Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Morris Acevedo was born April 8, 1966 in Texas and started playing guitar in 6th grade. During his high school years he mostly played progressive Rock and Jazz Fusion in high school. After graduating he became a music major at North Texas State University and studied Jazz Performance and Music Education but a move to Boston, Massachusetts set his course to transfer to Berklee College of Music, earning a degree in Jazz Composition and Arranging. After earning his bachelor degree, he played full time in professional bands in Boston, and studied improvisation in New York City with Lee Konitz, Richie Bierach and Jerry Bergonzi before relocating to California in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In addition to his regular jazz and fusion group performances, he became smitten with teaching guitar and improvisation he taught for years in the Bay area. He currently holds the position of music director at Cardinal Newman High School. He has also held positions as the Jazz Guitar and Improvisation at the University of California at Berkeley’s Young Musician’s Program and guitar at his Berklee alma mater during summers.
He has performd with Joshua Redman, Jim Black, Ken Vandermark, the Either Orchestra, the Charlie Kolhase Quintet, organ Trio Be-3, Matt Wilson, Richie Cole’s Alto Madness Orchestra, Dam East, Scott Amendola, among others.
Guitarist and composer of new jazz and electronic ambient music Morris Acevedo, who has twice received a Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Service to Jazz, continues to perform, compose and educate.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,educator,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
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…
William James Finegan was born on April 3, 1917 in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in a household full of piano players. While growing up in Rumson, New Jersey, he attended Rumson-Fair Haven High School, and taught orchestration to schoolmate Nelson Riddle. He studied piano with Elizabeth Connelly, piano and musicianship with flautist/alto saxophonist Rudolph John Winthrop., and spent time studying at the Paris Conservatory.
He had his first professional experience leading his own piano trio before being offered a job as a staff arranger for Glenn Miller after Tommy Dorsey bought a copy of his Lonesome Road and recommended him. Finegan remained with Miller until 1942 and arranged such hits as Little Brown Jug, Sunrise Serenade, Song of the Volga Boatmen, Stardust, A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square and Jingle Bells. He arranged these songs in collaboration with Glenn Miller, but also arranged music for films in which the band appeared in the early Forties. He then worked off and on for Tommy Dorsey from 1942 to 1952.
In the late Forties Bill studied in New York City, then lived in Europe from 1948-1950 where he studied with Darius Milhaud and Valérie Soudères. After returning to the States in 1952, along with Eddie Sauter formed an ensemble, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, which remained active until 1957.
Following this collaboration, Finegan found work in advertising, writing music for commercials. In the Seventies, he arranged for the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Mel Lewis’s orchestra. He taught jazz at the University of Bridgeport in the 1980s. He wrote arrangements for cornetist Warren Vaché and the vocal group Chanticleer until his death in 2008.
Pianist, composer and arranger Bill Finegan died from pneumonia on June 4, 2008 in Bridgeport, Connecticut at the age 91.
More Posts: arranger,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
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…
Andrzej Trzaskowski was born on March 23, 1933 in Kraków, Poland. He began playing piano at age four and founded his first jazz band, Rhythm Quartet. He attended Jan III Sobieski High School, passed his final exams cum laude, and eventually was admitted to Jagiellonian University where he earned his masters degree with his thesis being on Charlie Parker. Prior to his admittance he earned his living by playing in Kraków, Łódź and Zakopane night clubs.
By 1956 he was performing at jazz festivals and being recognized as the best jazz pianist by a Przekrój poll. From 1958, he played together with Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski in the band Jazz Believers. The following year Trzaskowski moved permanently to Warsaw, established his own hard bop band, The Wreckers, that drew inspiration from the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Horace Silver. In 1960, the Trzaskowski’s Trio accompanied saxophonist Stan Getz, and they recorded together the album Stan Getz & Andrzej Trzaskowski Trio.
At the end of the 1950s he began working with Polish cinema, arranging and recording music for the film Night Train, composed or created soundtracks for films and appeared on the screen, playing piano in Innocent Sorcerers in 1960 and Feliks Falk’s Był jazz in 1981. Andrzej moved to the United States in 1961 with a new configuration of The Wreckers and toured the country.
The Andrzej Trzaskowski Quintet would go on to perform with Don Ellis, Ted Curson, and in 1963 the Quintet gave concerts in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, East Germany and Belgium over the next year. By 1963, he began to move away from bop music towards free jazz.
In the Seventies he performed and recorded at the Polskie Radio Jazz Studio, and became the head of Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra Studio S-1. From 1992 he lectured at the Jazz Department of the State Music School of Warsaw and during the last years of his life he composed almost exclusively for cinema and television. In 1995, he was awarded the Cross of Merit for his artistic career.
Pianist, composer and musicologist Andrzej Trzaskowski, who from the mid-1950s onward was regarded as an authority on syncopated music, died in Warsaw on September 16, 1998, aged 65.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano