Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Trevor Ramsey Tomkins was born May 12, 1941 in London, England. As a young teenager, he first took up the trombone before switching to the drums on which he made his first professional appearance. Although he studied extensively, mostly in the classical vein, he was deeply interested in jazz, studied harmony and music theory, and in the early 60s moved permanently into this field.
Trevor worked and recorded several albums in small groups with trumpeter Ian Carr, as well as pianist Michael Garrick and saxophonist Don Rendell in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the Seventies, he was a member of the jazz-fusion group Gilgamesh that was part of the Canterbury scene in Kent, England. He also performed and recorded with saxophonist Barbara Thompson, pianist Mike Westbrook, and others.
After spending some time in the United States, he returned to England and became one of the most sought after jazz drummers in the UK. Tomkins worked with Ian Carr’s Nucleus, Giles Farnaby’s Dream Band, David Becker, and Henry Lowther’s Quaternity. He appears on the 1971 album First Wind by Frank Ricotti and Mike de Albuquerque and on Tony Coe’s 1978 album Coe-Existence. He is also in demand as accompanist to American jazzmen visiting the UK, amongst them Lee Konitz.
Mainstream and bop drummer Trevor Tomkins, who has never been a leader and was a member of various trios and other line-ups with Roy Budd, remains a first call drummer and much-respected teacher on the jazz scene.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis Landon was born on May 6, 1931 in Yonkers, New York and began studying piano at age five, playing classical compositions. Shortly afterward his parents got him piano lessons. In 1960 his family relocated to Studio City, California where his father, Leo De Lyon, is the voice actor best known as Brain and Spook in the popular television cartoon, Top Cat.
In the early 1970s, Landon transferred from Stony Brook University to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts to pursue his studies in jazz. While playing in and around Boston, Landon met saxophonist, John Payne, and toured with the John Payne Band for three years from 1974 to1977. During that period they recorded four albums, to which he contributed his songwriting skills, and incorporate a jazz fusion style into their sound and opened for Weather Report, The Tony Williams Lifetime, John McLaughlin.
Leaving Boston for Manhattan, he formed a jazz fusion band called Nightfire, and did studio work and freelanced around New York City. During the late 1970s, Landon auditioned for and landed the position of the keyboardist in the John Hall band. Appearing on Hall’s Columbia Records LP, Power, he subsequently began touring with composer and pop singer Rupert Holmes. He toured extensively during the course of the next few years across the country with Hall and Holmes as well as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers.
He has also performed with The Doobie Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall at the 1979 No Nukes concert that produced a triple live album released in 1980 that Landon is credited on as a keyboard player.
Composer, solo pianist for peace, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and touring musician from New York City, Louis Landon currently resides in Sedona, Arizona.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patrick Mungo Smythe was born on May 2, 1923 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a solicitor. Educated at Winchester College he went on to study law at Oxford University. When World War II interrupted his studies, he enlisted with the Royal Air Force, serving for five years as a night-fighter pilot. After the war, he resumed his legal studies, this time at the University of Edinburgh where he was also recognized as a talented classical and jazz pianist.
Upon graduation, he spent several years in his father’s law firm, before leaving Edinburgh for London in the late Fifties in search of a professional career in music. For a brief time, Pat worked with Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece, and in 1960 he joined the quintet led by another Jamaican, alto saxophonist Joe Harriott, who was beginning playing his revolutionary brand of free jazz. Smythe’s pivotal role highlighted one of the principal differences between Harriott and his American counterpart Ornette Coleman, who viewed the harmonic qualities of the piano as incompatible with his own brand of free improvisation.
The Harriott quintet stayed together until 1965, recording three ground-breaking albums ~ Free Form, Abstract and Movement, while also holding a long-term residency at the Marquee Club in Soho. Smythe stayed with Harriott after the dissolution of the quintet, becoming a key member of the group Indo-Jazz Fusions, co-led by Harriott and the Indian composer and violinist John Mayer. This double quintet of five Indian and five jazz musicians aimed to fuse Indian raga structures with jazz improvisation, performing and recording extensively until Harriott’s departure ended the project in 1969. With his knowledge of Indian ragas, Smythe was considered by Mayer to be the bridge between the two camps.
Over a diverse career, he worked and recorded with many other great names in jazz when they passed through Britain, including Stan Getz, Paul Gonsalves, Ben Webster, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Zoot Sims and Bob Brookmeyer. He worked mainly as an accompanist in the London clubs throughout the 1970s, helping bring Scottish jazz vocalist Carol Kidd to prominence.
After a long illness, pianist Pat Smythe passed away on May 6, 1983 in London, England. The Pat Smythe Memorial Trust was established two years later, as a registered charity to provide financial awards to young jazz musicians of outstanding talent. It was funded entirely from benefit concerts and gave awards to such musicians as Julian Arguelles and Jason Rebello. The trust is now defunct.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phillip Robert Lee was born on April 8, 1943 in London, England and studied guitar with Ike Isaacs as a teenager. He was a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, including their performance in the 1960 Antibes Jazz Festival. By the 1960s he was playing with John Williams and Graham Collier, was resident at Ronnie Scott’s Old Place, and in a band that included Bob Stuckey, Dudu Pukwana, and John Marshall.
During the 1970s, he played in jazz-rock bands such as Gilgamesh and Axel with Tony Coe and with Michael Garrick, Henry Lowther, and John Stevens. He recorded Twice Upon a Time in 1987 with Jeff Clyne.
Later in his career, he worked with Gordon Beck, Andres Boiarsky, Benny Goodman, Lena Horne, Marian Montgomery, Annie Ross, Dardanelle, Harry Edison, Ken Peplowski, Eddie Daniels, Jimmy Smith and the London Jazz Orchestra.
Phil Lee began playing jazz in the 1960s and. Since then he has recorded and appeared live with a vast range of musicians. including Pat Smythe, Duncan Lamont, Norma Winstone, Michael Garrick, Jimmy Hastings and Martin Speake. Phil has toured with Charles Aznavour, Michel Legrand, Gordon Beck and recently Jessye Norman.
In the 1970s he was a member of the fusion band Gilgamesh. His musicianship is held in high regard not only by fellow jazz players but also by musicians in other genres. His film credits include brief appearances in Eyes Wide Shut and Alan Plater’s TV film Misterioso and his playing featured in The Last of the Blonde Bombshells. Guitarist Phil Lee continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Bishop was born in Seattle, Washington on April 5, 1956 and raised in Germany, Washington, DC, San Antonio, Texas and Eugene, Oregon. He started playing drums at 9 in Washington, DC with the Patriots drum corps and performed regularly throughout high school and college in Oregon, studying with Mel Brown and Charles Dowd. Attending the University of Oregon, he later transferred to the jazz program at North Texas State University.
Moving to Seattle in 1981 he had an extended engagement with the band Glider and never left. An unusually creative and fertile scene at the time, the city offered performances with top touring artists and the opportunity to create long and substantial musical relationships with inspired Northwest musicians. 1983, saw Bishop helping to form the fusion group Blue Sky, which released two national Top 10 albums and toured throughout the west coast and Canada over the next 9 years.
He was a twenty-year member of the piano trio New Stories with pianist Marc Seales and bassist Doug Miller, releasing 4 CDs of their own, 6 with the late be-bop saxophonist Don Lanphere, and Song for the Geese with Mark Murphy. They were a house trio for 17 years at Bud Shank’s Pt. Townsend Jazz Festival, headlined the 1993 JVC Jazz Festival in Vladivostok, Russia, appeared in concert with Tom Harrell, Julian Priester, Charles McPherson, Vincent Herring, Nick Brignola, Conte Condoli, Bobby Shew and Larry Coryell.
They regularly appeared around the country by themselves or touring with Mark Murphy, Ernie Watts or Don Lanphere. He has performed in concerts and clubs with Lee Konitz, Slide Hampton, Benny Golson, George Cables, Kenny Werner, Bobby Hutcherson, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Sonny Fortune, Herb Ellis, Buddy DeFranco, Bobby McFerrin, Joe Locke, Jerry Bergonzi, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Larry Coryell, and countless others.
John has taught drums privately for forty years, was on the faculty at the University of Washington from 2005-2009, regularly holds drum and jazz workshops throughout the country with the Hal Galper Trio, and co-founded The Reality Book, a web-based, HD Video Play-Along education system for jazz musicians of all levels.
Drummer, educator, record label owner, graphic designer, and festival presenter John Bishop continues to perform, record, tour and educate. has been one of the primary voices in Northwest Jazz for over 35 years. He’s appeared on more than 100 albums, was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008, and was named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2019.
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