Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenn Smith was born Kenneth Lamont Smith on April 27, 1962 in Chicago, Illinois.
As a child of the 60s and Seventies living on the WestSide of his hometownhe first heard the sounds of Motown, Soul, Funk, Country, Jazz and Rock. His school was shows like Hee Haw and Midnight Special, his parents’ record collection, and a neighborhood filled with amateur and professional musicians.
When the family moved to the SouthSide in 1975, Smith began his guitar studies at age 13 with a visit to the local music store purchasing two Mel Bay books. Three years later the family moved to the western suburbs of Maywood, Illinois. At 16 he began classical guitar studies with guitarist Bruce Walters, and later continued studies at Jack Cecchini Studio.
While attending Proviso East High School, he played electric and classical guitar as well as timpani in the Proviso Township Orchestra, electric guitar and bass in the Proviso East High School jazz band, where he received the Louis Armstrong Award for Outstanding Jazz Improvisation during his senior year.
1982 saw Kenn beginning his career teaching guitar at Robinson’s Music Academy in Maywood, as well as performing with local funk and fusion bands. This he did while attending Columbia College of Chicago, studying music management and production. In 1987 he enrolled at the American Conservatory of Music where he studied jazz guitar and composition. In between those years of teaching, performing and study, he became an avid fan of progressive rock and fusion, developing skills as a guitarist, bassist and composer.
In 1986, he began his career as a freelance guitarist and bassist, performing on Chicago’s jazz, blues and rock scene. But it wasn’t till 1989 his professional career took off, working as a guitarist at the Chicago Cotton Club. It was here he later formed his first jazz trio and opened for jazz greats Shirley Horn, Stanley Turrentine, Freddy Cole, and Art Porter. As a jazz side man he played with other jazz greats, Jodie Christian, Guy Fricano, Johnny Frigo, Bobby Broom, Najee and many others.
He would go on tour with the Chi-Lites, start his own label Kenn Smith Music, has written, produced and recorded eight albums, as well as authored an instruction book for electric bass and numerous articles for online magazines such as Mel Bay Bass Sessions, and Bass Musician Magazine.
Guitarist, bassist, composer, educator and journalist Kenn Smith, who is well versed in many styles of music, continues to explore his music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lakshminarayana Shankar was born on April 26,1950 in Madras, India and raised in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. His father was a violinist and singer who worked as a teacher at the Jaffna College of Music. The young boy learned to play the violin and first performed in public in a Ceylonese temple at the age of seven.
In 1969 he traveled to the United States where he studied ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University. While attending college at Wesleyan University, he met jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Garrison, and John McLaughlin. With McLaughlin, Shankar founded the group Shakti in 1975, one of the early groups in which Eastern and Western musical traditions met. They released three albums between 1975 and 1977 titled Shakti, A Handful of Beauty, and Natural Elements.
Post performing with various Indian singers for several years, Shankar founded a trio with his brothers, L. Vaidyanathan and L. Subramaniam and they performed throughout India. After the band dissolved, Shankar was a violinist with Frank Zappa for a short time, and then founded the group The Epidemics and released a number of albums as a band leader.
Collaborating with Peter Gabriel, he wrote the soundtrack for the film The Last Temptation of Christ, for which he received a Grammy Award. In the following years, Shankar worked on several of Gabriel’s albums. Since 1996, he has been working with his niece, the violinist Gingger Shankar as the duo Shankar & Gingger.
He has performed in trio with trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg and saxophonist Jan Garbarek and has stretched with Elton John, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Yoko Ono, Stewart Copeland, John Waite, Charly García, Steve Vai, Ginger Baker, Nils Lofgren, Jonathan Davis, The SFA, and Sting.
Better known as L. Shankar, Shankar and Shenkar, violinist, singer and composer Lakshminarayana Shankar continues to perform among other endeavors.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Bishop was born on April 5, 1959 in Seattle, Washington and raised in Germany, Washington, D.C., San Antonio, Texas, and Eugene, Oregon. He started playing drums at the age of seven with the Patriots drum corp. Through high school and college he performed regularly and studied with Mel Brown and Charles Dowd at the University of Oregon prior to transferring to North Texas State University. A move back to Seattle in 1981 he played an extended engagement with Glider and never left.
The early Eighties saw Bishop as a member of the fusion group Blue Sky and for 20 years was a member of New Stories with pianist Marc Seales and bassist Doug Miller. They had four CDs of their own, six with the late be-bop saxophonist Don Lanphere, and a Grammy nominated recording with Mark Murphy, among others. They were a house trio for 17 years at Bud Shank’s Pt. Townsend Jazz Festival.
In 1997 John started the jazz label Origin Records, which was later named Jazzweek’s 2009 Label Of The Year, and OriginArts, a graphic design & CD production company, to help further the exposure of creative artists and their music. In partnership with his ex-drum student, Matt Jorgensen, and released over 750 recordings by 370 artists from around the world. 2003 saw them begin Seattle’s annual 4-day Ballard Jazz FestivalIn 2002 they added another jazz label, OA2 Records, a classical imprint, Origin Classical in 2008. Bishop has designed over eight hundred recording packages and multiple book covers, banners, posters, and other graphics for clients around the globe.
He has taught drums privately for 40 years, was on the faculty at the University of Washington from 2005-2009, and is presently adjunct at the Cornish College of the Arts. He regularly does drum and jazz workshops throughout the country, often with Hal Galper, including at the University of North Texas, University of Indiana, Dartmouth, Cal Arts, The New School, Purchase Conservatory-NYC, William Paterson University, University of Louisville, San Jose State University, The Jazz School- Berkeley, and Kent State University, to name a few.
He’s appeared on more than a hundred albums, and was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008, and named a Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2019. Drummer and record producer John Bishop continues to pursue his endeavors in the industry.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Russ Spiegel was born March 30, 1962 in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Santa Monica, California. His family was musical as he has an older sister who plays the bluegrass fiddle, a pianist and composer brother and a father who is an avid amateur jazz trumpeter.
A fan of pop radio as a youngster, Russ discovered rock music as he entered his teens. Picking up the electric guitar he took lessons at a local music store, eventually buying a Fender Stratocaster. He started jamming with area musicians, which led to forming a rock cover band. Finishing high school in Frankfurt, Germany he enrolled in the University of Maryland that had a campus in Munich, Germany. While there, he formed a progressive-rock band, joined a local R&B and soul unit, and began learning jazz standards. In 1982 Spiegel returned to the U.S. to complete his bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, earning a degree in philosophy.
In 1986 had Spiegel in Boston, Massachusetts on scholarship at Berklee College of Music. Upon completion of his studies, he relocated to Germany in 1988 where he gradually made contacts in the music world. He began playing on military bases and at local jazz clubs and festivals. During a stint in Paris, France he formed a quartet called Guitar Hell, which toured widely in France and Germany. He soon found himself in demand as a guitarist and electric bassist with various European big bands, jazz ensembles, and blues groups.
Around the same time, Russ joined the band of German jazz organist Barbara Dennerlein and toured Europe with her before receiving the coveted Jazz Scholarship by the city of Frankfurt for his contributions to the city’s artistic scene.
In 2001 Spiegel returned to the U.S. settled in New York City and studied under teachers Adam Rogers, Paul Bollenback, Ben Monder and John Patitucci, receiving his master’s degree in jazz performance from the City College of New York.
In 2008 his Jazz/North Indian classical fusion ensemble, Sundar Shor, undertook a tour of India under the auspices of the American Center, and it has toured widely in Europe as well. Guitarist Russ Spiegel continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ladislav Déczi was born on March 29, 1938 in Bernolákovo, Czechoslovakia and showed an interest in the trumpet while in elementary school. He went through several music ensembles in high school and during his military service performed in Prague, Czechoslovakia. After his discharge he remained in Prague and started performing with the Rokoko Theater Sextet and then with the Jazz Outsiders. He then went on to work with Karel Velebny’s S+HQ and as the frontman for the Reduta Quartet.
By the mid-Sixties he founded Jazz Celulla, joined the Czechoslovak All Star Band, the Jazz Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Radio, and the Dance Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Radio. He recorded several solo albums, composed orchestral compositions.
Emigrating to America in 1986 he again took the frontman space for Celula New York. He performed with Elvin Jones, Bill Watrous, Junior Cook, Dave Weckl and Sonny Costanzo. He recorded several duo albums with Sarka Dvorak and composed an abundance of music for film and television productions. He has won several awards during his career and has toured Eastern Europe especially his homeland, Germany and Austria.
Trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Laco Déczi, who also paints, continues to perform, compose and record.
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