Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anne Mette Iversen was born March 15, 1972 in Aarhus, Denmark. She studied classical piano at the Royal Academy of Music in her hometown and bass at the Rhythmic Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, Denmark and The New School University in New York City.
Living in New York City from 1998 to 2012 Iversen co-founded the Brooklyn Jazz Underground in 2006 and is co-owner of the related record label Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records, which was formed in 2008. She works as a sideperson in various settings and as a freelance composer.
Currently based in Berlin, Germany. Iversen was Composer in Residence for Sweden’s Norrbotten Big Band in 2016. Anne’s composing is recognized for her ability to integrate classical music with jazz ensembles. She is influenced by major classical composers as well as jazz and Brazilian artists and composers.
Bassist Anne Mette Iversen has recorded ten albums between 1998 and 2020 and continues to perform, record and compose.
More Posts: bandleader,bass,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patty Waters was born on March 11, 1946 in Iowa and started singing semi-professionally in high school. After school, she sang for the Jerry Gray Hotel Jazz Band, then her family moved to Denver, Colorado. There she started listening to Billie Holiday, whose life and singing had a profound influence on her.
The early 1960s saw her following the recommendation of friends to move to New York City. Albert Ayler heard her in a dining club and introduced her to Bernard Stollman, the owner of the experimental jazz label ESP-Disk. Her most influential albums, Sings released in 1965) and College Tour in 1966 were recorded on this label.
In the late 1960s, she spent time in Europe and then left the music world in 1969 to raise her son in California. Almost 30 years later she recorded the album Love Songs in 1996 and began performing in public again. In 2004 she released You Thrill Me: A Musical Odyssey, a collection of rare and unissued recordings from the years 1962–1979.
She returned in 2019 with the album Live recorded at the First Unitarian Congregational Church in Brooklyn. The album was followed in 2020 by another live recording entitled An Evening In Houston. That same year she released an unissued 1970 LP titled Plays via her own label.
Vocalist Patty Waters, best known for her free jazz recordings in the Sixties and her recording of the nearly fourteen minute version of the traditional song Black Is the Colour (Of My True Love’s Hair from Sings, which is rendered in a haunting, anguished wail, continues to record, perform and tour.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,vocal
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richard Hyman was born in New York City on March 8, 1927 and grew up in suburban Mount Vernon, New York. His older brother, Arthur, owned a jazz record collection and introduced him to the music of Bix Beiderbecke and Art Tatum. Trained classically by his uncle, concert pianist Anton Rovinsky, who taught him touch and a certain amount of repertoire while he pursued Chopin on his own.
Enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1945, Dick was transferred to the U.S. Navy band department. After leaving the Navy he attended Columbia University where he won a piano competition with the prize being 12 free lessons with swing-era pianist Teddy Wilson. It was during this period Hyman fell in love with jazz.
During the 1950s Relax Records released his first two solo piano versions of All the Things You Are and You Couldn’t Be Cuter. Hyman recorded two honky-tonk piano albums under the pseudonym Knuckles O’Toole and recorded more as Willie the Rock Knox and Slugger Ryan.
In the 1950s and early 1960s Dick worked as a studio musician and performed with Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Guy Mitchell, LaVern Baker, Ruth Brown, Mitch Miller and many more. He played with Charlie Parker for Parker’s only film appearance and had a stint as music director for Arthur Godfrey’s television show from 1959 to 1961.
As a composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist he worked on eleven Woody Allen films as well as other films like Moonstruck and Scott Joplin. Hyman composed and performed scores for ballet and dance companies. In the 1960s, Hyman recorded several pop albums on Enoch Light’s Command Records using the Lowrey organ and then the Moog synthesizer.
Between 1970 and 2014 he recorded 112 albums as a leader, sixty-two as a sideman, and arranged four albums for Count Basie, Trigger Alpert and Flip Phillips. He has been a guest performer at jazz festivals and concert venues around the world. In 1995 pianist and composer Dick Hyman moved his wife Julia permanently to Venice, Florida.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz..
Benny de Weille was born on March 6, 1915 in Lübeck, Germany. He studied clarinet under Hans Helmke and was heavily influenced by Benny Goodman, whom he often emulated in his own ensembles.
Benny made recordings with Teddy Stauffer, Hans Rehmstedt, and Willy Berking in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1940 he led his own Bar Trio. Following World War II he worked at Radio Frankfurt and conducted the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra.
Clarinetist and bandleader Benny de Weille, whose last recordings were in a Dixieland style in 1951, died on December 17, 1977 in Westerland, Germany.
More Posts: bandleader,clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of jazz…
David Darling was born March 4, 1941 in Elkhart, Indiana. Interested in music from an early age, he began piano when he was four, cello at ten, and string bass in high school. He studied classical cello at Indiana State University and after graduating remained there another four years as a teacher.
Working as a studio musician in Nashville, Tennessee he was a member of the Paul Winter Consort until 1978. During the following year Gus was part of the chamber jazz group Gallery with Ralph Towner and released his first solo album, Journal October. His performance and composition draw on a wide range of styles, including classical, jazz, Brazilian, African, and Indian music.
He has written and performed music for more than a dozen major motion pictures from 1988 to 2004 and recorded a collaboration with the Wulu Bunun, a group of Taiwanese aborigines. In 2007 he recorded The Darling Conversations, with Julie Weber discussing his music philosophy. He followed this in 2009 with the release of the Grammy-winning Prayer for Compassion.
In the Eighties he began his life as an educator of young children by joining Young Audiences, founded Music for People, which seeks to encourage self-expression through musical improvisation. He became part of a collaboration of music teachers and performers offering a training program in holistic and intercultural approaches to healing with sound and music at the New York Open Center Sound and Music School.
Cellist and composer David Darling died in his sleep on January 8, 2021.
More Posts: bandleader,cello,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music