Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Larry Goldings was born August 28, 1968 in Boston, Massachusetts and studied classical piano until the age of twelve. While in high school at Concord Academy his primary influences were Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, Dave McKenna, Red Garland and Bill Evans. As a young teenager, Larry studied privately with Ran Blake and Keith Jarrett.
Goldings moved to New York in 1986 to attend a newly formed jazz program under the leadership of Arnie Lawrence at The New School. During college he studied piano with Jaki Byard and Fred Hersch. While still a freshman, Sir Roland Hanna invited him to accompany him to a three-day private jazz party in Copenhagen. While there, he met Sarah Vaughan, Kenny Biurrell, Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones and had the opportunity to play in the band with Vaughan, Harry Sweets Edison and Al Cohn.
As a college student, Larry embarked on a worldwide tour with Jon Hendricks, working with him for a year. A collaboration lasting almost three years with guitarist Jim Hall followed. By 1988 he began developing his organ chops and secured a regular gig at Augie’s Jazz Bar, now Smoke on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He was featured with several bands, and his own trio with guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart got its start there.
His first release was Intimacy Of The Blues in 1991 followed by sixteen more albums as a leader and has appeared as a sideman on hundreds of recordings. Over the course of his career, Goldings distinctive keyboard sound has been sought out more and more by pop, R&B, Brazilian, and alternative artists, such as, Madeleine Peyroux, John Scofield, Carla Bley, Michael Brecker, De La Soul, India Arie, Tracy Chapman, Pat Metheny, Dave Grusin, Norah Jones, John Mayer, Sia, John Pizzarelli, Steve Gadd, Rickie Lee Jones, Jack DeJohnette, Luciana Souza, and the list goes on and on.
In 2007, Larry, DeJohnnette and Scofield captured a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Album Individual or Group for their live album, Trio Beyond – Saudades. He has been twice awarded Best Organist/Keyboardist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, and twice Best Jazz Album for Awareness and Big Stuff by the New Yorker Magazine.
As a composer his music has been used in the films Space Cowboys, Proof and Funny People. Brecker, Scofield, DeJohnette, Hall, Sia, Toots Thielemans, Curtis Stigers, James Taylor and Jane Monheit among others have recorded his compositions. Organist and keyboardist Larry Goldings continues to perform, record, tour and compose.
Selected discography[edit]
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mimi Fox was born of August 24, 1956 in New York City and started playing drums at nine and guitar when she was ten. She was inspired by a wide variety of music in her house from show tunes, classical, Dixieland, Motown pop, folk, and R&B. By fourteen she bought her first jazz album, John Coltrane’s classic Giant Steps and her course of her musical life changed. She began touring right out of high school and eventually settled in the San Francisco Bay area where she became a sought after player.
Fox has performed and recorded with Charlie Byrd, Stanley Jordan, Charlie Hunter, Mundell Lowe, Branford Marsalis, David Sanchez, Houston Person, Don Lanphere, Abbey Lincoln, Diana Krall, Kevin Mahogany, Janis Siegel, Joey DeFrancesco, Barbara Denerlein, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Terri Lyne Carrington, Stevie Wonder and John Sebastian and the list continues to grow.
Mimi has been named a winner in 6 consecutive Downbeat Magazine international critic’s polls, hit #23 on the Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart, recognized by the IAJE for her outstanding service to jazz education, has released ten albums as a leader, published several instructional books and interactive CD-Roms.
As a composer she has written and performed original scores for orchestras, documentary films and dance projects. As an educator she teaches master classes worldwide, is currently the Chair of the Guitar Department, a faculty advisor and instructor at the Jazz School for Musical Study and Performance in Berkeley, California. Guitarist Mimi Fox continues to composer, record, teach and perform at festivals around the world.
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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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