Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Raymond Michael Pizzi was born January 19, 1943 in Everett, Massachusetts. His first instrument was clarinet and he attended the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music in the 1960s.
Pizzi taught in Randolph, Massachusetts public schools from 1964 to 1969 before relocating to California. In the 1970s he worked with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Frank Zappa, Shelly Manne, Willie Bobo, Moacir Santos, Mark Levine, and Dizzy Gillespie.
The Eighties saw him accompanying Nancy Wilson and was a sideman for Milcho Leviev and Bob Florence. He worked with the American Jazz Orchestra into the early-1990s. Ray recorded as a leader, including in a quartet called Windrider.
As an educator he joined the faculty at the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami in 1997.
Saxophonist, bassoonist, and flautist Ray Pizzi, nicknamed Pizza Man, died on September 2, 2021.
More Posts: bandleader,bassoon,educator,flute,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pamela Wise was born on January 8, 1956 in Steubenville, Ohio. She began composing and playing piano by ear at age five and started lessosn at nine. After studying the basics she began playing for her church choir, directed by her bassist father. While in high school she formed Ohio Movement, a r&b group performing throughout the Midwest and East Coast. Eight years later she left the band and moved to Cleveland, Ohio with her brother and entered Cuyahoga Community College to further study music.
A move to Detroit, Michigan with her brother led her to play with several r&b groups in the Detroit area, meeting her future husband Wendell Harrison and eventually composing and performing for Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Leon Thomas and Eddie Harris. In 1989 she formed a group that enlisted James Carter, Dwight Adams, Jaribu Shahid, Ali Muhammad and Andrew Daniels.
Pamela has collaborated with Regina Carter, Akua Dixon Turre, and with Jerry Gonzalez produced her cd Songo Festividad. She went on to release A New Message From The Tribe, Kindred Spirits, Negre Con Leche, and Pamela’s Club projects.
Composer, pianist and music director Pamela Wise continues to perform, record, collaborate and educate.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paul Wertico was born January 5, 1953, in Chicago, Illinois. He began his professional career as a member of the Chicago based Simon & Bard Group. When Pat Metheny heard him play in 1983, he invited him and bassist Steve Rodby to join his band. During his time with Metheny, he played on ten albums and four videos, appeared on television, and toured around the world. He won seven Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Fusion Performance, Best Contemporary Jazz Performance, and Best Rock Instrumental Performance, as well as magazine polls, and several gold records.
Paul left Metheny in 2001 and formed the Paul Wertico Trio with John Moulder and Eric Hochberg. He collaborated with Larry Coryell, Kurt Elling, and Jeff Berlin. From 2000 to 2007, he was a member of SBB, the platinum-record-winning Polish progressive rock band. Wertico was a member of the Larry Coryell Power Trio until Coryell’s death in 2017.
He went on to create or gain membership in several groups Marbin, Paul Wertico’s Mid-East/Mid-West Alliance, Wertico Cain & Gray, and has won several awards. He has worked with Frank Catalano, Eddie Harris, Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman, Sam Rivers, Bob Mintzer, Terry Gibbs, Buddy DeFranco, Roscoe Mitchell, Evan Parker, Jay McShann, Herbie Mann, Randy Brecker, Jerry Goodman, Fareed Haque, Ramsey Lewis and the list goes on.
As an educator Paul has taught drums privately for 55 years, conducted clinics and masterclasses in addition to writing educational articles for Modern Drummer, DRUM!, Drums & Drumming, Drum Tracks, and DownBeat, and online for Musician.com. He is an Associate Professor of Jazz Studies at the Chicago College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt University, and also headed the school’s Jazz & Contemporary Music Studies program for five years. He served on the faculty of the percussion and jazz-studies programs at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois for 16 years, and taught at the Bloom School of Jazz in Chicago for several years.
Drummer and percussionist Parl Wertico continues to perform, record and educate.
More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music,percussion
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lowell Dwight Dickerson was born in Los Angeles, California on December 26, 1944 and grew up in the city where his influences were Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Barron, and Bud Powell, among others. He became active on the local jazz scene in the 1960s.
In the early Sevenites he appeared on the Chicago, Illinois tenor titan Gene Ammons’ Free Again album on Prestige, and the latter part of the decade found him being featured on a few LPs by baritone saxophonist Nick Brignola. In the 1980s Dickerson started recording as a leader when he provided his debut album, Sooner or Later, for Discovery. In 1992,
Dickerson recorded Dwight’s Rights which features Red Holloway on tenor sax for the small Night Life label. He has played as a sideman in the 1990s with saxman Rickey Woodard, singer Michael Martin and Albert “Tootie” Heath. The early 2000s saw him featured on singer David Coss’ Simple Life album.
Pianist Dwight Dickerson, who occasionally sings and plays a variety of genres ranging from hard bop, funk and soul jazz, to modal post-bop, continues to perform and record at 80.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,keyboard,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ronald Edward Cuber was born on December 25, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1959 he was playing tenor saxophone when he joined Marshall Brown’s Newport Youth Band at eighteen, but switched to the baritone. His first notable work was with Slide Hampton in 1962 and then went with Maynard Ferguson the following year until 1965. George Benson recruited him for a year in ‘66 to 1967.
As a leader he was known for hard bop and Latin jazz, the latter with Eddie Palmieri, As a sideman he played outside the genre with B. B. King, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, J. Geils Band, and one of his most spirited performances is on Dr. Lonnie Smith’s 1970 Blue Note album Drives. He was also a member of the Saturday Night Live Band.
Ronnie played with Frank Zappa on the live album Zappa in New York, which was recorded in 1976. He went on to gain membership in the Lee Konitz nonet from 1977 to 1979.He was a member of the Mingus Big Band from its inception in the early 1990s until his death. He performed as an off-screen musician for the movie Across the Universe.
Baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, who also played soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and flute, died at the age of 80 on October 7, 2022 in his New York’s Upper West Side studio from internal injuries sustained after a fall that could not be treated due to overwhelming Covid patients at the start of the pandemic.
More Posts: bandleader,clarinet,flute,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone