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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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Axel Dörner was born on April 26, 1964 in Cologne, Germany and studied piano in the Dutch town Arnhem, Netherlands and at the Music Academy in Cologne. From 1991 he studied trumpet with Malte Burba, and during his studies collaborated with trumpeter Bruno Light as the Street Fighters Duo.
The duo expanded to form the Street Fighters Quartet and the Street Fighters Double Quartet, with members including Matthias Schubert, Bruno Leicht, and Claudio Puntin. He formed the Axel Dörner Quartet with Frank Gratkowski, Hans Schneider, and Martin Blume, and played with saxophonist Matthias Petzold on the albums Lifelines and Psalmen Und Lobgesänge.
Living in Berlin, Germany since 1994 and is an integral part of the city’s scene of new improvisational and experimental music. Besides playing solo and in his trio TOOT with Phil Minton and Thomas Lehn, he has played with Otomo Yoshihide, and in the groups Die Anreicherung, Ig Henneman Sextet, Ken Vandermark’s Territory-Band, Hedros, and the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra.
A versatile musician, he has worked in the idiom of bebop, playing on pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach’s album Monk’s Casino, featuring interpretations of the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk.
Trumpeter and pianist Axel Dörner continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Massimo DeAngelis was born on April 25, 1958 in Rome, Italy. A self-taught drummer, he began playing at the age of twelve. As a composer he plays and writes in various styles and genres across the musical spectrum, favoring high-energy instrumental jazz fusion.
He has performed with many groups, including I Percussionisti di Roma, a percussion ensemble. Throughout his career he has been invited to perform at several jazz festivals throughout Europe.
In 1986 Massimo emigrated to the United States and has been performing live and recording with numerous bands. Teaching privately for several years, he is now focusing his energy and time on composing, arranging, recording, and producing.
Drawing his inspiration from surrealism and improvisation, drummer, percussionist and keybordist Massimo DeAngelis’ music is intended to fill those many musical voids that exist around us. He continues to composer, record and perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Collin Walcott was born on April 24, 1945 in New York City, New York. He studied violin and tympani in his youth, and studied percussion at Indiana University School of Music. After graduating in 1966, he went to the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied sitar under Ravi Shankar and tabla under Alla Rakha.
Walcott moved to New York and blended bop and oriental music with Tony Scott in 1967–69. Around 1970 he joined the Paul Winter Consort and co-founded the band Oregon. These groups, along with the trio Codona, which was founded in 1978, combined jazz improvisation and instrumentation with elements of a wide range of classical and ethnic music.
He played with Miles Davis on his 1972 album On the Corner, had three releases under his own name on ECM Records. He taught at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Sitar and tabla player Collin Walcott was killed in a bus crash in Magdeburg, East Germany on November 8, 1984 while on a tour with Oregon.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Keith Rowe was born March 16, 1940 in Plymouth, England. He began his career playing jazz in the early 1960s with Mike Westbrook and Lou Gare. His early influences were guitarists Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, and Barney Kessel. Growing tired of what he considered the genre’s limitations he began experimenting, stopped tuning his guitar and began playing free jazz and free improvisation.
Rowe developed prepared guitar techniques: placing the guitar flat on a table and manipulating the strings, body, and pick-ups in unorthodox ways. He has used needles, electric motors, violin bows, iron bars, a library card, rubber eraser, springs, hand-held electric fans, alligator clips, and common office supplies in playing the guitar.
Rowe has worked with Oren Ambarchi, Burkhard Beins, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Fennesz, Kurt Liedwart, Jeffrey Morgan, Toshimaru Nakamura, Evan Parker, Michael Pisaro, Peter Rehberg, Sachiko M, Howard Skempton, Taku Sugimoto, David Sylvian, John Tilbury, Christian Wolff, and Otomo Yoshihide.
Guitarist Keith Rowe, who was a founding member of both AMM in the mid-1960s, M.I.M.E.O. and is seen as a godfather of EAI electroacoustic improvisation, continues to compose, record and tour.
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