Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jasper van ‘t Hof was born on June 30, 1947 in Enschede, Overijssel, Netherlands. He began studying piano at the age of five. He played in jazz bands at school and by 19 was playing at jazz festivals with drummer Pierre Courbois. In 1969, he became a member of Courbois’ early European jazz rock band Association P.C. with German guitarist Toto Blanke.
In 1974, Van’t Hof founded Pork Pie and teamed up with guitarist Philip Catherine, saxophonist Charlie Mariano, drummer Aldo Romano, and bass guitarist Jean-François Jenny Clark, He went on to join the band Eyeball with saxophonist Bob Malach and violinist Zbigniew Seifert.
Jasper had two bands ~ Face to Face with Danish bassist Bo Stief and saxophonist Ernie Watts; and Pili Pili featuring African singer Angelique Kidjo. He played keyboards with Archie Shepp, although he is best known for his solo piano playing.
As part of Piano Conclave he played with pianists George Gruntz, Joachim Kühn, Wolfgang Dauner, and Keith Jarrett. He has recorded more than four dozen albums as a leader and another nineteen as a sideman. Pianist and keyboardist Jasper Van’t Hof, who is a textural player, comfortably blends impressionistic writing with freer concerns, continues to compose, perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phillip Robert Lee was born on April 8, 1943 in London, England and studied guitar with Ike Isaacs as a teenager. He was a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, and performed at the 1960 Antibes Jazz Festival.
Later in the 1960s he played with John Williams and Graham Collier, as well as in a band with Bob Stuckey, Dudu Pukwana, and John Marshall.
During the 1970s, Phil moved into jazz-rock playing in bands such as Gilgamesh and Axel with Tony Coe and with Michael Garrick, Henry Lowther, and John Stevens.
Lee recorded Twice Upon a Time in 1987) with Jeff Clyne. Later in his career he worked with Gordon Beck, Andres Boiarsky, Benny Goodman, Lena Horne, Marian Montgomery, Annie Ross, and the London Jazz Orchestra.
Guitarist Phil Lee continues his exploration of jazz music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Django Bates was born Leon Bates on October 2, 1960 in Beckenham, Kent, England where he attended Sedgehill School. While at this school, for six years he also attended the Centre for Young Musicians in London, England, where he learned trumpet, piano, and violin. In 1977 he studied at Morley College. The following year he enrolled at the Royal College of Music to study composition but left after two weeks.
He founded Human Chain in 1979 and, in the 1980s, he rose to prominence in a jazz orchestra called Loose Tubes. In 1991, Django started the 19-piece jazz orchestra Delightful Precipice. He also assembled the Powder Room Collapse Orchestra and created Circus Umbilicus, a musical circus show. As a sideman he was a member of Dudu Pukwana’s Zila, Tim Whitehead’s Borderline, Ken Stubbs’s First House, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, Sidsel Endresen, and in the bands of George Russell and George Gruntz.
As an educator, he has tutored at the Banff Centre jazz program, and was appointed Professor of Rhythmic Music at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Bates was appointed visiting professor of jazz in 2010 at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the next year was appointed Professor of Jazz at HKB Bern Switzerland.
He has performed with Michael Brecker, Tim Berne, Christian Jarvi, Vince Mendoza, David Sanborn, Kate Rusby, and Don Alias. Pianist, keyboardist, tenor hornist Django Bates continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Chase was born William Edward Chiaiese in Squantum, Massachusetts on October 20, 1934 His parents changed their name to Chase because they thought Chiaiese was difficult to pronounce. His father played trumpet in the Gillette Marching Band and encouraged his son’s musical interests, which included violin and drums. In his mid-teens, he settled on trumpet and attended his first Stan Kenton concert, which included trumpeters Conte Candoli and Maynard Ferguson.
After high school, he studied classical trumpet at the New England Conservatory but switched to the Schillinger House of Music, now Berklee College of Music. His instructors included Herb Pomeroy and Armando Ghitalla. By 1958 he was playing lead trumpet with Maynard Ferguson, Stan Kenton in 1959, and Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd during the 1960s.
One of Chase’s charts from this period, Camel Walk, was published in the 1963 Downbeat magazine yearbook. From 1966 to 1970 he freelanced in Las Vegas, Nevada working with Vic Damone and Tommy Vig. 1967 saw him leading a six~piece band at the Dunes and Riviera Hotel where he was featured in the Frederick Apcar lounge production of Vive Les Girls, for which Chase arranged the music.
In 1971 he started a jazz~rock band that mixed pop, rock, blues, and four trumpets. The debut album Chase was released in 1971 where he was joined by Ted Piercefield, Alan Ware, and Jerry Van Blair, three jazz trumpeters who were adept at vocals and arranging. The album contains Chase’s most popular song, Get It On, which garnered them a Best New Artist Grammy nomination.
For the next three years, he released two more and was working on a fourth when Chase’s work on a fourth studio album when en route to a scheduled performance at the Jackson County Fair, trumpeter and bandleader Bill Chase passed away at the age of 39 on August 9, 1974 along with the pilot, co-pilot, keyboardist Wally Yohn, guitarist John Emma, and drummer Walter Clark in the crash of a chartered twin-engine Piper Twin Comanche in Jackson, Minnesota.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Grolnick was born on September 23, 1947 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Levittown, New York. Musical life for him started on accordion but later he switched to piano. A childhood Count Basie concert sparked his interest in jazz and soon after they also saw Erroll Garner perform at Carnegie Hall. Attending Tufts University he opted for a major in philosophy rather than music.
After he left Tufts, he formed the jazz-rock band Fire & Ice with guitarist Ken Melville and bassist Stuart Schulman, his friend since childhood. They opened for B.B. King, The Jeff Beck Group, and the Velvet Underground at Boston clubs like the Boston Tea Party and The Ark. This was Grolnick’s first foray into rock and blues as a performer, and began writing within the medium.
Moving back to New York City in 1969 he joined Melville in the jazz fusion band “D”. Pianist Don Grolnick passed away at the age of 48 on June 1, 1996 from non-hodgkin lymphoma.
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