Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nguyên Lê was born Le Thanh Nguyen on January 14, 1959 in Paris, France of Vietnamese ancestry. He began playing drums at the age of 15, then took up guitar & electric bass. After graduating in Visual Arts he majored in Philosophy, writing a thesis on Exoticism. A self-taught musician, Nguyên started out playing rock, funk, jazz standards, avant-garde jazz, pop, African, Caribbean, and other world music.
Devoting himself to music, in 1983 he created Ultramarine, a multi-ethnic band whose recording DÉ has been considered 1989’s Best World Music album. He went on to record several albums and worked with such musicians as Miroslav Vitous, Trilok Gurtu, J. F. Jenny Clarke, Dewey Redman, Andy Emler, Jon Christensen, Nana Vasconcelos, Glenn Ferris, Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor and numerous others.
He has played with the O. N. J., the French National Jazz Orchestra in which he played with Johnny Griffin, Louis Sclavis, Didier Lockwood, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Randy Brecker, Toots Thielemans, Courtney Pine, Steve Lacy, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Gil Evans, Quincy Jones, Randy Brecker, Vince Mendoza, Carla Bley, Per Mathisen, Marc Johnson, Peter Erskine, Trilok Gurtu, Paolo Fresu and Dhafer Youssef and numerous others.
He has released albums as a leader and as a sideman. His 1996 album Tales from Viêt-Nam blends jazz and traditional Vietnamese music. In spring 2011 he released Songs of Freedom, an album with cover versions of pop hits from the 1970s.
Guitarist and composer Nguyên Lê continues to perform, record and compose.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Simon H. Fell was born on January 13, 1959 in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England. He began playing double bass in 1973 and from 1978 to 1981 he read English Literature at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, England. His early group was a free-jazz trio with drummer Paul Hession and saxophonist Alan Wilkinson. They recorded and released their music on his label Bruce’s Fingers.
During this period Fell was significantly connected with The Termite Club in Leeds. He was a member of the free jazz trio Badland, the improvising string and percussion ensemble ZFP with Carlos Zingaro, Marcio Mattos and Mark Sanders, and SFQ, a quartet/quintet with clarinettist Alex Ward and a changing membership. He also performed in many other ensembles, including the London Improvisers Orchestra and Derek Bailey’s Company Week.
Simon wrote a major sequence of four new large-scale compositions titled Compilation. Free improvisation, rock and jazz all form key parts of the musical language. Noise guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn, Evan Parker and John Butcher were essential musicians to the projects, but he often deliberately made use of amateur or student musicians.
Bassist and composer Simon Fell, who is primarily known for his work as a free improviser and the composer of post-serialist compositions, died on June 28, 2020
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gene Lake was born Oliver Gene Lake, Jr. on January 12, 1966 in St. Louis, Missouri. He began playing drums when he was five years old, and took lessons with Pheeroan akLaff as a high schooler at The High School of Music & Art in New York City. He attended Berklee College of Music, where he worked with Tommy Campbell, and played in local Boston bands in a variety of styles.
Gene played with his father in New York City in 1987 and 1988, then joined Henry Threadgill’s ensemble in 1990. Later in the Nineties, Gene worked with Steve Coleman, Lunar Crush with David Fiuczynski and John Medeski, Marcus Miller, Brandon Ross, David Sanborn, the World Saxophone Quartet, and Joe Zawinul.
He has recorded seven albums as a leader that includes The Oliver Lake Quartet, Dedication, and At This Time and another ten as a sideman. Outside of jazz, Lake also performed and recorded with R&B musicians Maxwell and Me’Shell Ndegeocello.
Drummer Gene Lake, who is the son of saxophonist Oliver Lake, continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sonya Jason was born on January 10, 1963 in Wayne, Nebraska. By the age of four, she began playing piano and took classical piano lessons for nine years. Joining the school band at age ten she took up the saxophone. At thirteen she joined her first jazz band where she learned the rudiments of swing, the basic ability that all jazz musicians must possess.
Her family’s move to the Southwest enabled Sonya to join the Apollo High School band in Phoenix, Arizona, then voted Arizona’s leading jazz band. It was here that she first heard the passionate recordings of Latin saxophonist Gato Barbieri, and began studying the bebop stylings of Charlie Parker, gaining further inspiration from the saxophone work of Phil Woods and David Sanborn.
She won the Phil Woods Scholarship offered by Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Two years of liberal arts study at Mills College in Oakland California and private lessons with bebopper Hal Stein led to her move to Boston. While at Berklee she studied privately with saxophonists Joe Viola, Jimmy Mosher, George Garzone and Herman Johnson. She honed her arranging skills with Herb Pomeroy and Grammy award-winning arranger Robert Freedman. After graduating summa cum laude from Berklee in 1985, Sonya returned to Arizona to begin her professional career.
Gigging all over Arizona she gained versatility working with bands of varied styles, jazz, latin, top 40, reggae, rock, classical, big band swing, and show bands. In 1987 she formed a quartet that performed as opening act for Natalie Cole, Richard Marx, Chuck Berry, Ramsey Lewis, Janis Siegel, Smokey Robinson, Spyro Gyra, Lionel Hampton, Mose Allison and the Stanley Clarke/George Duke Project, to name a few..
In 1988 she released her debut recording Secret Lover on her Saja Productions label. in December 1988. In 1991 she moved to Los Angeles, California and signed with Warner Music Discovery and two years later her second release Tigress.
In addition, Sonya appeared in the Showtime movie, Lush Life, starring Jeff Goldblum and Forest Whitaker, and was featured in two cable music specials, Music and the Biz and Hurry Up and Wait.
Relocating to the San Francisco, California Bay Area in 1999. Since moving she has recorded a few albums, served as musical director and arranger for theCoastal Theatre Conservatory’s presentation of Cinderella with over a hundred youth of all ages, and was band director and orchestrator of This Side Of The Hill Players.
First-call saxophonist Sonya Jason carries on a thriving music teaching studio, continues to perform as a soloist for several bands and orchestras, tour and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Benny Strickler was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas on January 9, 1917 and took music lessons as a pre-teen and later played in a town band. After graduating high school, he became a professional musician and played with several territory bands in Arkansas and the Southwest. In 1935, with wife Frances in tow, he joined the migration from the Dust Bowl to the Golden State.
Benny established himself as one of the top trumpeters in Los Angeles, California. He played with bands led by Ben Pollack, Joe Venuti, Vido Musso and boxing champ/string bassist Max Baer. He even got an invitation from Artie Shaw, which he turned down.
He recorded his first recordings in 1937 with the Choir of Brass led by vocalist/pianist Seger Ellis. In 1941 he went to work with Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys and along with Danny Alguire and Alex Brashear and reedman Woodie Woods they shaped the swinging sound of the band between 1941-42. World War II broke them up with some enlisting, others drafted, however, Benny was exempted due to tuberculosis.
His illness worsened and was ultimately forced to quit playing. He returned to Arkansas, checking into a Booneville sanitarium. Trumpeter Benny Strickler, who played with the top Western Swing and Traditional bands, played sporadically until he succumbed to the tuberulosis and died on December 8, 1946.
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