Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Leon Parker was born August 21, 1965 in White Plains, New York. He studied drums from age 11 and had classical training in his teens. He went on to study jazz under the tutelage of Barry Harris.

Leon made his recording debut with Harvie S and released his debut as a leader in 1994 with Above & Below on the Epicure label. Since then he has released three more projects and his 1998 album, Awakening, rose to #20 on the Billboard list of Top Jazz Albums.

Parker has collaborated on and recorded a du project with Charlie Hunter titled Duo, recorded with Dewey and Joshua Redman, Jesse Davis, MTB comprised of Brad Mehldau, Mark Turner and Per Bernstein, Jacky Terrasson, Don Braden, Franck Amsallem, Virgina Mathew, James Carter, Giovanni Mirabassi and Gianiuca Renzi,

Jazz percussionist and composer Leon Parker continues to perform, record and tour often playing with a minimalist drum kits, sometimes consisting of only one cymbal.

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Daily Doe Of Jazz…

Byron Stripling was born as Lloyd Byron Stripling on August 20, 1961, in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.

Following his studies, Stripling was featured as lead trumpeter and soloist with the Count Basie Orchestra when Thad Jones and Frank Foster were directing. His touring and recording reads like a who’s who list with Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Clark Terry, Louis Bellson, Buck Clayton,, Gerry Mulligan,, J.J. Johnson, Jim Hall, Sonny Rollins, Paquito D’Rivera, Freddie Cole, Jack McDuff, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Joe Henderson Big Band and the GRP All-Star Big Band.

Byron debuted at Carnegie Hall with Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops.  He took on Broadway as the lead in the musicals Satchmo and From Second Avenue to Broadway, and has had a featured cameo in the television movie The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He again portrayed Louis Armstrong in Dave Brubeck’s revival of his The Real Ambassadors.

He has been a featured soloist at the Newport Jazz Festival, Hollywood Bowl and the Vail Jazz Festival as well as with the Boston Pops, Cincinnati Pops, Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Symphony and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, and the Seattle, Utah and Minnesota Symphonies, and The American Jazz Philharmonic.

In 2002 Stripling was selected to succeed Jazz Arts Group founder, Ray Eubanks, as the Artistic Director of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra. He continues to serve in that role, while also performing throughout the world with symphony orchestras and his own small group.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

William John Evans was born August 16, 1929 in Plainfield, New Jersey and grew up in a turbulent household of abuse. While staying with his aunt family somewhere between age 3 and five he soon began to play what he had heard during his brother’s class and soon he would also receiving piano lessons. At age 7, Bill began violin lessons and also flute and piccolo but eventually dropped those instruments, though it is believed they later influenced his keyboard style.

From age 6 to 13 Evans would only play classical music scores of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. During high school he was exposed to Stravinsky and Milhaud but also the jazz of Tommy Dorsey and Harry James. At 13 he stood in for a sick pianist in Buddy Valentino’s rehearsal band where he got his first deviation from the written music, in an arrangement of Tuxedo Junction, leading him to listen to Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, George Shearing, Stan Getz and Nat King Cole among others.

Bill was soon playing dances and weddings throughout New Jersey and then formed his own trio, met Don Elliott, and bassist George Platt who taught him the harmonic principles of music. He would go on to study at Southeastern Louisiana University and in 1955 he moved to New York City where he worked with bandleader and theorist George Russell. In 1958, he joined the Miles Davis Sextet, where he was to have a profound influence. In 1959, the band, then immersed in modal jazz recorded Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album of all time.

In late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a seminal modern jazz trio. In 1961, ten days after recording the highly acclaimed Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, LaFaro died in a car accident. After months of seclusion he re-emerged with bassist Chuck Israel. In 1963, Evans recorded his first innovative solo project Conversations with Myself, and in ’66 met bassist Eddie Gomez who he would work with for eleven years.

He would work with Don Elliott, Tony Scott, Mundell Lowe, Jerry Wald, Lucy Reed, George Russell, Dick Garcia, Art Farmer, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, Joe Puma, Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson, Eddie Costa, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, Sam Jones, Marc Johnson, Tony Bennett, Marty Morell, Joe LaBarbera and the list goes on.

Despite his success as a jazz artist, Bill suffered personal loss and struggled with drug abuse. Both his girlfriend Elaine and his brother Harry committed suicide, and he was a long time user of heroin and later cocaine. As a result, his financial stability, personal relationships and musical creativity all steadily declined during his later years.

On September 15, 1980 pianist, compose and arranger Bill Evans who played in the modal, third stream cool and post-bop genres, passed away at age 51in New York City from complications due to peptic ulcer, cirrhosis, bronchial pneumonia and untreated hepatitis. His recordings for Riverside, Fantasy and Verve record labels left a seminal collection for the avid and casual listener, he was inducted in the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame, was nominated for 31 Grammys, winning seven awards, and was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Daly Dose Of Jazz…

Mulgrew Miller was born August 13, 1955 in Greenwood, Mississippi. Growing up in a home with a piano he played tunes on the piano from the age of six, playing by ear. He had piano lessons from the age of eight and during his childhood he played blues and R&B for dances, and gospel music in a church. His principal influence on piano at this stage of his life was Ramsey Lewis.

While in high school, Miller formed a trio that played at cocktail parties and around the age of fourteen after hearing Oscar Peterson on the Joey Bishop Show he decided to become a jazz pianist. After graduating from Greenwood High School, he attended Memphis State in 1973 on a band scholarship. He played euphonium and met pianists Donald Brown and James Williams who introduced him to the music of well-known players such as Wynton Kelly, Bud Powell, and McCoy Tyner.

He would go on to study with Madame Margaret Chaloff but left her tutelage to play with Ricky Ford and Bill Pierce. By 1976 he was the substitute for the regular pianist in the Duke Ellington Orchestra but left in in 1980 after being recruited by vocalist Betty Carter, then joined Woody Shaw’s band from 1981 to 1983, with whom he made his 1981 he made his studio recording debut, on Shaw’s United. During the early 1980s he also accompanied vocalist Carmen Lundy and played and recorded with saxophonist Johnny Griffin.

Mulgrew joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1983 under the recommendation of Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison. Although struggling to fit in with the dominating rhythm section his playing matured during his tenure. His recording career as a leader began in 1985, with Keys to the City, the first of Miller’s several Landmark Records recordings. He left Blakey to become Tony Williams’ pianist in 1986 and remained busy forming his own bands Wingspan and later Trio Transition with Reggie Workman and Freddie Waits

He would go on to work with Wallace Roney, Frank Morgan, Benny Golson, Steve Nelson and Donald Byrd, and toured internationally and domestically with the New York Jazz Giants with Jon Faddis, Tom Harrell, Lew Tabackin, Bobby Watson, Ray Drummond and Carl Allen. He continued to accompany and record with vocalists including Dianne Reeves and Cassandra Wilson, and played and recorded with saxophonist Joe Lovano.

For several years after he had turned 40, Miller concentrated on composing and playing his own music. In 1997 he toured Japan with 100 Golden Fingers, a troupe of 10 pianists, then joined bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson in 1999 to record duets based on 1940s performances by Duke Ellington and Jimmy Blanton. He signed with Maxjazz producing albums as a leader with Derrick Hodge, Rodney Green, Karriem Riggins, as well as trio projects and touring with bassist Ron Carter and guitarist Russell Malone, and as sideman with John Scofield, Kluvers Big Band, Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp.

As an educator Mulgrew became heavily involved in music education as the Director of Jazz Studies at William Patterson University from 2005, and was the Artist in Residence at Lafayette College, from which he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Performing Arts. Pianist Mulgrew Miller’s list of accomplishments continued with his recording as a leader, working with his own trio and quintet until his passing on May 29, 2013 in Allentown, Pennsylvania from a stroke at the age of 57.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ravi Coltrane was born August 6, 1965 in Long Island, New York to saxophonist John and pianist Alice Coltrane and was named after sitar player Ravi Shankar. Raised in Los Angeles, California, he was not yet two years old in 1967 when his father died.

Ravi graduated from El Camino Real High School in 1983 and three years later was studying music with a focus on the saxophone at the California Institute of the Arts. He worked extensively with M-Base guru Steve Coleman, who influenced his musical conception.

Coltrane has played and recorded as a sideman with Geri Allen, Kenny Barron, McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana, Stanley Clarke, Branford Marsalis and many others. In 1997, after performing on over thirty recordings as a sideman, Ravi entered the studio to record his first album as leader Moving Pictures, with drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, bassist Lonnie Plaxico and pianist Michael Cain.

This led to extensive touring and a series of recording sessions as a leader producing his sophomore project From the Round Box, followed by Mad 6 and In Flux.  He has performed in India as part of a State Department tour delegation to promote HIV/Aids awareness. He has played Monterey , Montreux, Newport and the Vienna jazz festivals, is a part of the Blue Note 7, and has worked with Renee Rosnes, Drew Gress, Luis Perdomo, E.J. Strickland, Al Jarreau, Earl Klugh, David Gilmore, Ralph Alessi and the late George Duke. Post-bop saxophonist Ravi Coltrane continues to perform, record, tour and produce.

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