Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Chip Shelton was born Clarence Elmo Shelton, Jr. on December 2, 1944 in Welch, West Virginia.  He studied drums with his multi-instrumentalist record collector father from age 5 to 7. He studied piano from age 8 to 11 and clarinet from age 11 to14 and finally settled on flute. A well-rounded student he found time to participate in choir, dance and sports.

Shelton attended high school in Dayton, Ohio, followed by 3 years of pre-med at University of Cincinnati, experimenting with his own brand of self-taught improvisation on piano, clarinet, and saxophone. At age 20, he became more focused musically and while at Howard University he jammed with notables like Donny Hathaway, Sherry Winston, and Lloyd McNeil, and led his own straight-ahead jazz quintet, the “DMZ Revisited”.

At age 24 Chip moved to New York, studying and/or performed with Bill Barron, James Moody, Hank Mobley, Irene Reid, Jimmy Ponder, Frank Foster, Jimmy Heath, Frank Wess, Hubert Laws, Ernie Wilkins, Joe Newman, and many others around New York and New Jersey.

Chip Shelton has gone on to perform live alongside Greg Bandy, Peter Bernstein, Philip Harper, Herman Foster, Lou Donaldson, and TK Blue. In the 90s he would record for with Rise Up Label, Satellites Records, and performed with Louis Hayes, Bob Baldwin, Roy Ayers, Roy Merriwether, John Hicks, Lynn Seaton and numerous others. He has recorded nearly a dozen albums and continues to compose, perform and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Gato Barbieri was born Leandro Barbieri on November 28, 1932 in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, Argentina into a family of musicians. He began playing music after hearing Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time”, first playing the clarinet and later the alto saxophone while performing with his fellow countryman pianist Lalo Schifrin in the late 1950s.

By the early 1960s in Europe he worked with Don Cherry, became influenced by John Coltrane’s later recordings as well as free jazz saxophonists Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders. He developed a warm and gritty sound that became Gato’s trademark and by the late Sixties began fusing music from South America and contributed to Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra and Carla Bley’s Escalator Over The Hill.

Barbieri earned a Grammy for the score of Last Tango In Paris, which led to a recording deal with Impulse Records. By the mid-70s, he was recording for A&M Records and moved his music towards soul-jazz and jazz-pop with albums like “Caliente!” and “Ruby Ruby”. As a leader he has recorded some thirty albums and as a sideman has played and recorded another nine with Dollar Brand, Gary Burton, the Jazz Composers Orchestra among others. The saxophonist has received the UNICEF Award and continued to compose, perform and record until his passing on April 2, 2016 in New York City.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jacky Terrasson was born Jacques-Laurent Terrasson on November 27, 1966 in Berlin, Germany to French and American parents, but grew up in Paris, France. He started learning piano at 5 years old and after studying classical piano in school, he studied jazz, in particular with Jeff Gardner. His encounter with Francis Paudras played an important role his initiation into jazz.

He studied at Berklee College of Music before playing in Chicago and New York clubs. He gained increased attention on winning the 1993 Thelonious Monk Piano Competition and began touring with Betty Carter.  A year later he was named by the New York Times Magazine one of the 30 under 30 to change American culture in the next 30 years.

He has recorded for Blue Note, Venus, EMI, Concord and Universal France amassing a total of 15 records. He has worked with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Michael Brecker, Dianne Reeves, Jimmy Scott, Charles Aznavor, Cassandra Wilson, Ry Cooder, and his trios with Leon Parker and Ugonna Okegwo or Eric Harland, Ben Williams, Jamire Williams and Justin Faulkner.

Pianist Jacky Terrasson plays festivals all over the world and works regularly in Japan, South Korea and in China, as well as in Europe and the United States. 

 He mingles and melts the colors and the inventions of the great pianists of yesterday and today creating his own style.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Terell Stafford was born in Miami, Florida on November 25, 1966 and raised in Chicago, Illinois and Silver Spring, Maryland. He went on to get a degree in music education from University of Maryland in 1988 branching out from classical trumpet to jazz with their jazz band. He went on to obtain a degree in classical trumpet performance from Rutgers University.

His career in jazz soon picked up and has played with McCoy Tyner, Shirley Scott, Christian McBride, John Clayton, Steve Turre, Stephen Scott, Bobby Watson, Dave Valentin, Lafayette Harris, Cecil Brooks III, Cornell Dupree, Ed Wiley, Victor Lewis, Melissa Walker, Herbie Mann and Russell Malone among others. He has graced the stages such as Carnegie Hall and The Tonight Show.

Stafford’s educator hat has him as the Director of Jazz Studies at Temple University and has also worked with the Juilliard School’s jazz program, at the Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington program, and with the 2006 All-Alaska Jazz Band. He has recorded eight albums to date and continues to perform and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Don Braden was born November 20, 1963 in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He began playing tenor sax at age 13 and started playing professionally at 15. As a high school student he played in the McDonald’s All-American High School Jazz Band. He went on to attend Harvard University, studying engineering but played in the school’s jazz ensemble.

Braden moved to New York City in 1984, where he played with The Harper Brothers, Lonnie Smith and Betty Carter. In 1986 he toured with Wynton Marsalis and followed this with Out of the Blue, Roy Haynes, Tony Williams, Freddie Hubbard, J. J. Johnson, Tom Harrell, Art Farmer and the Mingus Big Band.

Don has developed an extensive knowledge of every aspect of jazz performance and is an imaginative and soulful saxophonist. He has released 16 albums as a leader or co-leader, with his recording debut in 1991 with “The Time is Now”.  His list of sidemen is extensive and includes Christian McBride, Joris Teepe, Benny Green, Julian Joseph, Kenny Werner, Darrell Grant, Carl Allen, Cecil Brooks III & Billy Hart, David “Fathead” Newman, Vincent Herring, Dave Liebman, Terell Stafford, Tom Harrell, Randy Brecker, Steve Turre, Conrad Herwig, Jack McDuff, Larry Goldings and Russell Malone among many others.

He spent four years as co-music supervisor/composer for Bill Cosby’s CBS sitcom, “Cosby”, co-wrote the theme song for Cosby’s CBS cartoon series, “Little Bill” and composed music for Nickelodeon’s “Fatherhood”.  Braden is a passionate and highly experienced educator, having held the position of Coordinator of Jazz Studies at Montclair State University, served as Music Director of the Litchfield Jazz Camp, has been the Music Director of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Well’s Fargo Jazz for Teens program and a visiting professor in the “New York Comes to Groningen” program at the Prins Claus Conservatoire, in Groningen, Netherlands. He continues to educate, perform, record and tour.

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