Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Moore was born December 4, 1954 and raised in Eureka, California. He studied music at Humboldt State and in 1977 graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard and Gunther Schuller, and was a classmate of Marty Ehrlich. He played in a variety of musical contexts, especially those in support of theatre and dance groups.
By 1982 he was a regular member of Misha Mengelberg’s Instant Composers Pool and had moved to Amsterdam. He was also a member of Georg Gräwe’s Grubenklang Orchester. Michael is one-third of the Clusone Trio with cellist Ernst Reijseger and drummer Han Bennink. Originally meant only to play a single date at a festival in Clusone, Italy, the trio toured irregularly for several years and recorded six albums, including one of freely-interpreted Irving Berlin compositions.
His debut recording as a leader was in 1992 but it was with 1994’s Chicoutimi that he began to earn recognition as a composer. The drummerless trio on this album had Fred Herschon piano, and bassist Mark Helias was inspired by the duo recordings of Lee Konitz and Gil Evans.
He put together a jazz quintet in 2005 and the album Osiris. In 2013, he performed with InstanPool, a group of international musicians making improved music and occasionally playing a composition.
Saxophonist and clarinetist Michael Moore, who has recorded twenty-two albums as a leader, continues his journey in performing and recording.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ove Johansson was born on December 3, 1936 and didn’t start playing the tenor saxophone until the age of 13. However, he gave the clarinet a chance for a couple of years. Very early in his career he got into a professional jazz group playing before starting his own groups where he spent most of the time as a band leader.
For a short period Ove was a sideman with Swedish saxophonist Lars Gullin. From 1972 to 1994 he was a teacher of saxophone, improvisation, ensemble and harmony at the School of Music, Gothenburg University. He went on to start his own small record label LJ Records in 1989 and recorded his own and new Scandinavian jazz music internationally.
The end of the Fifties saw Johansson leading his own groups and a driving force of the Swedish jazz scene. He was musical director of Mwendo Dawa. His musical work stretched from straight ahead, free form and electronic jazz to the acoustic and electro acoustical mix of today.
He toured Europe, North and South America, and China, with Mwendo Dawa. He toured with the trio Natural Artefacts with performances both in the world of improvisation music as well as the world of electro acoustic music.
Tenor saxophonist and composer Ove Johansson, who produced 35 albums with his own material and with the group, died on December 25, 2015.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michel Portal was born on November 27, 1935 in Bayonne, France into a musical family and home filled with several instruments growing up. His interest in jazz began after hearing it on the radio after World War II. He studied clarinet at the Conservatoire de Paris and conducting with Pierre Dervaux.
Gaining experience in light music with the bandleaders Henri Rossotti and with Perez Prado in Spain in 1958, Michel performed with drummer Benny Bennett, Raymond Fonsèque, Aimé Barelli and for many years, the singer Claude Nougaro.
Portal co-founded the free improvisation group New Phonic Art. During 1969, he played on a recording of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen.
He began scoring music for films in the 1980s. He won the César Award for Best Music Written for a Film three times. Playing both jazz and classical music and is considered to be “one of the architects of modern European jazz.
Composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist Michel Portal continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jon De Lucia was born on November 26, 1980 in Quincy, Massachusetts. He is predominantly a student of jazz, but also has a deep interest in the folkloric music and instruments of Cuba, Japan, Ireland and Italy. He has performed on a variety of ethnic flutes, drums and stringed instruments.
Having led his groups and played as a sideman in Boston, Massachusetts, New York City and all over Japan, he has worked with Tommy Crane, David Tronzo, Bob Moses, Bob Gullotti, John Lockwood and Thomas Morgan among others.
He leads the Jon De Lucia Group, and the baroque improvising Luce Trio. Saxophonist and composer Jon De Lucia, now based in Brooklyn, New York, continues to compose, perform and teach full time at BMCC in Tribeca, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nick Lyons was born in New York City on November 7, 1982. He graduated from Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio, then lived and actively played in the San Francisco Bay Area. Returning to New York he settled in Brooklyn in 2005 and collaborated with pianist and mentor Connie Crothers until her passing in 2016. This had a profound effect on his approach to music and improvisation. His other significant teachers and mentors have included Donald Byrd, Donald Walden, and Gary Bartz.
In 2022 he toured as a solo performer in Denmark and Germany, participated in 2 residencies in France and 1 in the US with the Paris-based group Mobke, appeared on 2 CD releases, “Triple Exposure” under his own name with Gene Perla and John McCutcheon and “Another Spring” with vocalist Cheryl Richards, performed often with bassist Adam Lane’s quartet, performed with pianist Harvey Diamond and bassist Cameron Brown.
In 2020 he joined the improvising ensemble Concerts from Cars which traveled the streets of NYC as a car caravan and performed from the street. They have performed at clubs all over New York. Lyons has been a sideman with William Parker, Sam Ospovat, Adam Caine and Federico Ughi as well as a duet with pianist Carol Liebowitz.
Among the many he has performed with are pianists Connie Crothers and Kazzrie Jaxen; trio with clarinetist Bill Payne and flutist Robert Dick, tenor saxophonist Jimmy Halperin, bassists Michael Bisio, Ken Filiano, Hill Greene, and Ratzo Harris, and drummers Roger Mancuso, Michael Wimberly, Billy Hart, and Billy Mintz.
Nick Lyons, who is an improvising alto saxophonist and composer has earned a reputation among peers for his musical imagination and original approach to playing both standard tunes and pure improvisation.
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