz with different music styles of the world. The music of the TV-series was released on the album Visions of Music – World Jazz by Enja Records.
Oudist Rabih Abou~Khalil continues to be active in music, composing, recording and performing worldwide.
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