Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kathy Brown was born April 18th in Mandeville, Jamaica and began playing the family piano at age 5. Initially self-taught in reading and playing by ear, she studied classical piano up to the sixth grade at the Royal School of Music in England. She took music as an elective in high school, college, while attaining her medical degree at the University of the West Indies and took classes in jazz piano after graduation.
Leading her bands Dr. Kathy Brown & Friends or Kathy Brown Band, she plays throughout Jamaica and has graced the stages of the Port Royal Music Festival, Ocho Rios Jazz Festival, Air Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival, the Island Soul Festival in Toronto, Canada as well as performing in Suriname, Antigua and at the World Choir Games in Austria.
The pianist, composer, bandleader and recording artist, whose influences were Herbie Hancock, Joe Sample, Chick Corea, Chucho Valdes, Monty Alexander, Kenny Barron, and Michel Camilo, released her debut CD, Mission: A Musical Journey, which was nominated for Best Instrumental Album at the inaugural Jamaica Music Awards. Aside from performing as a jazz pianist and furthering her medical career, Dr. Kathy Brown is a vocalist and a member of the University Singers. When she puts on her educator hat she can be seen working with the East Queen Street Baptist and Nexus Performing Arts choirs.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Warren Chiasson was born on April 17, 1934 in Cheticamp, Nova Scotia and began his music training on the violin and by age 13 was playing sessions with noted fiddlers at dances, stage and radio shows. In high school he played the trombone and became inspired by George Shearing, which led him to study modern jazz.
But it was seeing Lionel Hampton play while in college that sealed his career path. He bought a small xylophone, left school, joined the Royal Canadian Artillery Band as a trombonist, practiced 8 hours a day, got a chance audition in New York for George Shearing and a week later was touring the world playing opposite Dave Brubeck and the Modern Jazz Quartet.
A pioneer of the four-mallet vibraphone technique, Warren has formed his own group and collaborated, played and recorded with such artists as Paul Bley, Chet Baker, Roland Hanna, Tal Farlow, Jimmy Garrison, Charlie Haden, Lee Konitz, Joe Farrell, Hank Crawford, Les McCann, Helen Ward, Wilbur Ware and Joe Chambers.
He played vibes in New York through the 1960s and spent four years playing percussion for the Broadway musical Hair. In 1972 he reunited with Shearing again, released a record under his own name and in the mid-1970s he toured with Roberta Flack.
Chiasson played on B.B. King’s Grammy winning album Blues ‘n Jazz, and played the 50th anniversary of From Spirituals to Swing at Carnegie Hall, filling in for Lionel Hampton, who was unable to perform. At 83 vibraphonist Warren Chiasson continues to record and perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nick Moran was born on April 14, 1963 in New York City and began playing trumpet at age ten, switching over to the guitar at thirteen. His early musical influences were the British rock guitarists Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Frampton. He played in several rock groups throughout high school and college while studying classical guitar. He first discovered the music of George Benson at age fifteen along with Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
Nick’s study of jazz began informally in 1991 with arranging and ear training classes at the Fachbereich Musik in Mainz, Germany, where he also played guitar and trumpet in the university big band. He returned to New York in 1998 and began formal jazz studies and graduated from City College of New York in 2001. He did rhythm section studies for two years with bassist Ron Carter and studied composition with pianist/arranger Mike Holober.
He has been a member of the Ray Santos Orchestra, Akiko Tsuruga, Shunzo Ohno, Tom Hubbard, Marco Panascia, Adam Rafferty, Rick Stone, Nick Russo and Russ Spiegel, Cliff Korman and Burt Eckoff. Nick Moran currently leads two bands, is an active solo performer, plays a seven-string guitar, performs throughout New York City and is a producer and recording engineer.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Marshall was born Edwin Marshall on April 13, 1938 in Springfield, Massachusetts and learned to play the drums as a child. He played in his father’s swing group and R&B bands while in high school. He moved to New York City in 1956, developing his percussion style under the influence of Max Roach and Art Blakey.
Two years later he was playing with Charlie Mariano followed by a stint with Toshiko Akiyoshi prior to Army service. He reunited with Akiyoshi in 1965, then worked with the house band at The Dom in New York, and with Stan Getz, Sam Rivers and toured with Dionne Warwick.
In 1967 he was a member of the fusion group The Fourth Way, touring San Francisco during the early Seventies, followed by work with Jon Hendricks and the Pointer Sisters. He would go on to work in Almanac with Bennie Maupin, Cecil McBee and Mike Nock releasing an album in ’77.
In the 1980s he worked in the project Bebop & Beyond, recording tribute albums to Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Undergoing heart surgery in 1984, temporarily sidelined his career, but he continued to perform on the recorder. He then taught at the San Francisco School of the Arts, issued his second release as a leader in 1999 and in the 2000s worked on the San Francisco Arts Commission. Drummer Eddie Marshall died of a heart attack on Wednesday, September 7, 2011.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herbie Hancock was born Herbert Jeffrey Hancock on April 12, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. Starting with a classical music education, he was considered a child prodigy, studied from age seven and played the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Chicago Symphony at age eleven.
Through his teens he was influenced by the vocal group Hi-Lo’s, Herbie never had a jazz teacher, developing his ear and sense of harmony. Influenced by Clare Fischer, Bill Evans, Ravel and Gil Evans, his harmonic guru was Chris Anderson with whom he studied. In the Sixties he attended Grinnell College, moved to Chicago, began working with Donald Byrd and Coleman Hawkins, studied at the Manhattan School of Music, quickly gained a reputation and played sessions with Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods.
In 1962 Hancock recorded his first solo album Takin’ Off for Blue Note Records that contained the hit for both Hancock and Mongo Santamaria – Watermelon Man. More importantly it caught the ear of Miles Davis and landed him an introduction by Tony Williams and membership of the second great quintet in 1963. It was during the Davis years that Herbie found his voice and subsequently produced two of the decade’s most influential albums, Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage.
He has recorded a catalogue of nearly sixty albums as a leader dozens of sessions as a sideman, working with the likes of Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Grant Green, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Donald Byrd, George Coleman, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard among others. He has been the subject of five films, won an Oscar for “Round Midnight soundtrack, received 14 Grammy Awards, five Playboy Music Polls and was honored as a NEA Jazz Master in 2004 along with a host of other recognitions. He is currently occupies the Creative Chair for Jazz with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Hancock joined the University of California, Los Angeles faculty as a professor in the UCLA music department where he teaches jazz music. He has received a Kennedy Center Honors Award for achievement in the performing arts, won 14 Grammy Awards, 1 Oscar for the Original Soundtrack of ‘Round Midnight and has been honored as an NEA Jazz Master among numerous other accolades.
He is the 2014 Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. Holders of the chair deliver a series of six lectures on poetry, “The Norton Lectures”, poetry being “interpreted in the broadest sense, including all poetic expression in language, music, or fine arts.” His theme is “The Ethics of Jazz. Pianist Herbie Hancock continues to advance the jazz genre in new directions.
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