Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arturo Sandoval was born in Artemisa, Cuba on November 6, 1949 and began to play music at age 12 in the village band. After playing many instruments, he fell in love with the trumpet. In 1964, he began three years of serious classical trumpet studies at the Cuban National School of Arts. By the age of 16 he had earned a place in Cuba’s all-star national band and was totally immersed in jazz influenced by Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown and with Dizzy Gillespie as his idol and later mentor and colleague.
In 1971 he was drafted into the military. Luckily, Sandoval was still able to play with the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna. In Cuba, Sandoval co-founded the band Irakere with Chucho Valdes and Paquito D’Rivera. They quickly became a worldwide sensation. Their appearance at the 1978 Newport Jazz Festival introduced them to American audiences and garnered them a recording contract with Columbia Records.
Arturo defected to the United States while touring in Spain with Dizzy in 1990, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1999 and has enjoyed a successful career. He has played with Woody Herman, Herbie Hancock, Woody Shaw, Stan Getz, Celine Dion, Tito Puente, Patti LaBelle, Frank Sinatra, Paul Anka, Gordon Goodwin and numerous others.
His life was the subject of the 2000 TV film For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story, starring Andy Garcia. He currently continues to perform, tour and record around the globe.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hailing from the West Coast, California native, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt was born on November 4, 1976. His primary interest was strictly classical music until he started high school when he began playing in the jazz band. After matriculating Berklee College of Music he set his sights on New York and before long got noticed by many top jazz musicians and got his first professional gig playing with the Mingus Big Band, allowing him to grow and nurture long lasting associations.
Pelt has had the good fortune to play with such jazz luminaries, such as Jimmy Heath, Frank Wess, Charlie Persip, Keter Betts, Frank Foster, John Hicks, Ravi Coltrane, Winard Harper, Vincent Herring, Ralph Peterson, Lonnie Plaxico, Nancy Wilson, Bobby Short, Cedar Walton and many too numerous to list. Coupled with those collaborations he has been a featured trumpeter in the Roy Hargrove Big Band, The Village Vanguard Orchestra and the Duke Ellington Big Band. Currently, he is member of the Lewis Nash Septet, the Frank Foster Loud Minority, and The Cannonball Adderley Legacy Band featuring Louis Hayes.
Jeremy maintains a consistent forward momentum while transmitting a modern-day sense of urgency with his songs. Pelt’s major focus is on writing music for each of his three bands: “Creation”– a sextet, “Noise” – a semi-electric band and “The Jeremy Pelt Quartet”.
He has been voted “Rising Star on the Trumpet” by Downbeat Magazine and the Jazz Journalist Association two years in a row. Jeremy Pelt has toured throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, Virgin Islands and Brazil, and continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Warne Marion Marsh was born October 26, 1927 in Los Angeles, California into an affluent family, his father was a cinematographer, mother a violinist and his aunt May Marsh an actress.
Tutored by Lennie Tristano and, along with Lee Konitz became one of the pre-eminent saxophonists of the Tristano-inspired “Cool School”. Of all of Tristano’s students, Marsh came closest to typifying Tristano’s ideals of improvised lines, in some respects, even transcending the master himself. He often recorded in the company of other Cool School musicians, and remained one of the most faithful to the Tristano philosophy of improvisation. His distinctively pure tone without the inflections popular among many other tenor saxophonists at that time such as honks, growls, etc. set him apart from other Lester Young and Ben Webster-influenced saxophonists.
Warne’s rhythmically subtle lines are immediately recognizable and have been called by Anthony Braxton as “the greatest vertical improviser.” In the 1970s he gained renewed exposure as a member of Supersax, a large ensemble that played orchestral arrangements of Charlie Parker solos. Marsh also recorded one of his most celebrated albums, “All Music”, with the Supersax rhythm section during this period.
Marsh died onstage at the Los Angeles club Donte’s on December 18, 1987, in the middle of playing the tune “Out of Nowhere”. Though he remains something of a cult figure among jazz fans and musicians, his influence has grown since his death. Younger players such as Mark Turner have borrowed from his music as a way of counterbalancing the pervasive influence of John Coltrane.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Terumasa Hino was born in Tokyo, Japan on October 25, 1942. His initial exposure to music began at four was with his father, a step dancer and trumpeter, taught him tap-dancing. He soon began performing with the trumpet when he was 9 years old, later adding flugelhorn to his arsenal. In the Fifties, Hino began his career as a professional jazz musician and by 1965 after working with several noted jazz artists, he joined Hideo Shiraki’s Quintet. He remained with the band till 1969, leaving to lead his own band full-time, which he formed in 1964.
1969 saw Hino releasing his successful third album “Hi-nology” to critical acclaim and was soon performing at jazz festivals and clubs worldwide before settling in New York City in 1975. Once there he found work with numerous jazz musicians including among others Gil Evans, Elvin Jones, Jackie McLean, Ken McIntyre, Dave Liebman, Hal Galper, Carlos Garnett, Greg Osby and Sam Jones in between leading his own group, which is credited by the jazz guitarist John Scofield for him turning from fusion to jazz.
From the 1980s, he spent more time in Japan and helped incorporate several elements such as avant-garde and fusion into his music. Trumpeter Terumasa Hino has a current catalogue of fifty-one albums and he continues to perform, record and tour around the world.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Odean Pope was born October 24, 1938 in Ninety Six, South Carolina to musical parents but was reared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when the family moved when he was ten. His lifelong study of music began at the Graniff School of Music and the Benjamin Franklin High School music program.
Pope grew up in a rich musical environment with other Philadelphia jazz luminaries as John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Kenny Barron, Jimmy and Percy Heath, Clifford Brown, Philly Joe Jones, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Golson to name a few. Early in his career, the young tenor saxophonist, while at Philadelphia’s Uptown Theater, played behind a number of noted rhythm and blues artists including James brown, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, however, it was Coltrane who chose him as his replacement in Jimmy Smith’s group when he left to join Miles Davis in New York.
He went on to play briefly with Jimmy McGriff in the 1960s and late in the decade began working with Max Roach and touring Europe. Odean was a member of Philadelphia group Catalyst in the early and mid-1970s, and in 1977 assembled the “Saxophone Choir” consisting of nine saxophones and a rhythm section. He became a regular member of Roach’s quartet in 1979 and has recorded extensively with him, in addition to numerous releases as a leader.
His never-ending quest to study his craft led him to study orchestration, modern harmony, African rhythms, be-bop art forms and arrangement with Kenny Clarke at the Paris Conservatory. He would go on to study with Ray Bryant, Jimmie Merritt, and Hasaan Ibn Ali and with Max Roach for some twenty-two years. Pope is known for saying, “Studying with Max was like going to the highest institution in the world.”
Odean perfected the techniques of circular breathing and multiphonics, both allowing him to stretch his solo improvisations from dazzling elevations to the throbbing, husky sounds for which he is so well known, to all kinds of delicacy in getting from one to the other.
Pope has won “Best Tenor Saxophone Player” at the North Sea Jazz Festival, received numerous citations from the City of Philadelphia, and has received awards from the Pew Fellowship, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Chamber music America. He started the jazz studies program at the Settlement Music School and he continues to give master classes in the Philadelphia School District as well as nationally and internationally.
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