Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Brian Priestley was born on July 10, 1940 in Manchester, England and began studying music at the age of eight. In the 1960s he gained a degree in modern languages from Leeds University, while playing in student bands. In the mid-1960s, he began contributing to the jazz press and was responsible for entries in Jazz on Record: A Critical Guide to the First Fifty Years, 1917–1967.
In 1969 he moved to London, England and began playing piano with bands led by Tony Faulkner and Alan Cohen. Priestley helped transcribe Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige, and Creole Rhapsody for Cohen. He formed his own Special Septet featuring Digby Fairweather and Don Rendell. His compositions include Blooz For Dook, The Whole Thing and Jamming With Jools, based on a live broadcast with Jools Holland.
As a broadcaster he worked on the BBC, London Jazz FM, and for BBC Radio London, and influenced the renewed interest in jazz in the 1980s. Priestley taught jazz piano at Goldsmiths College from 1977 until 1993, and has taught jazz history for various other universities and conservatoires over the years.
Priestley has also written biographies of Charles Mingus, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, as well as the book Jazz on Record: A History. He co-authored The Rough Guide to Jazz, as well as contributing to several other reference books, and has compiled and/or annotated more than a hundred reissue compilations.
Writer, pianist and arranger Brian Priestley has lived in Tralee, Ireland since 2006 where he continues playing the piano and presents a show on Radio Kerry.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sahib Shihab was born Edmund Gregory on June 23, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. Schooled in New York from age 3, he first played alto saxophone professionally for Luther Henderson at 13. He studied at the Boston Conservatory, and played in and around New York with Art Blakey, Gigi Gryce, Benny Golson, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Pettiford, Dizzy Gillespie. He toured with the bands of Fletcher Henderson, Buddy Johnson, Roy Eldridge, Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and the original 17 Messengers of Blakey.
During the late 1940s, Shihab played with Thelonious Monk, and on July 23, 1951 he recorded with Monk that was later issued on the album Genius of Modern Music: Volume 2. During the decade he recorded with Art Blakey, Kenny Dorham and Benny Golson. The invitation to play with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band saw his switch to baritone saxophone.
Between 1952 to 1955 he toured with Illinois Jacquet in Europe, as well as with Coleman Hawkins and Sarah Vaughn and toured with Dakota Stanton from 1956 to 1958. He was one of the musicians who showed up for the Art Kane photograph A Great Day In Harlem. Closing out the Fifteies he toured Europe with Quincy Jones, and subsequently settled in Scandinavia in 1960, married and raising a family. Shihab, disillusioned with racial politics in the United States, decided around this time to move to Europe.
As an educator he worked for Copenhagen Polytechnic and wrote scores for television, cinema and theatre. He composed and arranged for Swedish and Danish radio orchestras. He went on to perform with bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and together with pianist Kenny Drew, he ran a publishing firm and record company. Through the Sixties he joined the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band and remained a member of the band during its 12 years existence.
Returning to the United States in 1973 he toured with Quincy Jones and The Brothers Johnson. He returned to Copenhagen, Denmark three years later, where he produced albums for Metronome Records, along with Kenny Drew. The album is titled Brief Encounter, and features the voices of Debby Cameron and Richard Boone. At decade’s end he started a record company with Kenny Drew called Matrix and spent his remaining years between New York and Copenhagen, performed in partnership with Art Farmer and led his own jazz combo called Dues.
Hard bop baritone, alto, and soprano saxophonist and flautist, composer, arranger, producer and educator Sahib Shihab, who beginning of 1986 was a visiting artist at Rutgers University, died from cancer on October 24, 1989, in Nashville, Tennessee at age 64.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mat Mathews was born Mathieu Hubert Wijnandts Schwarts on June 18, 1924 in The Hague, Netherlands and learned to play accordion while the country was still under the Nazi rule during World War II. It was after hearing Joe Mooney on a radio broadcast after the war that he decided to play jazz.
Moving to New York City in 1952, Mat formed a quartet which included Herbie Mann. He also worked and or recorded with Kenny Clarke, Art Farmer, Percy Heath, Carmen McRae, Oscar Pettiford, Joe Puma, Milt Jackson and Julius Watkins.
He worked mainly as a session musician in the late 1950s, and returned to the Netherlands in 1964, where he worked as an arranger, session musician, and record producer. In the 1970s, he again worked in the United States with Charlie Byrd, Doug Duke, Marian McPartland, and Clark Terry.
Accordionist, arranger, record producer Mat Mathews, who recorded eight albums as a leader, died on February 12, 2009 in Clarence Center, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Danielle Wertz was born on June 11, 1994 in Washington, D.C. She was a semi-finalist in the 2015 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocal Competition.
Danielle independently released her debut album, Intertwined, in 2017 which ranked #4 on Capital Bop’s list of Best DC Jazz Albums of 2017 and was a finalist in both the Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition and the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Vocal Competition.
After making a cross-country move to California, Wertz quickly became an integral and sought-after musical collaborator and educator in the Bay Area. She has taught workshops and masterclasses at the Berkeley Jazzschool, joined the California Jazz Conservatory faculty, as well as the Sonoma State University faculty.
2022 saw her moving to NYC and being hired by Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA to co-create and co-star in a theatrical concert about the lives and music of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. In 2023 Danielle released her sophomore album, Other Side, as a composer and conceptualist. Reimagining arrangements of the Great American Songbook she paired them with her original compositions.
Vocalist, composer and arranger Danielle Wertz continues to collaborate as a new member of the NYC jazz scene, recording with Remy LeBoeuf, releasing a new album and looking forward to headline her first European tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gösta Theselius (was born June 9, 1922 in Stockholm, Sweden and was the younger brother of musician Hans Theselius.
He worked in the 1940s with a number of European big bands, including those of Thore Jederby, Hakan von Eichwald, Sam Samson, Lulle Elboj, and Thore Ehrling.
He played jazz into the 1950s, both as a saxophonist and a pianist. The latter instrument with Benny Bailey, Arne Domnerus, James Moody, and Charlie Parker, and composed copiously for film in the 1950s and 1960s.
Arranger, composer, film scorer, pianist and saxophonist Gösta Theselius died in Stockholm on January 24, 1976.
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