Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary Bruno was born in New Jersey on March 26, 1962. Showing an interest in music at the age of five he began learning drums and two yers later started studying guitar. Taking weekly lessons he showed prodigious technique and a hunger for learning music. His parents gave him a radio that he took everywhere as early as age three. It only took a short period of guitar lessons that he began to learn the songs of the day from the radio.
By age thirteen Gary had his first professional job with his band. Hired by a family friend he played a Christmas party, and that job was the first of what would become a livelihood. By his junior year in high school he was playing three to four nights a week as well as teaching. All four years of high school also found him playing first chair in the local jazz ensemble and winning outstanding soloist awards two of the four years.
After high school he began to get calls for recording sessions from unsigned local songwriters and local producers creating jingle ads for radio. Local club dates with bands served as his night job, and the days found him teaching, recording and studying guitar. The club dates kept Bruno within the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania area with occasional outside tri-state travel.
Gary landed a seat in the Dave Mason Band, which took his playing to a national & international level. This led to playing Greenpeace concerts with John Denver. Moving to Las Vegas he got gigs playing the Las Vegas Strip as much as six nights a week. Leaving Las Vegas, he settled in Southern California where he currently resides.
Guitarist and educator Gary Bruno will continue composing, recording & performing.
More Posts: bandleader,educator,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Nickolas was born on March 23, 1962 in Southington, Connecticut. A move to Boston, Massachusetts in 1980 had him attending the Berklee College of Music. After graduating Cum Laude in 1984, the guitarist became a founding member and leader of one of Boston’s most successful local acts, High Function. The group played extensively at clubs and colleges throughout New England and toured Switzerland, New York City, and recorded an eight song album in Chicago, Illinois.
After leaving High Function, he co-found and played guitar for the Boston Music Award winning R&B band, Universal Language. In addition to performing, Michael was teaching himself the art of recording, and built a home recording studio, worked as a freelance recording engineer, and has been published numerous times in the international periodical, Recording Magazine.
His home studio, Studio Nine Productions, has clients working on everything from voice over narration sessions to digital audio editing and CD creation. As a composer, Nickolas has licensed original music for NBC, ABC and CBS television’s daytime programming. In prime time, as well as Showtime.
Guitarist Michael Nickolas continues to perform, compose, record and engineer.
More Posts: bandleader,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Keith Rowe was born March 16, 1940 in Plymouth, England. He began his career playing jazz in the early 1960s with Mike Westbrook and Lou Gare. His early influences were guitarists Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, and Barney Kessel. Growing tired of what he considered the genre’s limitations he began experimenting, stopped tuning his guitar and began playing free jazz and free improvisation.
Rowe developed prepared guitar techniques: placing the guitar flat on a table and manipulating the strings, body, and pick-ups in unorthodox ways. He has used needles, electric motors, violin bows, iron bars, a library card, rubber eraser, springs, hand-held electric fans, alligator clips, and common office supplies in playing the guitar.
Rowe has worked with Oren Ambarchi, Burkhard Beins, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Fennesz, Kurt Liedwart, Jeffrey Morgan, Toshimaru Nakamura, Evan Parker, Michael Pisaro, Peter Rehberg, Sachiko M, Howard Skempton, Taku Sugimoto, David Sylvian, John Tilbury, Christian Wolff, and Otomo Yoshihide.
Guitarist Keith Rowe, who was a founding member of both AMM in the mid-1960s, M.I.M.E.O. and is seen as a godfather of EAI electroacoustic improvisation, continues to compose, record and tour.
More Posts: bandleader,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mayuto Correa was born March 9, 1943 in São Gonçalo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and began playing in local bands from the age of twelve when he became a member of the big band Rapazes da Alvorada. At age 16 he formed the ensemble Samba Show with musicians from Niterói and made several recordings for the CBS label with them.
In the 1960s Correa was the artistic director of Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro where he wrote and directed several plays. During this time, he also made several recordings in Brazil and worked as the musical director for the shows of Maria Bethânia, Elza Soares, and Eliana Pittman as well as playing in Roberto Carlos’s ensemble RC-7 and performing in Chacrinha’s television shows.
Leaving Brazil for Mexico in 1969 he worked with the Brazilian bossa nova group Tamba 4 before moving to the United States. Establishing himself as a musician in Los Angeles, California in the early 1970s, Mayuto became a vital session player in hundreds of major and minor albums taped in the city by 1977.
Some of the artists he recorded with are Howard Roberts, Charles Lloyd, Nat Adderley, Cannonball Adderley, Cal Tjader, Miriam Makeba, Gábor Szabó, Gato Barbieri, Kenny Burrell, Moacir Santos, Donald Byrd, Henry Mancini, Jon Lucien, Freddie Hubbard, and Richard “Groove” Holmes, among numerous others.
During that period he toured with many of the artists and became the record producer for the Argentine group Arco Iris. He returned to Brazil in 1972 when he toured with Carlos Santana and again in 1979 when he appeared on the Rede Globo television show Sexta Super.
Among his compositions is the soundtrack for the 1979 documentary Homeboys depicting Chicano youth gang culture in East Los Angeles, California. In the later years of his career, Correa performed with his bands Mayuto & Genuises 2000, Mayuto & The Dream Team Big Band, and Mayuto & Samba Pack.
Mayuto Correa continues to perform, record and tour.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,percussion
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dom Minasi was born on March 6, 1943 in New York City, New York and was primarily self-taught, a natural musician. In his youth he backed singers and played his share of rock and roll, church dances and small jazz combo gigs beginning when he was fifteen.
While launching his professional career at a young age with Blue Note Records he took on numerous private students. In the mid-1970s, however, Blue Note was being sold and Minasi dropped out of the recording scene and over the next fifteen years he began freelancing, going back to school and occasionally performing with Dennis Moorman.
1993 saw Dom doing off-Broadway shows, writing hundreds of compositions and working with youth in the New York public school system. While doing all this he wrote several books on music disciplines, improvisation, theory and chord substitutions.
By the turn of the century he returned to producing compact discs for his independent label. He would go on to collaborate with a host of musicians and his improvisational excursions opened up a new audience.
Guitarist, composer, and music producer Dom Minasi, who recorded thirteen albums as a leader, died on August 1, 2023, at the age of 80.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,producer