Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenji Yoshitake was born on April 5, 1985 in Sakura, Chiba, Japan on April 5, 1985 and started playing electric bass when he was 12 years old. After he graduated from high school, he entered Senzoku Gakuen College of Music in Yokohama studying acoustic bass, jazz theory, ear training, jazz arranging and ensemble.
In 2007, after receiving a scholarship he moved to Boston, Massachusetts for Berklee College of Music. During his tenure he studied with musicians such as John Lockwood, Greg Osby, Dave Santro, Victor Mendoza, Dave Samuels, Oscar Stagnaro, Marcello Pellitteri and Whit Brown.
Upon his graduation from Berklee College of Music graduation, he moved to New York. He has since been playing around the New York area. Though he hasn’t recorded as a leader at present, bassist Kenji Yoshitake has been playing with legendary singer Tony Middleton at Kitano every Sunday.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Matt Kendrick, was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on April 1, 1957 and attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He moved to New York City in 1977 and for four years performed in numerous avant-garde venues. After studying with jazz educator Jerry Coker at the University of Tennessee, and playing in the Knoxville Symphony, he returned home in 1981.
As a composer, he has released to critical acclaim five compact discs, featuring more than forty of his own compositions. He has scored music for three films, leads the Matt Kendrick Unit,and has performed with Marian McPartland, Tierney Sutton, Archie Shepp and Jaki Byard.
He serves on the board of Music Carolina, is the music director for Carolina Music Ways, and is co-artistic director for Music Carolina, a non-profit arts presenting organization. As an educator Kendrick was on the faculty at Wake Forest University for 25 years.
With four decades under his belt, bassist Matt Kendrick continues to compose, perform, and teach.
More Posts: bandleader,bass,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born Charles Isaacs on March 28, 1923 in Akron, Ohio, he initially played trumpet and tuba as a child before settling on bass. He served in the Army during World War II, where he took lessons from Wendell Marshall. After the war he played with Tiny Grimes from 1948–50, Earl Bostic from 1951 to 1953, Paul Quinichette in 1953, and Bennie Green in 1956.
Ike, as he was affectionately called, led a local band in Ohio in 1956, then played for two years in the trio behind Carmen McRae, whom he married late in the decade. He went on to work with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, then with Count Basie, Gloria Lynne, and Erroll Garner in the Sixties,
With his own small groups he recorded only once as a leader, At The Pied Piper in 1967 for RGB Records. On this recording he plays in a trio with Jack Wilson on piano and Jimmie Smith on drums. As a coleader he recorded two albums with Maxine Sullivan.
As a sideman he recorded twenty-six albums with Count Basie, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Roy Brown, Ray Bryant, Harry Edison, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Pee Wee Erwin, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Erroll Garner, Bennie Green, Al Grey, Jon Hendricks, Carmen McRae, Big Miller, Esther Phillips, Dan Wall, Jack Wilson, and Joe Williams.
Bassist Ike Isaacs died on February 27, 1981.
More Posts: bandleader,bass,history,instrumental,jazz,music
WCLK AT 50 | LIL JOHN & HIS ALL-STAR BAND
To celebrate WCLK 91.9’s 50th Anniversary the Atlanta Jazz Festival is presenting WCLK At 50: Featuring Lil John Roberts with an Atlanta All-Star Band.
Award-winning drummer Lil John Roberts will lead an Atlanta All-Star Band including these outstanding musicians: Phil Davis, Rodney Edge, Tres Gilbert, Derek Scott, Miguel Gaeten, Melvin Jones, Joe Gransden, Kebbi Williams, Jamel Mitchell, Mike Burton, Saunders Sermons, and Daniel Wytanis.
There will be special guest performances by Kathleen Bertrand, Cleveland Jones, Rhonda Thomas, Imani Grace-Cooper, Julie Dexter, Tony Hightower, Dashill Smith, and Alexandra Jackson.
As the Narrator, Jon Goode will weave in stories about the history and legacy of WCLK. Lil John Robert serves as the concert’s Music Director. The event is Co-Produced by Jamal Ahmad, Lil John Roberts, and Ray Cornelius.
More Posts: adventure,bass,concert,drums,festival,genius,jazz,music,percussion,piano,preserving,restaurant,travel,trumpet,vocal
STANLEY CLARKE
NEA Jazz Master and four-time Grammy Award Winner Stanley Clarke has attained “living legend” status during his over 50-year career as a bass virtuoso. He is the first bassist in history who doubles on acoustic and electric bass with equal ferocity and the first jazz-fusion bassist ever to headline tours, selling out shows worldwide. A veteran of over 40 albums, he won the 2011 Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy Award for The Stanley Clarke Band. Clarke co-founded the seminal fusion group Return to Forever with Chick Corea and Lenny White. In 2012 Return to Forever won a Grammy Award and Latin Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Forever.
Clarke’s creativity has been recognized and rewarded in every way imaginable: gold and platinum records, Grammy Awards, Emmy nominations, virtually every readers and critics poll in existence, and more. In 2022 Clarke was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of its four new Jazz Master honorees. He also was Rolling Stone’s very first Jazzman of the Year and bassist winner of Playboy’s Music Award for ten straight years. Clarke was honored with Bass Player Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of Guitar Player Magazine’s “Gallery of Greats.” In 2004 he was featured in Los Angeles Magazine as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People. He was honored with the key to the city of Philadelphia and put his hands in cement as a 1999 inductee into Hollywood’s “Rock Walk” on Sunset Boulevard. In 2011 he was honored with the highly prestigious Miles Davis Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival for his entire body of work. Clarke has won Downbeat Magazine’s Reader’s and Critics Poll for Best Electric Bass Player for many years. In September 2016 he became a part of the permanent collection displayed at the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC.
Unable to tour most of 2020, Clarke’s Pandemic work has involved developing his web series, Stanley Clarke’s Bass Nation. The series premiered November 2020. The project is about the dynamics of the music industry, recording and performing, and includes Stanley’s conversations with noted musicians, gear reviews, play-throughs and performances.
Born in Philadelphia, Clarke has been a constant force of nature in American music since the early 1970s with the success of the jazz-fusion group Return To Forever. That accomplishment gave way to a number of extremely successful solo albums for Clarke. Along the way, he has collaborated with Quincy Jones, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, The Police, Herbie Hancock and many more, and has shared the stage with Bob Marley and Miles Davis.
Clarke heads his own record label, Roxboro Entertainment Group. Five artists were chosen for its first releases; Lloyd Gregory, Sunnie Paxson, Ruslan Sirota, Kennard Ramsey and piano prodigy Beka Gochiashvili Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. It will soon be releasing singer Natasha Agrama’s CD, The Heart of Infinite Change
Clarke believes in giving back to help young musicians hone their skills. He and his wife Sofia established The Stanley Clarke Foundation seventeen years ago as a charitable organization, which offers scholarships to talented young musicians.
More Posts: adventure,bass,club,genius,jazz,music,preserving,travel