Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Luciano Milanese was born on Juy 15, 1950 in Genoa, Italy. Little is known about his family life during his early years, however, he learned to play the bass during his formative years. Over the course of his continual career he went on to play in Italy with numerous American jazz musicians including Harry “Sweets” Edison, Art Farmer, Chet Baker,Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Johnny Griffin, Sal Nistico, James Moody, George Coleman, Steve Grossman, Slide Hampton, Ray Bryant, Kenny Drew, Walter Bishop, Barney Kessel, Joe Pass, Louis Hayes, Alvin Queen, and Bobby Durham, to name a few.
Bassist Luciano Milanese currently continues to perform and record with important Italian musicians like Gianni Basso, Andrea Pozza, Dado Moroni, Tullio De Piscopo.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Carrothers was born July 13, 1964 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He began playing piano at age five, studying with his church organist before learning jazz from pianist Bobby Peterson. By age 15 he was performing in jazz clubs, and in 1982 he briefly attended North Texas State University.
After a year at North Texas, Carrothers was a member of Irv Williams’ band before a move to New York City in 1988. He performed at the Knitting Factory, The Village Gate, and Birdland as well as Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. He has worked with Buddy DeFranco, Curtis Fuller, Billy Higgins, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Konitz, James Moody, Gary Peacock, Dewey Redman, Charlie Rouse, James Spaulding, Terell Stafford, Toots Thielemans, and Prince.
He has performed in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In 2009 Bill played a week-long stand at the Village Vanguard with his European trio Nicolas Thys and Dre Pallemaerts, which resulted in a 2011.
He performs solo piano concerts, made his Monterey Jazz Festival debut and is a regular on the Chicago scene. He is an adjunct professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Carrothers was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque for Jazz in 2004 and was nominated for the Les Victoires du Jazz, twice.
Pianist and composer Bill Carrothers, who has cited Clifford Brown, Shirley Horn, and Oscar Peterson as influences on his development as a musician, continues to perform without shoes to better feel the piano pedals, sitting in a chair to achieve his preferred seating height.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Antonio Underwood was born on July 7, 1960 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He matriculated through the Yale School of Music as a Classical Tuba Major, where he was awarded several honors. Graduating in 1987 he has since been a member of the two-time Grammy Award winning McCoy Tyner Big Band.
He began his career playing in NYC clubs at the age of nineteen and has performed alongside Max Roach, Jerry Gonzalez, Julius Preister, Delfeayo Marsalis, Bob Belden, Christian McBride, Cecil Taylor, Cecil Bridgewater, Vincent Herring, Joshua Redman, Javon Jackson, Lester Bowie, John Faddis, Charlie Haden, Eddie Henderson, Billy Harper, and the list goes on.
He has been a cast member of Broadway musicals Juan Darien, Jelly’s Last Jam, One Mo’ Time and Further Mo. Tony’s composition and orchestration credits include recordings by Be Be Winans, Terry Dexter, John Purcell, The World Saxophone Quartet, Anthony Montgomery, among others. Owner of his own published material (380), brass quartets published by TAP Music (Iowa), and Jazz compositions published by ENJA Music, Germany.
Underwood has scored films Rumbling of the Earth and Shadows of the Dead. He has produced tracks for Lisa Fischer, Katreese Barnes, Steve Jordan, and Anthony Jackson. He is the first Black person to be a George Lucas scholar to the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at USC and is a Fulbright Scholar Lecturer in Serbia.
Tubist, composer and lecturer Tony Underwood continues to perform, compose and lecture.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sahib Shihab was born Edmund Gregory on June 23, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. Schooled in New York from age 3, he first played alto saxophone professionally for Luther Henderson at 13. He studied at the Boston Conservatory, and played in and around New York with Art Blakey, Gigi Gryce, Benny Golson, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Pettiford, Dizzy Gillespie. He toured with the bands of Fletcher Henderson, Buddy Johnson, Roy Eldridge, Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and the original 17 Messengers of Blakey.
During the late 1940s, Shihab played with Thelonious Monk, and on July 23, 1951 he recorded with Monk that was later issued on the album Genius of Modern Music: Volume 2. During the decade he recorded with Art Blakey, Kenny Dorham and Benny Golson. The invitation to play with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band saw his switch to baritone saxophone.
Between 1952 to 1955 he toured with Illinois Jacquet in Europe, as well as with Coleman Hawkins and Sarah Vaughn and toured with Dakota Stanton from 1956 to 1958. He was one of the musicians who showed up for the Art Kane photograph A Great Day In Harlem. Closing out the Fifteies he toured Europe with Quincy Jones, and subsequently settled in Scandinavia in 1960, married and raising a family. Shihab, disillusioned with racial politics in the United States, decided around this time to move to Europe.
As an educator he worked for Copenhagen Polytechnic and wrote scores for television, cinema and theatre. He composed and arranged for Swedish and Danish radio orchestras. He went on to perform with bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and together with pianist Kenny Drew, he ran a publishing firm and record company. Through the Sixties he joined the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band and remained a member of the band during its 12 years existence.
Returning to the United States in 1973 he toured with Quincy Jones and The Brothers Johnson. He returned to Copenhagen, Denmark three years later, where he produced albums for Metronome Records, along with Kenny Drew. The album is titled Brief Encounter, and features the voices of Debby Cameron and Richard Boone. At decade’s end he started a record company with Kenny Drew called Matrix and spent his remaining years between New York and Copenhagen, performed in partnership with Art Farmer and led his own jazz combo called Dues.
Hard bop baritone, alto, and soprano saxophonist and flautist, composer, arranger, producer and educator Sahib Shihab, who beginning of 1986 was a visiting artist at Rutgers University, died from cancer on October 24, 1989, in Nashville, Tennessee at age 64.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edwin John Prévost was born June 22, 1942 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England of Huguenot heritage. Brought up by a single parent mother in war-damaged London Borough of Bermondsey. He won a state scholarship to Addey and Stanhope Grammar School, Deptford, London. Enrolled in the Boy Scouts Association’s 19th Bermondsey Troop to join the marching band and as a teenager began to get involved with the emerging youth culture music, first skiffle, then introduced to a big jazz record collection of a school friend with rich parents.
Prévost worked part-time after school, purchasing his first snare drum from the Len Hunt Drum Shop on Archer Street. Leaving school at 16, he took various clerical positions, while continuing his musical interests. Immersed in the music of bebop, his playing technique was insufficient, however, New Orleans trad jazz offered scope for his growing musical prowess.
He played in various bands mostly in the East End of London. It was during a tenure with one of these bands he met trumpeter David Ware, who shared a passion for hard-bop jazz. Together, while in their early twenties they formed a modern jazz quintet which included Lou Gare, who was a member of the Mike Westbrook Jazz Orchestra.
In 1965 AMM was co-founded by Eddie, Lou Gare, and Keith Rowe and were shortly joined by Lawrence Sheaff. All had a jazz background and were soon augmented by composer Cornelius Cardew. They stayed together until 1972 when some split and others took their place.
Over the years Prévost has conducted many improvised music workshops. However, as a result of a seminar he conducted at The Guelph Jazz Festival, Canada in 1999, Prévost began to formulate a framework for a workshop based upon a more thorough working of AMM principles and practice.
Percussionist Eddie Prévost, who has recorded twenty albums as a leader, twenty-eight with the free improvisation group AMM, and another thirty as a sideman with Derek Bailey, John Wolf Brennan, John Butcher, Cornelius Cardew, Chris Corsano, Sachiko M, Jim O’Rourke, Bruce Russell, David Sylvian, Telectu, Ken Vandermark, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Christian Wolff, Marilyn Crispell, continues to perform and record.
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