Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Graham Haynes was born September 16, 1960 in Brooklyn, New York the son of drummer Roy Haynes. With aspirations to push jazz beyond its traditional boundaries, his first foray into electronic music came in 1979 with meeting alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. Together, they formed a band called Five Elements, which launched the influential group of improvisers called M-Base Collective.
With the formation of his own ensemble, Graham Haynes and No Image and subsequent release of What Time It Be?, he spent much of the Eighties studying a wide range of African, Arabic and South Asian Music. Then in 1990 a move to France incorporated these far-off influences into his next two releases, Nocturne Parisian and The Griot’s Footsteps.
Haynes returned to New York City in 1993, took advantage of the flourishing Hip-Hop scene and released the sample heavy album Transition. He recorded another hybridized album in 1996, Tones For The 21st Century, then discovered drum ‘n’ bass and began working with some of the genres finest DJs and producers in London and the U.S. This manifested in the 2000 release of BPM, a fusion of drum n’ bass beats with the classical music of Richard Wagner.
Over the years, Haynes has kept busy with several critically acclaimed multimedia projects, composing scores for films Flag Wars and The Promise, and as a lecturer at New York University. He received two nominations for the Alpert Award For The Arts.
He has collaborated with his father, Cassandra Wilson, Jaki Byard, Uri Caine, Vernon Reid, Me’Shell Ndegeocello, The Roots, David Murray, George Adams, Ed Blackwell, Bill Laswell, Steve Williamson and Bill Dixon to name a few. With ten albums under his belt, cornetist, trumpeter and composer Graham Haynes continues to push the envelope in his performance, recording and composing.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bruce Barth was born September 7, 1958 in Pasadena, California. He started banging on the piano almost before he could walk. By the age of five he started piano lessons though he preferred to play by ear. When he was eight his family moved to New York where he studied piano and musicianship with Tony and Sue LaMagra for the next decade. Turning 15 his older brother Rich gave him his first jazz record, Mose Allison’s Back Country Suite. The young lad fell in love with both the music and the genre and inspired, he taught himself to play jazz by listening to records and imitating his many favorite pianists and horn players.
He went on to study privately with Norman Simmons and Neil Waltzer, and eventually enrolled in New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with Jaki Byard, Fred Hersch, and George Russell. Barth’s first professional recording was Russell’s masterpiece, The African Game, captured live on Blue Note Records. Arriving on the New York jazz scene in 1988, he soon joined tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and their musical collaboration spanned a decade. Shortly thereafter, he toured Japan with Nat Adderley, and toured Europe and recorded with Vincent Herring’s quintet with Dave Douglas.
In 1990, Bruce joined the Terence Blanchard Quintet; the band toured extensively, and also recorded six CDs, as well as several movie soundtracks. In 1992, he played piano on-screen in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. While in Blanchard’s band, he recorded his first two CD’s as a leader, In Focus and Morning Call; both were chosen for the New York Times’ top ten lists.
Throughout his professional life, Bruce has performed and collaborated with Tony Bennett, Steve Wilson, Terell Stafford, Luciana Souza, and Karrin Allyson, David Sanchez, James Moody, Phil Woods, Freddie Hubbard, Tom Harrell, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Art Farmer, Victor Lewis, John Patitucci, Lewis Nash, the Mingus Big Band, Tim Armacost, Scott Wendholt, Dave Stryker, Carla Cook, Paula West, Rene Marie, Luis Bonilla, Doug Weiss, Ugonna Okegwo, Montez Coleman, Dana Hall and Dayna Stephens, among numerous others.
As an educator pianist Bruce Barth is on the jazz faculty of Temple University, has taught at Berklee College of Music, Long Island University, currently gives private lessons to City College University and New School students, and has participated in many workshops, clinics, and seminars in the U. S. and abroad. To date he has performed on over one hundred recordings and movie soundtracks, including ten as a leader, is a Grammy nominated producer, and has served two years on the panel for the U.S. State Department “Jazz Ambassadors” program,. He continues to play solo piano, lead an all-star septet and composed for a variety of ensembles.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Larry Ridley was born September 3, 1937 in Indianapolis, Indiana and began playing bass professionally while still in high school in the 1950s. He studied at Indiana University School of Music and then would later study at the Lenox School of Jazz. As a college student he would go on to matriculate through be bassist in his mentor’s ensemble, the David Baker Big Band.
Ridley served as chairman of the Jazz Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and was the organization’s National Coordinator of the “Jazz Artists in Schools” Program for five years. He was awarded the Mid Atlanti Arts Foundation’s Living Legacy Jazz Award, the Benny Golson Jazz Award from Howard University, and inducted into the International Association for Jazz Education Hall of Fame,
Over the course of his career Larry has recorded two albums as a leader and performed and/or recorded with Chet Baker, Al Cohn, Dameronia, Red Garland, Dexter Gordon, Stephane Grappelli, Joe Venuti, Roy Haynes, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, James Moody, Lee Morgan and Horace Silver to name a few.
Bassist and music educator Larry Ridley has been involved in jazz education, heading the jazz program at Rutgers University, and Professor of Jazz Bass at the Manhattan School of Music is a Jazz Artist in Residence at Harlem’s New York Public Library/Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, and continues to perform with his Jazz Legacy Ensemble.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Horace Silver was born Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva on September 2, 1928 in Norwalk, Connecticut to a mother from Connecticut and a father from Maio, Cape Verde. He began playing the piano as a child, receiving classical music lessons and Cape Verde folk music from his father. When he turned 11 he became interested in becoming a musician, after hearing the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra.
From ninth grade Silver played tenor saxophone in the Norwalk High School band and orchestra, influenced by Lester Young. He played gigs locally on both instruments while still at school and around 1946 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut, taking a regular job as house pianist in a nightclub. His big break came around 1950, backing saxophonist Stan Getz at a Hartford club. Liking what he heard, Getz took Silver’s band on the road. With Getz he made his recording debut on the Stan Getz Quartet album, along with bassist Joe Calloway and drummer Walter Bolden.
The following year Horace left Getz, moving to New York City and worked at Birdland on Monday nights. During that year, he met the executives of Blue Note Records, eventually signed with them, and remained there until 1980. He also co-founded the Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey.
From 1951 he free-lanced around New York, recorded mostly his own compositions with his trio, featuring Blakey on drums and Gene Ramey, Curly Russell or Percy Heath on bass. Throughout his career he would record with Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Junior Cook, Blue Mitchell, Louis Hayes, Carmell Jones, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Tyrone Washington, Michael and Randy Brecker, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Donald Byrd and Miles Davis All Stars.
He music reflected the social and cultural upheavals of the 60s and 70s as he briefly played electric piano and including lyrics in his compositions, and his interested in spiritualism also came into his music.
He received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award, recorded his final studio session in 1998 titled Jazz Has A Sense of Humor, was awarded the President’s Merit Award by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, penned his autobiography Let’s Get to the Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silver and published by University of California Press, and many of his compositions have become jazz standards.
Horace Silver, whose early influences were Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Nat King Cole and Thelonious Monk, and who and influence for Bobby Timmons, Le McCann, Ramsey Lewis and Cecil Taylor, passed away of natural causes in New Rochelle, New York on June 18, 2014. The pianist and composer known for his distinctive playing style and pioneering compositional contributions to hard bop, featured surprising tempo shifts from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic merged with funk long before that word could be used in polite company.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tineke Postma was born in Heereveen, Netherlands on August 31, 1978. At the age of eleven she began playing the saxophone and studied at the Amsterdam Conservatory between 1996 and 2003. She graduated cum laude with a Master’s degree in Music. During this period she also studied under Dave Liebman, Dick Oatts and Chris Potter at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City where she also received a Masters degree.
Postma has performed with Greg Osby, Gerry Allen, Ivan Paduart, Esperanza Spalding, The Metropole Orchestra and has featured and collaborated with Teri Lyne Carrington on the albums For The Rhythm, Journey That Matters and The Mosaic Project in 2011.
Dutch alto and soprano saxophonist Tineke Postma has recorded and released 6 CDs as a leader with her debut coming in 2003 with First Avenue. During 2005 she produced a video Live In Amsterdam: The Teneke Postma Quintet. In between performing, touring, composing she has been teaching at the Amsterdam Academy since 2005.
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