Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pablo “Chino” Nunez was born on June 25, 1961, adopted as an infant, the only son of Puerto Rican immigrants and raised in New York City’s Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. Inspired and encouraged at a young age, he attributes his success to the “masters” he studied as well as idolizing many instrumentalists and vocalists most notably Tito Puente, Orestes Villato, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Nicky Marrero, The Beatles, The Jackson 5, James Brown, and Ella Fitzgerald among others.
Self-taught, Chino’s career spans four decades he established himself as a percussionist, multi-Instrumentalist, producer, arranger, composer, recording artist, band leader, and educator. He is a multiple Grammy, Latin Grammy and Billboard nominee and winner. He has amassed hundreds of music credits as a producer including the documentary film, “Pedro “Cuban Pete” Aguilar: Dancing En Clave”. He has toured with a who’s who list of performers and has garnered critical acclaim with his Chino Nunez Orchestra.
Nunez has recorded and performed with Tito Puente, Hector Lavoe, Celia Cruz, Johnny Pacheco, Marc Anthony, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Ray Barretto, Willie Colon, Ruben Blades, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Larry Harlow, Tito Nieves, Spanish Harlem Orchestra and a host of others. He has performed all over the world including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, North Sea Jazz Festival, Madison Square Garden, Montreal Jazz Festival, the Tito Puente Amphitheatre and Bellas Arte Performing Arts Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to name a few.
He creates a unique and rhythmic swing fusing Salsa, Big Band, Latin Jazz, Christian, Gospel, Bachata, Reggaeton, Hip Hop and R & B. On Broadway he has performed in “The Life of Celia Cruz”, “Evita”, “Cape Man”, “Lion King”, and “A Tale of Two Cities” featuring his arrangement “Another 100 People”. In 2005, he released his debut album Chino Nunez & Friends, A Tribute to the Dancers, It’s ShoTime. Producer of voice-overs, jingles, radio and television and commercials, Chino Nunez continues to perform and tour worldwide.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Allen Russell was born on June 23, 1923 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the adopted only child of a nurse and a chef on the B & O Railroad. He sang in the choir of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and listened to the Kentucky Riverboat music of Fate Marable and made his stage debut at age seven, singing “Moon Over Miami” with Fats Waller.
Surrounded by the music of the black church and the big bands played on the Ohio Riverboats, he started playing drums with the Boy Scouts and Bugle Corps, receiving a scholarship to Wilberforce University. There he joined the Collegians, a band noted as a breeding ground for great jazz musicians including Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Charles Freeman, Frank Foster and Benny Carter. He was a member noted jazz composer, Ernie Wilkins. When called up for the draft at the beginning of WWII he was hospitalized with tuberculosis where he was taught the fundamentals of music theory by a fellow patient.
Following his release from the hospital, he played drums with Benny Carter’s band, but after hearing Max Roach decided to give up drumming as a vocation. Inspired by hearing Thelonious Monk’s Round Midnight, George moved to New York in the early Forties and became a member of a coterie of young innovators who frequented the 55th Street apartment of Gil Evans. This clique included Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis.
Back to the hospital in 1945 for 16 months with another bout of tuberculosis Russell worked out the basic tenets of what was to become his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. This was his theory encompassing all of equal-tempered music which has been influential well beyond the boundaries of jazz. At that time, Russell’s ideas were a crucial step into the modal music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis on his classic recording, Kind Of Blue, and served as a beacon for other modernists such as Eric Dolphy and Art Farmer.
George would go on to compose Cubano Be,Cubano Bop for the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, becoming the pioneering experiment of fusing bebop and Cuban jazz elements. The following year he composed A Bird In Igor’s Yard in tribute to Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky and recorded at a session led by Buddy DeFranco. He would start playingpiano and go on to work with Artie Shaw, Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Hal McCusick, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, Paul Motian, Paul Bley, Jon Hendricks, Bob Brookmeyer, Steve Swallow, Dave Baker, Eric Dolphy, Sheila Jordan, Tom Harrell, Ray Anderson and numerous and others.
Russell recorded his debut album as a leader, Jazz Workshop, playing very little but masterminding the events of the session in the same vein as Gil Evans. He was to record a number of impressive albums over the next several years, sometimes as primary pianist.
Over the course of his career he would be commissioned to compose a piece for Brandeis University and Swedish Radio for the Radio Orchestra, tour Europe, live in Scandinavia, assume the presidency of the New England Conservatory of Music and was appointed to teach the Lydian Concept in the newly created jazz studies department. He continued to compose major orchestral and chorus works, earned two Grammy nominations for his 45-minute opus The African Game, and toured with a group of American and British musicians, resulting in The International Living Time Orchestra, a group comprised of Dave Bargeron, Steve Lodder, Tiger Okoshi, Brad Hatfield, and Andy Sheppard, who still tour and perform today.
He received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, NEA American Jazz Master Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships and a British Jazz Award. He taught throughout the world, and was a guest conductor for German, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish radio groups. Pianist, composer, arranger and theorist George Russell died of complications from Alzheimer Disease in Boston, Massachusetts on July 27, 2009.
Give The Gift Of Knowledge
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gail Thompson was born on June 15, 1958 in London, England. Coming from a musical family as a child she learned to play the clarinet. At 16 she was playing baritone saxophone as a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and founded her own bands.
She went on to become a founding member alongside with Courtney Pine of the British band Jazz Warriors. She played briefly with Art Blakey becoming the second female member of the Jazz Messengers along with Joanne Brackeen.
In 1986, she led the big band of Charlie Watts and then founded her first big band Formation Gail Force, for which she also composed music. Thompson’s music is inspired by Africa rhythms and hard bop bringing her stylistically close to the big band sounds of Abdullah Ibrahim and Quincy Jones.
In 1994, her debut recording session and album as a leader came with Gail Force. One year later as a product of a journey through the African continent, she recorded live in Duisburg the album Jazz Africa for Enja Records with Harry Beckett, Claude Deppa, Jerry Underwood and Patrick Hartley. After a stay in the Australian Queensland in 1999 she recorded the album Jadu, referencing Jazz Africa Down Under with bassist Mario Castronari.
For health reasons, flutist, saxophonist, composer and arranger of modern jazz Gail Thompson had to quit playing the saxophone but she put her energies towards focusing on music education activities. In 2003 she organized the Afro-European Women’s Big Band Femmes Noires , who performs her compositions.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack Wilkins was born on June 3, 1944 in Brooklyn, New York. He has played with many jazz greats including Bob Brookmeyer, Stanley Turrentine, Jimmy Heath, Epitaph Mingus and Eddie Gomez as well as singers Mel Torme, Ray Charles, Morgana King, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, The Manhattan Transfer, Nancy Marano and Jay Clayton.
Wilkins’ cover of the Freddie Hubbard standard “Red Clay”, from his 1973 album Windows, was sampled by the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest on their 1993 album Midnight Marauders and also by Chance the Rapper on the song NaNa, off his 2013 mix-tape Acid Rap. His full cover was subsequently included on the 1998 break beat compilation Tribe Vibes Volume 2.
Wilkins was awarded an NEA grant in recognition of his work with the guitar. He currently teaches at The New School, New York University, Long Island University and the Manhattan School of Music in addition to performing, recording and touring.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Elisabetta Serio was born on June 1, 1972 in Italy. Inspired by the music of all genres she heard helped form her artistic personality. As a child, she trained in classical and modern studying at the Conservatorio Nicola Sala in Benevento, Italy. She graduated with a degree in jazz and pursued further studies with Maestro Valerio Silvestro and followed with seminars in Rome with Barry Harris and also the Italian musicians Rita Marctulli and bassist Pippo Matino.
Her musical journey in the strict sense is “the street” with the conventional forms of love and sacrifice make it a viable learning ground. This makes each performance unique and unrepeatable.
Modern jazz pianist Elisabetta Serio continues to collaborate with her countrymen musicians such as Pino Daniele, Rino Zurzolo – double bassist, Matino as well as James Senese, Tullio De Piscopo, Rino Zurrolo, Enzo Gragnianello. She has worked with international pop stars Noa, dipped into the funky blues with British singer Z Star and ventured into world music withSarah Jamne Morris.
She leads her own trio, drummer Leonardo De Lorenzo and bassist Marco de Tilla performing throughout Italy, at festivals around the world and in most jazz clubs. She often invites trumpeter Fulvio Siqurta for her quartet and Morris is a frequent guest. With all this she still finds time to participate on numerous recording and performing projects as a sideman/woman.
Jazz Is Global – Share
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