Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cecilia Wennerström was born on April 21, 1947 in Stockholm, Sweden and studied saxophone at the music academies in Malmoe and Gothenburg. In 1997 she released her first self-titled album as a leader, Cecilia Wennerström/Minor Stomp on the Four Leaf Records label. Joining her were Ann Blom on piano, Filip Augustson on bass, and Henrik Wartel on drums. Enjoying the small group format she explores classical, bebop/cool-oriented jazz.
Cecilia is currently a member of the Wennerstrom Larsson Explicity with her husband Sven Larsson, who released their first album Tussilago in September 2011. She is also part of the octet LARS 8 which plays compositions by Lars Gullin and other Swedish jazz icons.
In 2013 she released her fourth solo compact disc Lydian Mars with pianist Maria Kvist, bassist Filip Augustson, and drummer Jonas Holgersson. The band on the recording session evolved into the Cecilia Wennerström New Quartet with Chris Montgomery replacing Holgersson on drums.
Saxophonist, flutist, and composer Cecilia Wennerström continues to compose, perform, and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billy James born William James on April 20, 1936 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He first came on the jazz scene in the Fifties when he began working with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, with the bandleader thinking the 15-year-old James was already playing at professional standards. He would then go to work with Booker Ervin. In the early 1960s with played and recorded with James Moody, Candido Camero, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Don Patterson, and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.
With Patterson, he frequently recorded as a duo, and James led his own groups in the latter half of the 1960s. He worked further with Stitt during this time as well as with Eric Kloss. Further associations also include Eddie Harris, Houston Person, Grant Green, and Pat Martino.
Billy’s most illustrious performances including the Patterson side righteously titled Boppin’ and Burnin’ and even better, the Boss Tenors in Orbit! sessions in which Stitt duels with Ammons.
Drummer Billy James, whose most distinctive aspect of drumming is an extremely well-disposed shuffle that he seems able to reinvent endlessly, chorus after chorus, passed away on November 20, 2009.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Piers Lawrence was born on April 19th in New York City, raised in San Francisco, California and Switzerland, where he attended the Conservatoire de Musique de Lausanne and studied guitar and composition.
An alum of the Harlem-based, Jazz-Mobile Orchestra and studying with Barry Galbraith and Ted Dunbar, he has played Broadway shows including Guys and Dolls, Dancin’, Hubie, and Your Arms Too Short to Box With God, and has toured and recorded with R&B hitmakers Wilson Picket, The Main Ingredient, Esther Phillips, Phyllis Hyman, The Caribbean All-Stars and Merl Saunders.
He has recorded sessions and shared the jazz stages with many great musicians including Narada Michael Walden, Sammy Figueroa, Hiram Bullock, Lou Soloff, Jerry Garcia, John Handy, Steve Kimock, Armando Peraza, Bob Weir, Vince Welnick, Reuben Wilson, Jimmy Heath, and Tommy Flanagan.
Being based in Manhattan, the jazz guitarist continues to lead the Piers Lawrence Quartet, manage his record label, JazzNet Media, that produced his internationally acclaimed recording Stolen Moments, and produces independent projects and ambient music for film and television.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Bishop was born in Seattle, Washington on April 5, 1956 and raised in Germany, Washington, DC, San Antonio, Texas and Eugene, Oregon. He started playing drums at 9 in Washington, DC with the Patriots drum corps and performed regularly throughout high school and college in Oregon, studying with Mel Brown and Charles Dowd. Attending the University of Oregon, he later transferred to the jazz program at North Texas State University.
Moving to Seattle in 1981 he had an extended engagement with the band Glider and never left. An unusually creative and fertile scene at the time, the city offered performances with top touring artists and the opportunity to create long and substantial musical relationships with inspired Northwest musicians. 1983, saw Bishop helping to form the fusion group Blue Sky, which released two national Top 10 albums and toured throughout the west coast and Canada over the next 9 years.
He was a twenty-year member of the piano trio New Stories with pianist Marc Seales and bassist Doug Miller, releasing 4 CDs of their own, 6 with the late be-bop saxophonist Don Lanphere, and Song for the Geese with Mark Murphy. They were a house trio for 17 years at Bud Shank’s Pt. Townsend Jazz Festival, headlined the 1993 JVC Jazz Festival in Vladivostok, Russia, appeared in concert with Tom Harrell, Julian Priester, Charles McPherson, Vincent Herring, Nick Brignola, Conte Condoli, Bobby Shew and Larry Coryell.
They regularly appeared around the country by themselves or touring with Mark Murphy, Ernie Watts or Don Lanphere. He has performed in concerts and clubs with Lee Konitz, Slide Hampton, Benny Golson, George Cables, Kenny Werner, Bobby Hutcherson, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Sonny Fortune, Herb Ellis, Buddy DeFranco, Bobby McFerrin, Joe Locke, Jerry Bergonzi, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Larry Coryell, and countless others.
John has taught drums privately for forty years, was on the faculty at the University of Washington from 2005-2009, regularly holds drum and jazz workshops throughout the country with the Hal Galper Trio, and co-founded The Reality Book, a web-based, HD Video Play-Along education system for jazz musicians of all levels.
Drummer, educator, record label owner, graphic designer, and festival presenter John Bishop continues to perform, record, tour and educate. has been one of the primary voices in Northwest Jazz for over 35 years. He’s appeared on more than 100 albums, was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008, and was named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2019.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz
Paul James Abler was born April 3, 1957 in Saginaw, Michigan but grew up in Pontiac, Michigan. He first came into contact with jazz as a child when his grandfather played drums on recordings of Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington. Influenced by Jimi Hendrix, he turned to the guitar and in 1982 he moved to Los Angeles, California where he studied with Joe Diorio, Carl Schroeder and Ron Eschete at the Musicians Institute (Guitar Institute of Technology). In 1988 he moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he took improvisation lessons with Jerry Bergonzi.
1990 saw Paul moving back to Michigan where he played in Detroit with Marcus Belgrave, Harold McKinney, James Carter, David McMurray, Roy Brooks, Straight Ahead, and Leonard King. By 2003 he was living in New York permanently and has worked with Cindy Blackman, Allen Farnham, Joe Lee Wilson, Charles Davis, Cameron Brown, Guilherme Franco, Yusef Lateef, the Mingus Big Band, Ted Curson, David Ruffin and The Funk Brothers, among others.
In 2005, Abler released the album In the Marketplace as a leader under his own name, in which Marion Hayden, Cindy Blackman, William Evans, and Robert Pipho had worked. In addition, he worked with his own formations, which in various formations, among others Bobby Battle, Gerald Cleaver, Craig Taborn, Ugonna Okegwo, Helio Alves, Santi Debriano, Adriano Santos and Harvie S belonged.
Abler wrote over 150 compositions, some of which were used in films and television series such as Madam Secretary, Breaking Bad, 20/20, The Big Bang Theory and Mad Men. Abler, who most recently lived in New Jersey, was involved in six recording sessions from 1991 to 2013. On March 3, 2017 in Livingston, New Jersey guitarist and film composer Paul Abler passed away at the age of 69.
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