Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ettore Carucci was born on May 18, 1969 in Taranto, Italy and began playing the piano at the age of four. Graduating in classical piano he went on to join a jazz band named Taras Jazz Forum in 1989 and played with a jazz quintet composed of experienced jazz musicians from his area. By 1993/94 he attended two workshops, Siena Jazz and Umbria Jazz, where he won two scholarships. He studied jazz with Danilo Rea, Ray Santisi, and Paul Schmelling.
Throughout his career Ettore has had the opportunity to perform with a who’s who list of American musicians not limited to Benny Golson, Jerry Bergonzi, Eric Marienthal, Dennis Chambers, Christopher Thomas, Greg Hutchinson, Mike Moreno, Tony Scott, Bob Mintzer, Sonny Fortune, and Rachel Gould, as well as Anne Ducros, Maria Pia De Vito, Massimo Moriconi, Maurizio Giammarco, Marco Tamburini, Philip Catherine, Massimo Manzi, Fabrizio Bosso, Tullio De Piscopo, the Jazz Studio Orchestra and numerous others.
By 2001 he was participating in the Umbria Jazz Festival workshops where he won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Ettore had the opportunity to perform with the Berkee College of Music Trio. In the same year he participated at the jazz festival in Orvieto with the Berklee Award Group during the edition of Umbria Jazz Winter.
2005 saw him playing at the Blue Note in Milan, Italy with the Sonny Fortune Quartet and two years later was playing with his peers in New York City. Pianist, composer and educator Ettore Carucci has recorded nine albums as a leader, thirty-eight as a sideman and has released twenty compilations. He continues to compose, teach, perform and work on various artistic projects..
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Francis Picard was born May 17, 1934 in Tottenham, London, England and started learning music when he was seven years old by taking lessons on the piano.
After serving in the RAF, during which he played on weekends with Cy Laurie, he spent a further four months with Laurie before joining Humphrey Lyttelton, from 1954 until 1961. Through the Sixties and into the early 1970s he worked with Tony Coe as well as co-leading a quintet with Kathy Stobart. Then beginning in 1975 to 1983, he was a member of the London Jazz Big Band, led by Stan Greig.
During the early 1980s, with his friends Ian Stewart, Colin Smith and Dick Morrissey, he was a founding member of Rocket 88. and later went on to join the Charlie Watts Big Band.. Trombonist John Picard continues to perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pete Paul George Jacobsen was born on May 16, 1950 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Having lost his sight as a baby, due to a growth behind the optic nerve, he studied at the Worcester School for the Blind before forming his own trio, which was good enough to attract local television coverage. In 1969, he moved to London, England to study at the Royal Academy of Music. With a keen memory and perfect pitch, hi’s lack of sight was no obstacle.
In London, Jacobsen played with saxophonists Barbara Thompson, Isotope’s Gary Boyle, and Don Weller. He became a member of the jazz-fusion band Morrissey–Mullen, but it was not until 1985 that he recorded with them on This Must Be The Place and Happy Hour in 1988. Recommended by trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, he landed the piano chair in the Bobby Wellins Quartet and recorded four albums with the group from 1978 to 1989, Live… Jubilation, Dreams Are Free, ERCO Makes Light Work, and Birds of Brazil.
Pete regularly collaborated with Chris Biscoe and recorded tw albums with him and often performed as a duo, recording several BBC Jazz Club performances. He played and recorded with trombonist Jimmy Knepper, and contributed Song For Keith for the recording of the 1980 album Primrose Path. He would also write the song “Black Book” for the album Highly Committed Media Players.
During this time, Jacobsen was part of the resident rhythm section at the Cambridge Modern Jazz Club. He would go on to play with Robin Kenyatta, Alan Skidmore, Peter King, Eberhard Weber, Paul Carmichael, and Chris Fletcher. He gave memorable solo recitals, toured and played on three of their albums with the Celtic-jazz band Cármina.
In 1994, Jacobsen released his only solo album Ever Onward. Through the rest of the decade he performed with his own trio and with the Tim Whitehead quartet or trio. He spent much of his time in the East End of London playing obscure clubs with unknown or struggling musicians. Pianist Pete Jacobsen fell ill after a series of rural art center gigs and transitioned on April 29, 2002 at age 51.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Karin Krog was born May 15, 1937 in Oslo, Norway and started singing jazz as a teenager, attracting attention while performing in jam sessions in her hometown. By 1955, she was hired by the pianist Kjell Karlsen to sing in his sextet.
1962 saw Karin forming her first band and becoming a student of the Norwegian-American singer Anne Brown, studying with her until 1969. Throughout the Sixties she performed with the rhythm and blues band Public Enemies, releasing the hit singles Sunny and Watermelon Man.
She has worked with Vigleik Storaas, Jacob Young, Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen, Jan Garbarek, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Don Ellis, Steve Kuhn, Archie Shepp, Paul Bley, John Surman, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Red Mitchell, and Bengt Hallberg. During 1994, she became the first Norwegian musician to have an album released by Verve Records. The album Jubilee was a compilation of songs from her thirty-year career.
She has released thirty-seven albums as a leader with her latest live album Infinite Paths in 2016, as well as three as a guest. Vocalist Karin Krog, who has been bestowed with fifteen awards, including being knighted in 2005 into the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olavz, continues to compose and perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Skip Martin was born Lloyd Vernon Martin on May 14, 1916 in Robinson, Illinois. He was an active arranger during the swing jazz band era of the 1930s and 1940s. working with Count Basie, Charlie Barnet, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. He doubled as a reedist with the latter three, and recorded with trumpeter Cootie Williams in the early 1940s as well.
Later in the 1940s Skip worked with Les Brown before moving to Los Angeles, California in the 1950s, where he did extensive work as a staff and freelance orchestrator, studio conductor and popular song arranger Tony Martin, The Pied Pipers, the Andrews and De Castro sister groups, and Barbara Ruick.
Martin recorded three albums as a leader and produced material for West Coast jazz and swing concept albums such as Scheherajazz in 1959 for Somerset Records. In 1963 he joined Nelson Riddle on a dream team of arrangers working on the Sinatra-Burke compilation albums for the ambitious Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre project, featuring the singing members of the Rat Pack, plus Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Jo Stafford.
In Hollywood, Skip was one of the team of orchestrators contributing to Singin’ in the Rain, Guys and Dolls, and shared arrangement credits with Conrad Salinger on Summer Stock, Kiss Me Kate and Funny Face, where a few songs of the Great American Songbook came from. He retained sole credit as orchestrator for Judy Garland’s comeback vehicle A Star Is Born, which gave us The Man That Got Away and It’s A New World.
Saxophonist, clarinetist, and music arranger Skip Martin transitioned on February 12, 1976, in Los Angeles, California.
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