Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phil Woods was born Philip Wells Woods on November 2, 1931 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He studied music with his great influence Lennie Tristano, at the Manhattan School of Music and at The Julliard School.
After moving to France in 1968, Phil led the avant-garde jazz group The European Rhythm Machine, and then returned to the United States in 1972 and unsuccessfully attempting to establish an electronic group formed a quintet, which is still performing with some changes of personnel.
Although Woods is primarily a saxophonist he is also a fine clarinet player and solos can be found scattered through his recordings. His pop credits include the alto solos on Billy Joel’s Just The Way You Are, Steely Dan’s Doctor Wu and Paul Simon’s Have A Good Time.
Phil has worked with the likes of Manny Albam, Kenny Burrell, Gary Burton, Ron Carter, Lou Donaldson, Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie. Stephane Grappelli, Milt Jackson, Quincy Jones, Mundell Lowe, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Oliver Nelson, Lalo Schifrin, Shirley Scott, Clark Terry and Ben Webster among others.
He has amassed 34 sessions as a sideman and nearly four-dozen albums as a leader and has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards and won one for Images: “Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance”, and three for “Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Individual or Group” for Live from the Show Boat, More Live, and At the Vanguard.
His 2005 documentary film “A Life in E Flat” – Portrait of a Jazz Legend” offers an intimate portrait of Woods during a recording session of the Jazzed Media album This is How I Feel About Quincy. In 2007, Phil received a “Jazz Master” award from the National Endowment of the Arts. Saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Phil Woods was married to Chan Parker, the widow of Charlie Parker, until her death in 1999. He continued to perform, record and tour until his passing on September 29, 2015 in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carmen Lundy was born November 1, 1954 in Miami, Florida and at the age of six began to study the piano. After joining her church junior choir, she decided to become a singer when she was 12 years old. While an opera major at the University of Miami she sang with a jazz band and her decision to sing vocal jazz was cemented.
Moving to New York in 1978 Carmen was hired by the Mel Lewis/Thad Jones Big Band and performed her first engagement at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Two years later she formed her own trio, performing with pianists John Hicks and Onaje Allan Gumbs. She has also performed with Walter Bishop Jr., Don Pullen, Mulgrew Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Courtney Pine, Bill O’Connell, Steve Berrios, Marian McPartland, Kenny Kirkland and numerous others.
Lundy recorded her first album of original compositions Good Morning Kiss in 1985 followed by her sophomore project Night and Day the next year featuring musicians Kenny Kirkland, Alex Blake, her brother Curtis Lundy, Victor Lewis, Rodney Jones and Ricky Ford.
Carmen played the lead role in the European tour of Duke Ellington’s Broadway musical, Sophisticated Ladies. Off-Broadway she portrayed Billie Holiday in Lawrence Holder’s They Were All Gardenias. She made her television debut in 1990 as the star of the CBS pilot-special Shangri-La Plaza in the role of Geneva.
A composer, arranger, producer, actress, painter, and sophisticated vocalist well known for her progressive bop and post-bop styling’s, Lundy has composed and published forty songs with favorites such as Quiet Times, Forgive Me, The Out Crowd, and Never Gonna Let You Go that have been recorded by Kenny Barron, Ernie Watts and Straight Ahead. With thirteen albums to her credit Carmen Lundy continues to focus on original material as she moves her three-decade career forward.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Davis was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 14, 1967 but was raised in Binghamton, New York. He grew up with jazz music being played in the household listening to his father’s record collection and his grandparents played. With mentors Doug Beardsley and Al Hamme, he was fortunate to play with his peers Kris Jensen, Tony Kadleck, Tom Dempsey, Dena DeRose and John Hollenbeck among many others.
He went on to study jazz under Dr. Jackie McLean at The Hartt School of the University of Hartford in Connecticut. While in school, Davis also gained valuable experience sitting-in and gigging with Hotep Galeta, Nat Reeves, Don DePalma, Larry DiNatale and others at The 880 Club. A recommendation to Art Blakey saw Steve joining the Jazz Messengers at Sweet Basil in New York City in 1989. Following Blakey’s death, he joined the Hartt faculty in 1991 where he continues to teach today, and taught at The Artist’s Collective in Hartford.
He gained further international recognition playing with McLean’s sextet for five years and for four in Chick Corea’s Origin. Trombonist Steve Davis has played and recorded with Freddie Hubbard and The New Jazz Composers Octet, Benny Golson’s New Jazztet, Hank Jones, Cecil Payne, Horace Silver, Cedar Walton, Harold Mabern, Larry Willis, Eddie Henderson, Roy Hargrove, Avishai Cohen, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and Michael Weiss.
Davis has been a member of the cooperative sextet One for All since its inception in 1996, alongside Eric Alexander, Jim Rotondi, David Hazeltine, John Webber and Joe Farnsworth. He also currently plays with Larry Willis’s Quintet, The Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Star Big Band/Septet, leads The Steve Davis Quintet and remains a fixture on the New York and Hartford jazz scenes.
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