Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patrick Earl Rebillot was born on April 21, 1935 in Louisville, Ohio and studied music at Mt. Union College and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music with Jeno Takacs. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music Education in 1957.
A long-time member of Herbie Mann’s various line-ups and credited as arranger, Pat appears on recordings by David Newman, Jon Faddis, Flora Purim, Michael Franks, Freddy Cole, Patti Austin and Chris Connor as well as Steely Dan, the Average White Band, Gloria Gaynor, Irene Worth, Bette Midler, Hall & Oates, Morrissey–Mullen, Barbra Streisand, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, The Spinners, and Laura Lieberman.
Rebillot has played live with Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams, Anita O’Day, Benny Powell, Jimmy Rushing, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, James Moody, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Benny Goodman, Gary Burton, Paul Winter, Joan Baez, Liza Minnelli, Cissy Houston, O.C. Smith, and others.
Rebillot is associated with fellow session and studio musicians Hugh McCracken, Tony Levin, Steve Gadd, Ray Barretto and Ralph MacDonald.
Pianist and composer Pat Rebillot performs occasionally at the age of 90.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Czesław Kazimierz Bartkowski was born April 19, 1943 in Łódź, Poland. He has been involved in music since he was six years old. He graduated from the Secondary Music School in Wrocław, Poland in percussion class. He made his official debut in 1960 as a drummer in Jerzy Pakulski’s Far Quartet.
In 1963 he started working with Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet and also played with Czesław Niemen’s Niemen Enigmatic, and Michał Urbaniak’s Grupa .
He has played in a variety of trios with pianists Adam Makowicz, Wojciech Karolak, Artur Dutkiewicz, Andrzej Jagodziński, tenor saxophonist Tomasz Szukalski, guitarist Marek Bliziński, trumpeter Tomasz Stańko, and double bassists Andrzej Cudzich, Zbigniew Wegehaupt, Adam Cegielski.
Moreover, he took part in the recording of such singers as Ewa Bem, Urszula Dudziak and Stanisław Sojka, and American musicians Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Joe Newman, Art Farmer, Ben Webster, and the Polish band Novi Singers.
He has collaborated with the Polish Radio Jazz Studio and with Sławomir Kulpowicz’s Mainstream and InFormation bands. He has performed in Poland, India, United States, New Zealand, Australia and numerous European countries. He has been a lecturer and participated in jazz workshops.
Drummer and teacher Czesław Bartkowski continues to perform, record and educate..
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Last was born Hans Last on April 17, 1929 in Bremen, Germany. He grew up in the suburb of Sebaldsbrück and began studying the piano at ageten, although he could play simple tunes when he was nine. He switched to the double bass as a teenager and entered the Bückeburg Military Music School of the German Wehrmacht at the age of fourteen and continued learning to play bass, piano and tuba.
After the end of World War II he joined Hans Günther Oesterreich’s Radio Bremen Dance Orchestra. In 1948 he became the leader of the Last-Becker Ensemble, which performed for seven years. He was voted as the best bassist in the country in a German jazz poll for 1950, 1951 and 1952. When they disbanded, he became the in-house arranger for Polydor Records, as well as a number of European radio stations. During the next decade he helped arrange hits for artists such as Helmut Zacharias, Freddy Quinn, Lolita, Alfred Hause and Caterina Valente.
He won numerous popular and professional awards, including Billboard magazine’s Star of the Year trophy in 1976, and was honoured for lifetime achievement with the German ECHO prize in 1994. In addition, Last sold an estimated 200 million records worldwide in his lifetime of which 80 million were sold by 1973 and won numerous awards including 200 gold and 14 platinum discs in Germany.
In February 2015, after almost 50 years on tour he announced that he was finally bidding adieu to the stage and the last concert of his farewell tour took place in Lanxess Arena in Cologne on April 26, 2015. Composer, bassist and big band leader of the James Last Orchestra, wose “happy music” made him a bestseller in Germany, died on June 9, 2015 in Florida at the age of 86.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marc Hoffman was born April 16, 1961 in Salisbury, North Carolina. He attended the North Carolina School of the Arts and received a degree in composition. He continued his education at The Dartington International Summer School of Music in Devon, England then studied film composition at the University of Southern California. He studied with David Ott, Sherwood Shaffer, Leo Arnaud and Neil Hefti.
Up until the early 1990s Hoffman wrote concert music, music for theater, pop, Christian music and film composition. Then he focused his attention on jazz and began writing original compositions, both instrumental and vocal, creating his own arrangements of jazz standards. Establishing his own label, Virillion Music, he recorded Long Way Home in 2003 followed by his sophomore album Christmas Time. In 2010 he released Curioso of all-original jazz.
As an educator and author he teaches and lectures on classical, pop and film music and has published two books. He also is an instructor of piano, composition, and voice at Bold Music in the Charlotte, NC area.
Pianist, composer and vocalist Marc Hoffman continues to write concert music, instrumental and vocal jazz pieces, film scores, as well as performing works solo, or with his trio, quartet or quintet and with four- or five-piece bands in a variety of venues.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Mesterhazy was born April 8, 1954 in Hungary and came to the United States with his family when they fled Hungary following their country’s 1956 revolution. Settling first in upstate New York, they later moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey where he first played guitar and trumpet.
Switching to piano he became a professional musician, relocated to Los Angeles, California but eventually became well known in the area of Cape May, New Jersey.
Mesterhazy had recently released a new album with singer Paula West, Live at Jazz Standard, and the pair was scheduled to play the New York club together in May.
He was nominated for a Grammy for his arranging work on Shirley Horn’s 1997’s Loving You album, on which he also played. George also played with Les Paul, Bernadette Peters and others.
At Rowan University he ran the jazz piano program, taught privately and managed Cape May’s Merion Inn. Pianist and composer George Mesterhazy died quietly in his sleep at his home in Cape May on April 11, 2019 of natural causes. He was 59.
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