Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paul Bollenback was born on June 6, 1959 in Hinsdale, Illinois. The guitarist first got his hands on a nylon stringed guitar when he was seven years old. It was a gift from his dad, who played trumpet, adored music as much as the his son. He developed a taste for the exotic over the course of the three-year period his family lived in India at the age of 11 years old.
At the age of 14, the budding guitarist returned to the states with his family, where he discovered the delights of rock & roll. Around this time he started to play the electric guitar, but it was when Paul discovered Miles Davis that his musical development took a major turning point.
Bollenback studied music at the University of Miami then went on to eight more years of private instruction under the tutelage of Asher Zlotnik in Baltimore. By 1993 he embarked on a European tour and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in conjunction with the Virginia Commission on the Arts, for New Music for Three Jazz Guitars.
He was named 1997 Musician of the Year by The Washington Area Music Awards, SESAC honored two of his original pieces, Romancin’ the Moon and Wookies’ Revenge, both of which were included on the album Reboppin’ by Joey DeFrancesco. He joined the music faculty at American University, has been an artist-in-residence at the Litchfield Jazz Festival Summer Music School and is a featured artist on the bill of the Summer Guitar & Bass Workshop offered by Duquesne University. T
Throughout his career Paul has performed on among others Entertainment Tonight, The Tonight Show, The Today Show, Joan Rivers, and Good Morning America. He has shared the stage with a long list of musical artists, including Charlie Byrd, Arturo Sandoval, Herb Ellis, Stanley Turrentine, Spyro Gyra’s Scott Ambush, Della Reese, Carol Sloane and Gary Thomas among others.
Guitarist Paul Bollenback, who uses modern quartal harmony, and has eight albums under his name as a leader to date since his debut of Original Vision in 1995, continues to teach, record and perform as both leader and sideman.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Peter Erskine was born on June 5, 1954 in Somers Point, New Jersey and began playing the drums at the age of four. He graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, then studied percussion at Indiana University.
He began playing professionally in 1972 when he joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra. After three years with Kenton he spent two years with Maynard Ferguson and in 1978 Erskine joined Weather Report along Jaco Pastorius in the rhythm section. After four years and five albums with Weather Report and the Jaco Pastorius big band Word of Mouth, he joined Steps Ahead.
Over the course of his prolific career Peter has recorded 20 albums as a leader and to date has been a sideman on over ninety-five albums working with John Abercrombie, Diana Krall, Eliane Elias, Queen Latifah, Linda Ronstadt, Eberhard Weber, Kate Bush, Gary Burton, Randy and Michael Brecker, George Cables, Pino Daniele, Eddie Daniels, Al Di Meola, Marty Ehrlich, Joe Farrell, Jan Garbarek, Giorgio, Gordon Goodwin, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Marc Johnson, Rickie Lee Jones, Gary Peacock, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Rod Stewart, Ralph Towner, Joe Zawinul, Kenny Wheeler and many more.
Drummer Peter Erskine currently splits his time between performing and teaching. He ss a professor at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. His big band recordings with the Bob Mintzer Big Band are modern big band jazz/funk performances studied by many students of drums and drumming. He has published five books on drumming and has one DVD titled The Erskine Method of Drumming.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anthony Braxton was born June 4, 1945 in Chicago, Illinois. He studied philosophy at Roosevelt University and early in his career he led a trio with violinist Leroy Jenkins and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. He was involved with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) founded in his birthplace.
In 1969, Braxton recorded the double album For Alto, the first full-length album for unaccompanied saxophone. The album’s tracks were dedicated to Cecil Taylor and John Cage among others. The album influenced other artists like soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and trombonist George Lewis, who would go on to record their own solo albums.
Joining pianist Chick Corea’s trio with bassist Dave Holland and Barry Altschul they form the short-lived avant garde quartet Circle around 1970. When Corea broke up the group to form Return To Forever, Holland and Altschul remained with Braxton for much of the 1970s as part of a quartet, rotating Kenny Wheeler, George Lewis and Ray Anderson. With Sam Rivers they recorded Holland’s This group recorded for Arista Records and the core trio with saxophonist Sam Rivers recorded Holland’s Conference of the Birds on ECM. In the 1970s he recorded duets with Lewis and with synthesizer player Richard Teitelbaum. In 1975, he released Muhal with the Creative Construction Company featuring Richard Davis, Steve McCall, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith and Leroy Jenkins. He would oo on to record through the 70s, 80s and early 90s wth Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway.
He performed at the Woodstock Jazz Festival, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, composed his Ghost Trance Music released on his now defunct Braxton House label, and the final Ghost House live recordings at the New York City Iridium club were released by Firehouse 12 label in 2007. He recorded a prodigious series of multi-disc sets of standards during the 1990 and early 2000s
Besides playing saxophone, Braxton also plays clarinet, flute and piano, performs and records in the avant-garde, improvisation, bebop and mainstream genres, composes operas, orchestral and classical compositions, and is an avid chess player. He is the author of multiple volumes explaining his theories and pieces, such as the philosophical three-volume Triaxium Writings and the five-volume Composition Notes.
Composer and instrumentalist Anthony Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s, has taught at Mills College in the Eighties, was Professor of Music at Wesleyan University from the 1990s until his retirement at the end of 2013, and in 2013, was named a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.
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Dave McKenna was born May 30, 1930 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island and started out at the age of 15 playing with Boots Mussulli in 1947. He then worked with Charlie Ventura and Woody Herman’s Orchestra three years later. He went on to spend two years in the military, and re-joined Ventura in 1953.
He worked with a variety of swing and Dixieland musicians including Gene Krupa, Joe Venuti, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Bob Wilbur, Eddie Condon, and Bobby Hackett but became primarily a soloist after 1967 operating nearly exclusively in the Northeast United States. McKenna performed with Louis Armstrong at the 1970 Newport Jazz Festival. He was an accompanist, recording with singers such as Rosemary Clooney, Teddi King, Donna Byrne and Tony Bennett.
During the 1970s his star rose but chose to play in his local area rather than travel extensively playing in clubs and hotels over center stage in major venues. He retired around the turn of the millennium due to increasing mobility problems brought on by his long battle with diabetes. Pianist Dave McKenna passed away in Pennsylvania on October 18, 2008 from lung cancer.
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Max Bennett was born May 24, 1928 in Des Moines, Iowa and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and Oskaloosa, Iowa. Attending college in Iowa and studying guitar, his first professional gig was with Herbie Fields in 1949, then played with Georgie Auld, Terry Gibbs and Charlie Ventura.
After serving in the Army during the Korean War from 1951 to 1953, Max played with Stan Kenton before moving to Los Angeles, California where he played regularly at the Lighthouse Cafe with his own ensemble. During this period played behind Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez through the Seventies and recorded with Charlie Mariano, Conte Candoli, Bob cooper, Bill Holman, Stan Levey, Lou Levy, Coleman Hawkins and Jack Montrose.
Bennett recorded under his own name from the late 1950s, and did extensive work as a composer and studio musician in addition to playing jazz. His session works is a who’s who list playing bass on sessions with The Monkees,The Partridge Family, Frank Zappa, With Lalo Schifrin on the soundtrack of Bullitt, Marvin Gaye, Barbra Streisand, Anthony Newley, Paul Anka, Elvis Presley, Four Tops, Nelson Riddle, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Cleo Laine, Joe Williams, Quincy Jones, Kenny Rogers, The Beach Boys, Carol King, The Temptations, The Crusaders, Henry Mancini, Johnny Mandel and the list goes on.
Bennett continued with his own band, L.A. Express, which included the late Joe Sample, Larry Carlton and John Guerin under the leadership of Tom Scott. After this band, Bennett formed his own group Freeway, and continued to perform with his most recent band, Private Reserve, until he passed away on September 14, 2018 in San Clemente, California.
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