Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Darius Brubeck was born David Darius Brubeck on June 14, 1947 in San Francisco, California into a musical family. His father Dave and mother Iola Brubeck named after his father’s teacher and mentor, French composer Darius Milhaud. Moving from Oakland, California they settled in Wilton, Connecticut in 1960 and ultimately graduated from Wilton High School in 1965.
Darius majored in ethnomusicology and the history of religion at Wesleyan University, graduating cum laude in 1969. While there he composed and performed the music for the film Christopher’s Movie Matinee. During the next decade and into the early 1980s he would go on to lead two groups, The Darius Brubeck Ensemble and Gathering Forces, cross America as a sideman with Don McLean and record two albums with guitarist Larry Coryell. He toured the world and recorded as a member of Two Generations of Brubeck and The New Brubeck Quartet, both led by his father.
In 1983, Brubeck and his South African wife, Catherine, moved to Durban, South Africa, joined the music Department at the University of Natal and initiated the first degree course in Jazz Studies offered by an African university. In 1989, he was appointed as Professor of Jazz Studies and Director of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music, where he taught until 2005.
A move to London, England in 2005, Darius taught courses at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Brunel University. Appointed as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Jazz Studies in 2007, he taught at Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul, turkey and subsequently at the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2010.
His years in South Africa saw him forming five student/staff bands, record the album The Jazzanians: We Have Waited Too Long to be released in 2024, form the band Afro Cool Conceptwhich toured for nearly 15 years and recorded a live album in New Orleans.
As a composer Brubeck has written music for all types of ensemble, large and small. He has arranged and written an original composition for his father’s 80th birthday, and the Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a residency as a composer at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy.
Pianist, author, composer, arranger and educator Darius Brubeck, who has had a documentary film made by Michiel ten Kleij titled Playing the Changes: Tracking Darius Brubeck, currently leads The Darius Brubeck Quartet.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John William Stevens was born on June 10, 1940 in Brentford, Middlesex, England, the son of a tap dancer. He listened to jazz as a child but was more interested in drawing and painting, through which he expressed himself throughout his life. He studied at the Ealing Art College and then started work in a design studio, but left at 19 to join the Royal Air Force. It was here that he studied the drums at its School of Music in Uxbridge, England and where he met Trevor Watts and Paul Rutherford, two musicians who became close collaborators.
In the mid-1960s, Stevens began to play in London jazz groups with Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott, and in 1965 he led a quartet. He moved away from mainstream jazz when he heard free jazz from the U.S. by musicians like Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler. By 1966, he formed the Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME) with Watts and Rutherford. The band moved into the Little Theatre Club at Garrick Yard, St Martin’s Lane, London, England. In 1967, they released their debut album, Challenge, however, his interest turned to quiet music, non-Western music and improvisation.
Stevens would go on to play with free improvisors Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Julie Tippetts and Robert Calvert, until the mid-1970s when the SME settled down to regulars Stevens, Nigel Coombes on violin, and Roger Smith on guitar. During the same period he consistently played with guitarist and songwriter John Martyn as part of a trio that included bassist Danny Thompson, recording Martyn’s 1976 Live at Leeds.
The Eighties saw John becoming an educator involved with Community Music, an organisation through which he took his form of music making to youth clubs, mental health institutions, the Lewisham Academy of Music, and other unusual places. Notes taken during these sessions were later turned into a book for the Open University called Search and Reflect.
Drummer John Stevens died at the age of 54 from a heart attack on September 13, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mick Goodrick was born on June 9, 1945 in Sharon, Pennsylvania and began studying guitar in his pre-teens and was performing professionally a few years later. At sixteen he became interested in jazz at a Stan Kenton Band Camp. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts and attended the Berklee School of Music from 1963 to 1967, eventually teaching at Berklee,
After spending a few years touring with Gary Burton, he returned to Boston, he settled into a career largely as an educator. Goodrick’s notable students include Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, John Scofield, Lage Lund, Mike Stern, Avner Strauss, and Rale Micic.
During the 1980s to the late 1990s,Mick worked with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, Jack DeJohnette and with Steve Swallow. He performed in a duo with Pat Metheny at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2005 and with Wolfgang Muthspiel at the Jazz Standard in 2008.
Guitarist Mick Goodrick died November 16, 2022 from the long-term effects of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 77.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Karl Sterling was born in Ithaca, New York on June 5, 1961. Growing up in a musical household, it was a natural thing for him to take to music and drums. Both parents attended the Ithaca College School of Music with his father, a drummer, composer/arranger, and band leader, his mother, a vocalist and pianist.
His interest turned to medicine and he became a nuerorehabilitation specialist, educator, and advocate for people with Parkinson’s disease. So in 2018 Karl founded the Parkinson’s Global Project nonprofit corporation dedicated to funding research and supporting associations around the world.
Using his musical talents to raise awareness of the disease, in 2019, Sterling recorded Dream, a project in which Jimmy Haslip, Jeff Richman, Peter Erskine, Scott Kinsey, and other musicians donated their time and talent.
He has since traveled, researching with and educating neurologists, physical therapists, fitness trainers, people with Parkinson’s, and caregivers all over the world.
Drummer Karl Sterling has spent the majority of his life in the Syracuse, New York area and continues to perform, compose and educate.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James J. Snidero was born in Redwood City, California on May 29, 1958 and grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Camp Springs, Maryland. He then attended the University of North Texas, performed in the One O’clock Lab band and then moved to New York City in 1981. Once there he recorded and toured with Jack McDuff from 1981 to 1982, then joined Toshiko Akiyoshi’s Jazz Orchestra in 1983 after she moved to New York.
Snidero was a working member of Frank Sinatra’s band from 1991 to 1995 and Eddie Palmieri’s band beginning 1994. He performed with the Frank Wess Sextet, the Mingus Big Band, and Walt Weiskopf. He has worked as a sideman for David Hazeltine, David Murray, Mike LeDonne, Joe Magnarelli, Maria Schneider, Mel Lewis, Jim Rotondi, Brian Lynch, Conrad Herwig, and Tom Varner.
He recorded and performed with his own quintet and over time had various musicians including trumpeters Brian Lynch, Tom Harrell and Tim Hagans; pianists Benny Green and Mulgrew Miller; double bassists Peter Washington and Dennis Irwin; and the drummers Billy Hart and Louis Hayes, Gene Jackson, and Adam Nussbaum.
As an educator Jim has held professor positions at the New School University, Indiana University and Princeton University. He has written five series of jazz etude books and produced courses in jazz improvisation and performance for The Jazz Conception Company.
Saxophonist Jim Snidero Snidero, who has recorded 27 albums as a leader and thirty-three as a sideman, continues to perform throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan.
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