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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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louie Bellson was born Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni on July 6, 1924 in Rock Falls, Illinois. He started playing drums at three years of age and at 15 pioneered the double-bass drum set-up. By 17 he triumphed over 40,000 drummers to win the Slingerland National Gene Krupa contest and graduated from high school in 1939.
1943 saw Bellson performing with Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee in the film “The Powers Girl” followed two more by the decade’s end. Between 1943 and 1952, he performed with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Duke Ellington, for whom he composed “Skin Deep” and “The Hawk Talks”. In 1952 he married Pearl Bailey, leaving Ellington to be her musical director, a union that lasted 38 years until her death in 1990.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, Louie performed with Jazz At The Philharmonic or J.A.T.P., Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Count Basie, again with Duke Ellington and Harry James, as well as appearing on several Ella Fitzgerald studio albums.
Equally adept as a big band or small group drummer, Bellson recorded extensively and led his own big and small bands, occasionally maintaining separate bands on each coast. His sidemen have included Blue Mitchell, Don Menza, Larry Novak, John Heard, Clark Terry, Pete and Conte Candoli and Snooky Young.
Louie Bellson, composer, arranger, bandleader and jazz educator passed away from Parkinson’ s disease on February 14, 2009.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eric Watson was born July 5, 1955 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. After graduating from Oberlin Conservatory he moved to Paris and by 1982 he recorded his first trio album with Paul Motian and Ed Schuller followed by two solo albums.
He worked in a long-time duo with double-bass player John Lindberg that became extended with Albert Mangelsdorff and Ed Thigpen. He has played and recorded with Steve Lacy, Linda Sharrock and Joelle Leandrein1991. His trio with Mark Dressler and Ed Thigpen recorded “Silent Hearts” in 1998 that became the basis for the “Full Metal Quartets” a year later with saxophonist Bennie Wallace.
Eric’s current small catalogue of seven recordings includes a solo piano project “Sketches of Solitude” in 2002 that became one of the best-selling jazz albums in France. Between 2003 and 2005 he toured Europe, Asia, and Australia with tenor saxophonist Christof Lauer.
His dance score The Peking Ballet was commissioned by Radio City Music Hall to a record summer attendance of 200,000. Watson has presented commissioned works at the Lyon Opera, the State Theatre in Poitiers, he has written for Martial Solal and the Orchestra National de Jazz and for Australian violinist Jane Peters.
In 2001, Eric Watson was appointed artistic director of La Villette Jazz Festival, is musical consultant to the director of the Cité de la Musique, and in 2003 he was appointed as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Dose A Day – Blues Away