Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jacques Loussier was born on October 26, 1934 in Angers, France. Starting piano lessons there aged ten, the following year he heard a piece from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. He fell in love with the music and began adding his own notes and expanding the harmonies. By 13, he met the pianist Yves Nat in Paris, who regularly gave him projects for three months, after which he returned for another lesson.
While studying at the Conservatoire National Musique, Loussier began composing music, having moved by then to Paris, with Nat, from the age of 16. He played jazz in Paris bars to finance his studies, and fusing Bach and jazz was unique at the time. After six years of studies, he traveled to the Middle East and Latin America, where he was inspired by different sounds. He stayed in Cuba for a year.
Early in his career, he was an accompanist for the singers Frank Alamo, Charles Aznavour, Léo Ferré, and Catherine Sauvage, before forming a trio in 1959 with string bass player Pierre Michelot, a Reinhardt alum, and percussionist Christian Garros. The trio began with Decca Records then moved to Philips/Phonogram in 1973, selling over six million albums in 15 years.
By the mid-1970s, the trio dissolved and Jacques set up his own recording studio, Studio Miraval, where he composed for acoustic and electric instruments. He recorded with musicians such as Pink Floyd, Elton John, Sting, Chris Rea, and Sade. Reviving his trio in 1985, with the percussionist André Arpino and the bassist Vincent Charbonnier. As early as 1998 the trio recorded interpretations). Besides Bach, the trio recorded interpretations of classical compositions on the album Satie: Gymnopédies Gnossienne. His last albums, My Personal Favorites, and Beyond Bach, Other Composers I Adore, were released in 2014, on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
Suffering a stroke during a performance at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr on July 14, 2011 retired from the stage. Pianist Jacques Loussier, who performed in the classical, jazz, and third stream arenas, passed away on March 5, 2019 at the age of 84.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Friedrich Dallwitz was born on October 25, 1914 in Freeling, South Australia. He studied violin as a child and after moving with his family to Adelaide, South Australia in 1930, he developed an aptitude for jazz piano. Beginning in 1933 for two years he studied concurrently at the South Australian School of Art and the North Adelaide School of Fine Art.
He led the Southern Jazz Group, a Dixieland band that performed at the first Australian Jazz Convention. Abandoning jazz for a period, he studied at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, composing symphonic and chamber music and taking up bassoon and cello. He became involved in composing and arranging music for revues, leading to the formation of the Flinders Street Revue Company, for which he also directed and played piano.
Returning to jazz in 1970, he resumed recording. He worked with Australian progressive musicians such as John Sangster, Bob Barnard, and Len Barnard. He led the Dave Dallwitz Ragtime Ensemble.
Pianist, bandleader, composer, and arranger, painter, and art teacher Dave Dallwitz, who led jazz, Dixieland and ragtime bands, passed away on March 24, 2003 in Adelaide after finishing the artwork for his album The Dave Dallwitz Big Band live at Wollongong, December 1984.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,composer,educator,history,instrumental,jazz,music,painter,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Giorgio Gaslini was born on October 22, 1929 in Milan, Italy and began performing aged 13 and recorded with his jazz trio at 16. In the 1950s and 1960s, Gaslini performed with his own quartet. He was the first Italian musician mentioned as a “new talent” in the Down Beat poll and the first Italian officially invited to the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1976-77. He collaborated with leading American soloists, such as Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Max Roach, but also with the Argentinian Gato Barbieri and Frenchman Jean-Luc Ponty.
Adapting the compositions of Albert Ayler and Sun Ra for solo piano, issued on the Soul Note label, he also composed the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte, The Night, in 1961. In the early Seventies, he was the first holder of jazz courses at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome.
As to contemporary music, he composed symphonic works, operas and ballets represented at the Scala Theatre in Milan and other Italian theatres. In addition from 1970 to 1977 he scored nine films, including Your Hands On My Body, Cross Current, and Kleinhoff Hotel. From 1991 to 1995, Gaslini composed works for Carlo Actis Dato’s Italian Instabile Orchestra.
Pianist, composer and conductor Giorgio Gaslini passed away on July 29, 2014 at age 84 in Borgo Val di Taro, Parma, Italy, where he had been living for years together with his longtime wife and fourteen dogs and cats.
More Posts: composer,conductor,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Skip Hall was born Archie Hall on September 27, 1909 in Portsmouth, Virginia and studied piano under his father. He lived in New York from age eight and in the late twenties, he relocated to Cleveland, Ohio where he led his own band for most of the 1930s.
He worked as an arranger on contract, arranging for Jay McShann from 1940 to 1944. During World War II he played with Don Redman and in 1943 he entered military service and played in a band while stationed in England.
He would eventually work with Hot Lips Page around the year 1945 and then joined the Sy Oliver band, who was his brother-in-law. Following this he worked with Wynonie Harris, Thelma Houston, and Jimmy Rushing before joining Buddy Tate’s group in 1948. He worked with Tate for twenty years both as a performer and arranger.
In the 1950s and 1960s, he performed with Dicky Wells, Emmett Berry, and George James, as well as working solo and with his own small groups. Arranger, pianist, and organist Skip Hall passed away in November 1980, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,organist,pianist
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Gershwin was born Jacob Bruskin Gershowitz on September 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York. When his parents bought his older brother Ira a piano, it was the younger George who spent most of his time playing it. He studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody.
He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. In 1919 he scored his first big national hit with his song Swanee, with words by Irving Caesar.
In the late 1910s, Gershwin met songwriter and music director William Daly and the two collaborated on the Broadway musicals Piccadilly to Broadway in 1920 and For Goodness’ Sake in 1922, and jointly composed the score for Our Nell the following year. This was the beginning of a long friendship and collaboration as Daly was a frequent arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of Gershwin’s music.
Moving to Paris, France intending to study with Nadia Boulanger. Refusing him, he subsequently composed An American in Paris, before returning to New York City and writing Porgy and Bess with Ira and DuBose Heyward. Unfortunately for them, it was initially a commercial failure, however, years later it came to be one of the most important American classic operas of the twentieth century.
After the commercial failure of Porgy and Bess, George moved to Hollywood, California. In 1936, with a commission from RKO Pictures, he wrote the music for the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Shall We Dance. His extended score, which would marry ballet with jazz in a new way, runs over an hour in length. It took Gershwin several months to compose and orchestrate.
Gershwin had a ten-year affair with composer Kay Swift, whom he frequently consulted about his music. The two never married, but he titled his 1926 musical Oh, Kay for her. His compositions have been adapted for use in film and television, with several becoming jazz standards recorded and covered in many variations.
Composer and pianist George Gershwin, whose compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, passed away at 38 from a malignant brain tumor on July 11, 1937 in Los Angeles, California.