Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Matthew Mitchell was born in Hamilton, New Zealand on August 9, 1973 and didn’t start studying jazz until late in his teens, beginning on guitar at the age of 17. Four years later he attended what became the Massey University Wellington School of Music majoring in jazz. By 1998 he became a member of the New Zealand Youth Jazz Orchestra and toured with ex-Buddy Rich trumpeter John Hoffman.

First achieving prominence on the New Zealand jazz scene the following year when he won the Wellington Fringe Festival Music Award. His study of Indian classical music produced cohesive results and Matthew toured the country with Master Tabla drummer Dr. Tarlochan Singh from Delhi, India and then with New York vibraphonist Arthur Lipner.  He then put together his own trio featuring Paul Dyne and Rick Cranson and they released two CDs, one of which was a big band work.

Moving to London, England in 2000 he continued work with his trio and rapidly became a prominent member of the jazz scene and joined Byron Wallen’s As Is project touring the UK and performing at a number of international festivals. He went on to perform and tour with German saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, as well as Japanese electronic music artists Takagi Masakatsu and Ogorusu Norihide and with countryman electronics artist Signer.

Guitarist Mattewh Mitchell continues to tour regularly throughout Europe with his own groups and release recordings.

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RONI BEN~HUR SEXTET FEATURING GEORGE CABLES

• Remembering Barry Harris

Ben~Hur started playing guitar when he was eleven. He learned about jazz from a high school’s friend’s record collection. In Israel he performed in clubs and at weddings and bar mitzvahs until he had enough money to move to the U.S. He arrived in New York City in 1985, spending time at Barry Harris’s Jazz Cultural Theater. He took lessons from Harris, then became a member of his band.

Ben-Hur’s experience as an educator dates back to 1981 in Israel. In the U.S. he started jazz music programs at Professional Performing Arts School, the Coalition School for Social Change, and at the Lucy Moses School. At the request of Bette Midler, he started a jazz program for New York City high schools.^[1] Ben-Hur began a jazz camp in Saint-Cézaire-sur-Siagne, France, with Santi Debriano. With Nilson Matta, he began a jazz and Brazilian music camp in Bar Harbor, Maine, both intended for adult jazz amateurs. He is the founding director of the jazz program at the Lucy Moses School at Kaufman Center in Manhattan where he teaches.

His book Talk Jazz: Guitar (Mel Bay, 2004) includes a CD with a removable guitar track of Ben-Hur performing the exercises in the book with Tardo Hammer on piano, Earl May on bass, and Leroy Williams on drums.

His album Anna’s Dance was named by The Village Voice one of the best jazz albums of 2001. All About Jazz called him “a virtuoso guitarist with impeccable swing”. In 2000, he won the Jazziz reader poll for “Best New Talent”.

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RODNEY JONES

A foursome of world-class musicians who have worked with countless top talents (like Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, James Brown, Stevie Wonder) Rodney Jones Quartet thrills audiences worldwide by not just playing straight ahead jazz at its highest level, but performing for the audience, sharing stories about the music and its meaning.

Bandleader Jones was also the Apollo Theater house guitarist and staff guitarist on Rosie O’Donnell’s TV show. Jazz Times called him a “consummate guitarist.”

Featuring Rodney Jones, guitar | Ron Blake, saxophone | Lonnie Plaxico, bass | Ronnie Burrage, drums

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

George Abel Van Eps was born on August 7, 1913 in Plainfield, New Jersey into a family of musicians. His mother was a classical pianist, his father was a ragtime banjoist and sound engineer and his three brothers were musicians. He began playing banjo at eleven years old but after hearing Eddie Lang on the radio, he devoted himself to guitar. By thirteen, in 1926, he was performing on the radio.

Through the middle of the 1930s, he played with Harry Reser, Smith Ballew, Freddy Martin, Benny Goodman, and Ray Noble. Van Eps moved to Los Angeles, California and spent most of his remaining career as a studio musician, playing on many commercials and movie soundtracks.

In the 1930s, he invented a model of guitar with another bass string added to the common six-string guitar. The seven-string guitar allowed him to play bass lines below his chord voicings, unlike the single-string style of Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. He called his technique “lap piano”, as it anticipated the fingerpicking style of country guitarists Chet Atkins and Merle Travis and inspired jazz guitarists Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli, and Howard Alden to pick up the seven-string.

Dixieland had a following in Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s, and he played in groups led by Bob Crosby and Matty Matlock and appeared in the film Pete Kelly’s Blues. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra’s 1955 album. In The Wee Small Hours.

Playing guitar into his eighties, he built a career that lasted over sixty years. Swing and mainstream guitarist George Van Eps, who recorded eleven albums as a leader and thirty~two as a sideman, transitioned from pneumonia on November 29, 1998 in Newport Beach, California at the age of 85.

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RANDY NAPOLEAN QUARTET

Known as a forward-thinking musician with a passion for the jazz tradition, guitarist Randy Napoleon is an Associate Professor at Michigan State University. He is currently touring as a leader after twenty years of road apprenticeship with some of the most celebrated musicians and groups of our time.

Napoleon cut his teeth touring with pianist Benny Green, The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Michael Buble, and a thirteen year tenure with Freddy Cole. He has also performed with artists across the jazz spectrum such as Bill Charlap, Natalie Cole, Monty Alexander, Rodney Whitaker and John Pizzarelli.

Napoleon has performed or arranged on over seventy records. He arranged as well as performed on Freddy Cole’s seven most recent records including the Grammy-nominated releases, Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B and My Mood Is You. He performed on The Clayton Hamilton Orchestra: Live at MCG. Napoleon is featured on Buble’s Grammy-nominated CD/DVD Caught in the Act.

Napoleon has played on The Tonight Show, Late Night With David Letterman, The View, The Today Show, and The Ellen DeGeneres show as well as TV shows in South America, Europe and Asia. He has performed across the globe at notable venues including Royal Albert Hall, The Sydney Opera House, The Hollywood Bowl, and Lincoln Center.

THE BAND:

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