Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pia Beck was born Pieternella Beck on September 18, 1925 in Den Haag, Netherlands. She was a natural on the piano without significant musical training. In 1945 she joined the Miller Sextet taking the piano chair and vocalist slot touring Belgium, Germany, Sweden and the Dutch East Indies.
By 1949 she started her own combo and her first composition, Pia’s Boogie, became an instant hit, though she never learned to read sheet music. 1952 saw her first visit the United States, toured the jazz club circuit – an annual event until 1964, was nicknamed “The Flying Dutchess” by Time Magazine who also gave her the cover, and was bestowed honorary citizenship of New Orleans and Atlanta.
In 1965 Beck emigrated to Costa de Sol with her life partner and three children, opened a piano bar and when it went bankrupt she opened a real estate firm and wrote travel guides. By 1975 she was on the comeback trail in Scheveningen, Netherlands and once again enjoyed a successful career, albeit, openly exposing her homosexuality during her U.S. tours by resisting against the anti-gay activist Anita Bryant during the late Seventies.
Pia Beck said goodbye to the general public in 2003. The pianist who Oscar Peterson called the best jazz pianist in the world, died at age 84 of heart failure on November 26, 2009 in Malaga, Spain.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born August 26, 1943, Dorival Tostes Caymmi, the son of famous Brazilian musicians Dorival Caymmi and Stella Maris. He began playing piano at age eight, studied music theory at the Conservatorio Lorenzo Fernandez and in 1959 made his professional debut accompanying his sister, Nana.
In 1960 Dori became a member of Groupo dos Sete, writing music for plays aired on Brazilian television. He co-directed and played viola in the play Opinião, an important transitional work between the styles of bossa nova and MPB and directed the play Arena Conta Zumbi. For a time he produced Edu Lobo, Eumir Deodato and Nara Leao, co-wrote the prize winning song “Saveiros” with Nelson Matta, a collaboration that lasted many years and produced some of Brazil’s biggest hits.
Caymmi played and toured with Paul Winter, arranged and directed albums by Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa and Gilberto Gil, and was involved with the tropicalia movement of the late 1960s, but did not record in this style himself due to his distaste for Euro-American pop music. He wrote scores for numerous films and television shows in the 1970s and 1980s, moved to Los Angeles, California in 1989 and has since played or recorded with Dionne Warwick, Toots Thielemans, Marilyn Scott, Oscar Castro-Neves, Eliane Elias, Richard Silveira and Edu Lobo; was a collaborator celebrating Tom Jobim at Carnegie Hall and arranged the music for Spike Lee’s film, Clockers.
Dori Caymmi has been nominated for Latin Grammys several times and is a two-time Grammy Award winner for Best Latin Song and Best Latin Samba Recording. The Brazilian singer, guitarist, songwriter, arranger, and producer has an extensive discography dating back to 1964 and he continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roberta Piket was born on August 9, 1966 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, the composer Frederick Piket, gave her first piano lessons when she was seven. She began playing jazz in her early teens, studying jazz piano with Walter Bishop, Jr and classical piano with Vera Wels. After graduating from prestigious Hunter College High School, she entered the joint double-degree program at Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer ScienceAll Postsfrom the former and a Bachelor’s Degree in Jazz Studies from the latter. She studied privately with Fred Hersch, Stanley Cowell, Jim McNeely, Bob Moses, Richie Beirach and Sofia Rosoff.
Roberta’s swinging and inventive straight-ahead jazz playing as well as her powerful and sensitive work in creative improvised music has gained her the respect of the jazz community. She has been a side woman performing or recording with David Liebman, Rufus Reid, Billy Hart, Michael Formanek, Lionel Hampton, Mickey Roker, Billy Mintz, Harvey Wainapel, Eliot Zigmund, Benny Golson, Ratzo Harris and the BMI/NY Jazz Orchestra.
Having appeared twice on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, Piket has performed in Europe and japan as well both as a side woman and leader of her own trio and was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk BMI Composers’ Competition. She has released ten albums under her own name and frequently make the “best of” lists of the major jazz magazines and earning rave reviews in Jazz Times, Downbeat, the Washington Post, and Jazziz. A musical pioneer in several ways, Roberta is the first and only woman leader with a release on the prestigious Criss Cross label.
As an educator Roberta hold master classes at the Eastman School of Music, Rutgers University, Cal Arts, Duke University, the Northwestern University Composers’ Colloquium, among others around the world; has taught at the Litchfield Jazz Camp and the Vermont Jazz Center and has coached ensembles at Long Island University and maintained several private students.
Pianist and composer Roberta Piket occasionally performs on B3 organ, as she continues to record, perform and tour throughout Europe America and Japan.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anton Schwartz was born July 16, 1967 in New York City. He attended the Dalton School, studied jazz privately with Warne Marsh and Eddie Daniels, and went on to pursue a degree in advanced mathematics from New York and Columbia Universities, and computer science at Stanford University where he pursued research in artificial intelligence. He soon left academia to become a full-time musician.
The saxophonist and composer has released five CDs as a leader on his Antonjazz label that has garnered notoriety amongst jazz enthusiasts. His 2006 release, Radiant Blue, landed in the Top Five on the U.S. jazz radio charts and featured sidemen Peter Bernstein and Taylor Eigsti. His most recent release “Flash Mob” has trumpeter Dominick Farinacci and pianist Taylor Eigsti joining him.
Anton performs periodically at Yoshi’s, has been a guest on NPR’s JazzSet and has been a soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra. He returned to academia and has held artist-in-residence at Harvard University and The Brubeck Institute. He is currently a faculty member of the Jazzschool at the California Jazz Conservancy in Berkeley, California and The Stanford jazz Workshop.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sadik Hakim was born Argonne Thornton on July 15, 1919 in Duluth, Minnesota and was taught piano by his grandfather and started playing professionally about 1939. In 1944 he moved to New York City and was hired by Ben Webster. A participant in the emergence of bebop, he shared piano duties with Dizzy Gillespie on Charlie Parker’s famous “Ko-Ko” session.
He recorded with Dexter Gordon and Lester Young, heard on the latter’s I’m Confessin’, also credited with co-writing Thelonious Monk’s standard “Eronel” and is rumored to have written a few famous bop tunes credited to other composers. He adopted his Muslim name in 1947.
Hakim moved to Montreal after visiting in 1949 and was a big fish on the small bebop scene there, working with Louis Metcalf’s International Band. Compelled to leave Canada following a drug bust in 1950 he returned to New York and through the decade worked with James Moody and George Holmes Tate.
He returned to Montreal from 1966 to 1976, leading bands and recording with Charles Biddle. He led a few recording dates from 1976–1980 and cut an album with Sonny Stitt in 1978. Hakim played “Round Midnight” at Monk’s funeral in 1982, and the pianist and composer passed away himself the following year on June 20, 1983.
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