Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mike Stern was born Michael Sedgwick on January 10, 1953 in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Washington, D.C. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston and when he was twenty-two, he became a member of Blood, Sweat & Tears, spending three years with the band. During this stint he appeared on the albums More Than Ever and Brand New Day.
1979 saw him joining Billy Cobham’s fusion band. Two years later he joined Miles Davis, making his public debut in 1981, a performance recorded on the album We Want Miles. He remained with Davis through 1983 until he was replaced by guitarist John Scofield. From 1983 to 1984 he toured with Jaco Pastorius and in 1985 returned to tour with Davis.
Stern’s solo debut, Upside Downside, with Jaco Pastorius, David Sanborn, and Bob Berg, was released on Atlantic Records in 1986. For the next two years he was a member of Michael Brecker’s quintet, appearing on Don’t Try This At Home. His second Atlantic album, dropped in 1988, was Time in Place, and he would go on to release more than a dozen albums.
He formed a touring group in 1989 with Bob Berg, Dennis Chambers and Lincoln Goines. His acclaimed 1993 album, Standards (and Other Songs), led to his being named Best Jazz Guitarist of the Year by the readers and critics of Guitar Player. He was nominated for two Grammy awards, received another Best Jazz Guitarist award, and in 2009 in the first of a series of articles celebrating Down Beat‘s 75th anniversary, Stern was named one of the 75 Great Guitarists of all time.
Serious injuries to his shoulders and right arm after tripping and falling led to the ending of his 2016 European tour. Modifying his playing technique in the summer of 2017 he returned to Europe on tour with a new formation called Mike Stern/Randy Brecker Band, featuring Randy Brecker, Teymur Phell and Lenny White.
Guitarist Mike Stern, who received a Certified Legend Award from Guitar Player magazine, continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kevin Kraig Toney was born on January 1, 1953 in Detroit, Michigan. Graduating from Cass Technical High School, in his teens he listened to the music of John Coltrane and Art Tatum He attended Howard University where Donald Byrd, head of the jazz studies department, assembled a group of students which became the fusion band the Blackbyrds, led by Toney. The band played with Chick Corea, The Crusaders, Herbie Hancock, and Grover Washington Jr.
The band released seven albums, three were certified gold and had two hits. Rock Creek Park and Unfinished Business, the latter earned Kevin a Grammy Award nomination. He has recorded several albums as a leader, has worked with Kenny Burrell, Hubert Laws, David “Fathead” Newman, James Newton, Sonny Rollins, Frank Sinatra, Sonny Stitt, Gerald Wilson and Nancy Wilson among numerous others.
As an arranger and conductor with Patti Austin, Babyface, Gloria Gaynor, Edwin Hawkins, James Ingram, Enrique Iglesias, Michael McDonald, Brian McKnight, Freda Payne, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis Jr., and produced his daughter, Dominique Toney’s debut album.
In the same roles he worked in theater for Ain’t Misbehavin’, Five Guys Named Moe, Harlem Suite, The Magic of Motown, Sophisticated Ladies, and Wild Women Blues. He wrote the music for the film Kings of the Evening.
Pianist and composer Kevin Toney, who has recorded eleven albums as a leader, nine as a member of The Blackbyrds and eighteen as a sideman, continues to perform, tour, and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gray Hall was born November 10, 1992 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Learning to play the guitar as a youth, by the time he was in high school he was playing lead with Nathaniel’s jazz quartet and with Donnie in their modern blues group called Edens Unknown.
He and his high school classmates Alex Plye and Mike Haldelman while working with Marilisa Cook-Simmons on vocals, creating an electro-future-soul odyssey that blends the art of soul, production, and instrumentation that demonstrates the art of cool.
After graduating from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina he rejoined his fellow musicians Pyle and Haldeman to produce and record tracks for the neo-soul jazz group Space Captain. Splitting his time between performing and recording in New York City and recording at the Great Time Studio in suburban Philadelphia.
Other studio work by Hall features original beats and soundtrack mastering for So Far Productions (NYC). He has studied guitar with Daniel Sheriff, Greg Hyslip, and Rory Stewart; and interned as an studio production assistant with Eddie Motilla of Universal Studios, NYC and The Record Room in Miami, Florida.
Guitarist Gray Hall, who works in genres ranging from modern jazz, jazz fusion, modern blues, and neo-soul, continues to perform, record and produce.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richard Malden Heckstall-Smith was born on September 26, 1934 in the Royal Free Hospital, in Ludlow, Shropshire, England. Raised in Knighton, Radnorshire, he learned to play piano, clarinet and alto saxophone as a child. He attended a York boarding school but refused a second term there, instead enrolling in Gordonstoun, where his father had accepted a job as headmaster of the local grammar school.
Completing his education at Dartington Hall School, before co-leading the university jazz band at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, from 1953, by the age of 15 Dick had taken up the soprano sax while at Dartington. He was captivated by the sound of Sidney Bechet, then Lester Young and tenor saxophonist bebop jazzman Wardell Gray proved to be major influences for him.
An active member of the London jazz scene from the late 1950s, Heckstall-Smith did a six-month stint in 1957 with the Sandy Brown band. He joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, a groundbreaking blues group in 1962, recording the album R&B from the Marquee.
The following year, he was a founding member of that band’s breakaway unit, The Graham Bond Organisation. Then in 1967, he joined guitarist-vocalist John Mayall’s blues rock band, Bluesbreakers. He went on to jazz rock with Colosseum until ‘71, then recorded a solo album and ventured into jazz fusion with several groups, which sustained most of his performing through the remainder of his career.
In 1984 he published his witty memoirs, The Safest Place in the World, with an expanded version, retitled Blowing the Blues, published in 2004.
Diagnosed with acute liver failure, tenor, soprano, and baritone saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith, who also played piano, clarinet and alto saxophone, transitioned on December 17, 2004 at 70 in Hampstead, London, England.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Günter Lenz was born July 25, 1938 in Frankfurt am Main. He first taught himself guitar and studied with Carlo Bohländer, playing jazz in the clubs of the U.S. Army from 1954 onwards. During national service in 1959/1960 he switched to the bass.
In 1961 Albert Mangelsdorff picked him up as a member of the Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet. Since then Lenz has also become a member of the hr-jazz ensemble, for which he arranged and composed. 1965 saw him working in the Krzysztof Komeda Quintet, recording the album Astigmatic. Three years later he was playing with Joachim Kühn and Aldo Romano in a band led by Barney Wilen at the Berlin Jazz Days. With The German All Stars he toured internationally in 1969 and 1971.
He played with the George Russell Sextet, and with a band led by Leon Thomas. This allowed him to collect big band experience. During the 1970s he was a member of the Kurt Edelhagen Big Band and with Peter Herbolzheimer Rhythm Combination & Brass. He would go on to be engaged for their concert tours and record productions by Chet Baker, Coleman Hawkins, Oliver Nelson and Benny Bailey, as well as German musicians such as Eugen Cicero, Horst Jankowski and Volker Kriegel.
Dipping into the blues field in 1972 Günter played with Lightning Hopkins. The mid-1970s saw Lenz joining drummer Peter Giger in Clarinet Contrast, an avant garde band around the clarinetists Perry Robinson, Theo Jörgensmann, Bernd Konrad and Michel Pilz. As a member of the Manfred Schoof Quintet he recorded for ECM/Japo.
In the late 1970s Günter founded his combo, Günter Lenz Springtime, an international jazz-fusion band with members as Bob Degen, Claus Stötter, Frank St. Peter, Johannes Faber, Leszek Zadlo and Joe Nay. He recorded as part of the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra. In 1991 he recorded “Life at the Montreux Music Festival” in trio-formation with Uli Lenz and Allen Blairman
Lenz created orchestral arrangements for Plácido Domingo, and from 2001 to 2006 as a professor he taught bass at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. During that period of education he received the Hesse state Jazz prize awarded by the State Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts Udo Corts.
Bassist Günter Lenz continues to perform, compose, arrange and educate.
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