Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jyrki Sakari Kukko was born July 8, 1953 in Kajaani, Finlan and started his career in the early 1960s as a singer participating in several singing contests and performing in radio stations, TV programs and other venues. At the age of 7, he began taking piano lessons and soon after started playing guitar and flute, then saxophone. The mid-1960s saw him forming bands, constructing a school band, playing mainly rock and roll, before forming a group of local dance bands.
He embarked his career at sixteen playing with the Kajaani Big Band, Kisu & Uniset, Markku Suominen’s Monopol, Tapiola Big Band, Oulunkylä Big Band, Maarit & Afrikan Tähti, Kalevala, SIMO Big Band, Jukka Tolonen’s band, Heikki Sarmanto’s band, Sensation Band of Addis Ababa, Mahmoud Ahmed’s Ibex Band, Etoile de Dakar, and Espoo Big Band through the Seventies. He founded the group Piirpauke in 1974.
He has performed with Youssou Ndour, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Bob Mose, Lester Bowie, Charlie Mariano, Thad Jones, Paquito d’Rivera, Ted Curson, Walter Bishop Jr., Herbie Hanckock’s HeadHunters, Richie Cole, Juan Carlos Romero, and numerous Finnish musicians.
Working as a studio-musician Kukko performed as a freelancer with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Finnish National Opera. He has composed music for his own bands, EBB, Koiton Laulu and several films and theaters.
Pianist, flutist, guitarist, saxophonist, vocalist and composer Sakari Kukko continues to perform with over forty countries around the globe.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,flute,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,saxophone,vocal
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Antonio Underwood was born on July 7, 1960 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He matriculated through the Yale School of Music as a Classical Tuba Major, where he was awarded several honors. Graduating in 1987 he has since been a member of the two-time Grammy Award winning McCoy Tyner Big Band.
He began his career playing in NYC clubs at the age of nineteen and has performed alongside Max Roach, Jerry Gonzalez, Julius Preister, Delfeayo Marsalis, Bob Belden, Christian McBride, Cecil Taylor, Cecil Bridgewater, Vincent Herring, Joshua Redman, Javon Jackson, Lester Bowie, John Faddis, Charlie Haden, Eddie Henderson, Billy Harper, and the list goes on.
He has been a cast member of Broadway musicals Juan Darien, Jelly’s Last Jam, One Mo’ Time and Further Mo. Tony’s composition and orchestration credits include recordings by Be Be Winans, Terry Dexter, John Purcell, The World Saxophone Quartet, Anthony Montgomery, among others. Owner of his own published material (380), brass quartets published by TAP Music (Iowa), and Jazz compositions published by ENJA Music, Germany.
Underwood has scored films Rumbling of the Earth and Shadows of the Dead. He has produced tracks for Lisa Fischer, Katreese Barnes, Steve Jordan, and Anthony Jackson. He is the first Black person to be a George Lucas scholar to the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at USC and is a Fulbright Scholar Lecturer in Serbia.
Tubist, composer and lecturer Tony Underwood continues to perform, compose and lecture.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,lecturer,music,tuba
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles William Jenkins was born July 5, 1956 in Bromley, Kent, England and was known to the jazz and blues worlds as Billy. He began learning the violin from the age of nine and two years later added piano and choir. By twelve he taught himself to play the guitar.
As a young teenager, Billy started regular jam sessions in the basement of the bohemian twenty-three room former hotel where he grew up. This jam session attracted many local contemporaries, his best friend at the time, Bill Broad, who the world came to know as Billy Idol and Steven Bailey, later to become Steven Severin.
During those teen years he performed in local church halls, USAF Bases in East Anglia, riverside pubs, local colleges and clubs under various names 1970-72. Jenkins toured and recorded for Arista Record’s Clive Davis with art rock band Burlesque from 1972-77, performed as a young adult with ‘alternative musical comedy’ duo The Fantastic Trimmer & Jenkins from 1979-82 and drummer Ginger Baker before founding the VOGC, the Voice of God Collective.
From 1983 – 93 he lived and worked at Wood Wharf Rehearsal Studios in Greenwich, England. Since then Billy has produced a large body of over 40 recorded albums including Scratches of Spain, Motorway At Night, Entertainment USA and Music For Two Cassette Machines. Some of his recordings are about his SE London environs and include Sounds Like Bromley, Greenwich, Still Sounds Like Bromley and Suburbia.
Guitarist, composer and bandleader Billy Jenkins, who is immersed in improvisation as ell as standards, continues to pursue his love of jazz and blues.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jason Miles was born June 30, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York. He went to Indiana State University and when jazz fusion was becoming popular in the 1970s he was in New York creating innovative techniques in synthesizer programming and electronic music.
In 1979 he recorded his debut album Cozmopolitan with Michael Brecker and Marcus Miller, although it was never released. During the 1980s he was a session musician who worked with Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Diana Ross, David Sanborn, and Luther Vandross.
The 1990s had him playing keyboards and writing music for the animated film The Snow Queen and People: A Musical Celebration of Diversity on the Disney Channel. He and his wife Kathy Byalick composed Visionary Path, a New Age album with narration by Diana Krall, Roberta Flack, and F. Murray Abraham.
In 2000 Miles released The Music of Weather Report, the first of several tribute albums. During the next year he won a Grammy Award for producing A Love Affair: The Music of Ivan Lins with appearances by Sting and Brenda Russell. His next solo album To Grover, with Love, was a tribute to Grover Washington Jr. that was nominated for Record of the Year by the National Smooth Jazz Awards. He also recorded tributes to Miles Davis and Marvin Gaye.
Keyboardist, composer and record producer Jason Miles, who has a discography of nineteen albums, continues to compose and perform.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,keyboards,music,record producer
ANAT COHEN QUARTETINHO
Following great success at some of the world’s great jazz festivals and venues with her Tentet, Grammy-nominated clarinetist and composer Anat Cohen shifts her focus to an intimate group sound with her newest band, the endlessly colorful Quartetinho (pronounced “quar-te-CHIN-yo,” i.e., little quartet).
The group of New York-based international multi-instrumentalist-virtuosos are all drawn from the ranks of her aforementioned Tentet. The idea of instrumental doubling to achieve a wide stylistic range comes from the larger group, and the spirit of this cross-cultural / stylistic ensemble ring true throughout their performances. They share a deep love for music in all its heterogeneity and it’s all amply represented in both recordings and the band’s own live show. The result is boundlessly melodic and lyrical, with a wide array of timbres and subtle details of orchestration.
The Group:
Clarinet: Anat Cohen
Bass: Tal Mashiach
Piano/Accordion: Vitor Gonçalves
Vibraphone/Percussion: James Shipp
Cover: $40.61 ~ $50.91
More Posts: adventure,bandleader,clarinet,composer,instrumental,jazz,music,preserving,travel