MARIA SCHNEIDER ORCHESTRA
Maria Schneider’s music has been hailed by critics as “evocative, majestic, magical, heart-stoppingly gorgeous, imaginative, revelatory, riveting, daring, and beyond categorization.” Blurring the lines between genres, her varied commissioners stretch from Jazz at Lincoln Center to The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra to the American Dance Festival, and include collaboration with David Bowie. She is among a small few to receive Grammys in multiple genres, having received the award in jazz and classical, as well as for her work with David Bowie.
Schneider’s many honors also include: 14 Grammy-nominations, 7 Grammy Awards, numerous Jazz Journalists Association awards, DownBeat and Jazztimes Critics and Readers Polls awards, an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, the University of Minnesota, ASCAP’s esteemed Concert Music Award (2014), the nation’s highest honor in jazz, “NEA Jazz Master” (2019), and election into the 2020 American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gene DiNovi was born Eugene Salvatore DiNovi on May 26, 1928 in New York City. While in his teens he worked with Joe Marsala and Chuck Wayne and by the late Forties was very active live and on record. During this period he worked with Buddy DeFranco, Benny Goodman, Chubby Jackson, Brew Moore, Boyd Raeburn, Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw, Lester Young.
At the end of the decade and into the 1950s Gene worked extensively as an accompanist for vocalists, starting with Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and Anita O’Day. He recorded with Lena Horne multiple times in the late 1950s and early 1960s and accompanied her on European tours. He also led his own small combos with sidemen including Danny Bank, Johnny Carisi, Bill Crow, Tony Fruscella, and Dave Schildkraut.
He began working more as a studio musician and film score composer in the 1960s. Toward the end of the decade he played with Carmen McRae, then moved to Canada to take a position as a house pianist with the CBC in Toronto. In the 1980s he worked with Ruby Braff and toured and recorded in Japan, and continued to be active as a performer into the 1990s, working with James Campbell, Don Thompson, Memo Acevedo, Dave Young, and Terry Clarke.
Pianist and composer Gene DiNovi, now 95, lives a quiet life.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Friedrich Gulda was born on May 16, 1930 in Vienna, Austria and as the son of a teacher began learning to play the piano at age 7 with Felix Pazofsky at the Wiener Volkskonservatorium. In 1942, he entered the Vienna Music Academy, where he studied piano and musical theory under Bruno Seidlhofer and Joseph Marx.
During World War II as teenagers, Gulda and his friend Joe Zawinul were rebellious and would perform forbidden music, including jazz, in violation of the government’s prohibition of playing such music. Winning first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1946, he began to play concerts worldwide, making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1950, and with Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda, formed what became known as the “Viennese troika”. Friedrich enjoyed a renowned classical career for years before his 1956 engagement at Birdland in New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival.
In 1966 he organized the International Competition for Modern Jazz in 1966, and established the International Musikforum, a school in Ossiach, Austria two years later, for students who wanted to learn improvisation. From the 1950s on Gulda cultivated a professional interest in jazz, writing songs and free improvisation or open music improvisations. He also recorded as a vocalist under the pseudonym “Albert Golowin”, fooling music critics for years until it was realized that Gulda and Golowin were the same person.
In jazz, he found “the rhythmic drive, the risk, the absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught. He also took up playing the baritone saxophone. His 1970 album, As You Like It, includes the standards Round Midnight and What Is This Thing Called Love?, as well as his own classic Blues For H.G. that is dedicated to Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer.
From the late 1960s through the 1980s he continued his straight-ahead swing and bop-based jazz often in European Jazz big bands, which he often organized yearly performances and recordings. He performed and recorded playing clavichord, percussion instruments, and a bass recorder wooden flute with musicians involved in free improvisation, including Cecil Taylor, Barre Phillips, Ursula Anders, John Surman, Albert Mangelsdorff, Stu Martin, and Fritz Pauer. He would go on to collaborate in the coming decades with Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, and Chick Corea.
When the Vienna Music Academy awarded him its Beethoven Ring in recognition of his performances, he accepted it but then later reconsidered and returned it. To promote a concert in 1999, he announced his own death in a press release so that the concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus could serve as a resurrection party.
Pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda, who worked in both the classical and jazz fields, transitioned from heart failure at the age of 69 on January 27, 2000 at his home in Weissenbach, Austria.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rico Belled was born in the Netherlands on May 9, 1970 to Spanish/Swiss parents. Growing up in a multicultural environment, with a pianist father, he was exposed to many styles of music. He started playing piano at age 11, exploring everything from classical music to jazz. At 15 he started playing gigs with local bands doing pop and blues, while slowly getting interested in the bass, which he started practicing at age 17.
In 1989, while studying electrical engineering at the TU Delft, Rico met Roy Cruz in The Hague and joined his weekly Sunday night band at De Pater, exploring the world of Funk and Jazz playing Fender Rhodes. During these sessions they broke down all stylistic walls from playing Weather Report tunes to full on James Brown Funk, featuring as many as 10 people on the little stage. Here he got an education in the art of jamming.
Realizing music was his passion, in 1992 Belled gave up engineering and moved to Los Angeles, California and attended the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. Post graduation he was already playing with a few different groups in the Los Angeles area and in the following years made a name for himself as a bass and keyboard session musician. His breakthrough came when he joined Wrecking Crew pianist Don Randi and the house band at the Baked Potato in 1994. A two year residency offered the opportunity to lead his own group performing his original music at the club.
This led to him performing and recording with Marc Antoine, The Dan Band, Sound Assembly, Jeff Robinson, Leslie Paula’s Latin Soul Band, Liza Minelli, Chris Standring, Scott Grimes, Keiko Matsui and many others. He has co-written and published music with Mindi Abair and Jeff Robinson. All this led to him being asked to join the Rippingtons, starting with recording the album ‘Modern Art’, for which he received a Grammy Nomination in 2010. Still a member, bassist Rico Belled remains one of the top bassists in Los Angeles, known for his deep groove and versatility, staying busy live and in the studio.
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Magnus Öström was born in Västerås, Västmanland, Sweden on May 3, 1965. The son of an artist couple, he was influenced by the musical tastes of his older brother who was into Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. By the age of eight years he had built his first drum set and soon played music with a friend, Esbjörn Svensson.
He attended the musical grammar school in Västerås in 1981 and played with the Svensson trio. Between 1983 and 1985, he studied at the adult education center in Sjövik, Sweden before he continued his studies at the Music Academy Stockholm, Sweden. During this time, he played with various bands on the Stockholm scene and between 1987 and 1992 he was a member of singer Monica Borrfors band.
In 1989 Magnus was back with Svensson, initially in the group Stock Street B , then again in a trio with the bassist Dan Berglund with an album released in 1993. e.s.t. released twelve albums, toured internationally with great success, and played until the accidental death of Svensson.
Öström has worked with Bobo Stenson, Lennart Åberg, Palle Danielsson, Nils Landgren, Stina Nordenstam, Peter Gullin and Steve Dobrogosz as well as numerous American musicians such as Michele Hendricks, Benny Golson, Mulgrew Miller, Stefon Harris, Pat Metheny or Alan Pasqua. In 2010, he founded his own quartet and released their first album Thread of Life, which received an Echo Jazz.
In 2019, the ACT label released Live in Gothenburg for the first time. Drummer Magnus Öström, known for being part of the first Esbjörn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.), continues to perform and record.
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