Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Warren Smith was born on May 14, 1934 in Chicago, Illinois, to a musical family. His father played saxophone and clarinet with Noble Sissle and Jimmie Noone, and his mother was a harpist and pianist. At the age of four he studied clarinet with his father. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1957, then received a master’s degree in percussion from the Manhattan School of Music in 1958.

One of his earliest major recording dates was with Miles Davis as a vibraphonist in 1957. In 1958 Warren found work in Broadway pit bands and also played with Gil Evans. In 1961 he co-founded the Composers Workshop Ensemble. In the 1960s Smith accompanied Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Lloyd Price, and Nat King Cole; he worked with Sam Rivers from 1964–76 and with Gil Evans again from 1968 to 1976.

In 1969 he played with Janis Joplin and in 1971 with King Curtis and Tony Williams. He was also a founding member of Max Roach’s percussion ensemble, M’Boom, in 1970.

In the 1970s and 1980s Smith had a loft called Studio Wis that acted as a performing and recording space for many young New York jazz musicians, such as Wadada Leo Smith and Oliver Lake. Through the 1970s Smith played with Andrew White, Julius Hemphill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Nancy Wilson, Quincy Jones, Count Basie, and Carmen McRae. Other credits include extensive work with rock and pop musicians and time spent with Anthony Braxton, Charles Mingus, Henry Threadgill, Van Morrison, and Joe Zawinul.

He continued to work on Broadway well into the 1990s, and has performed with a number of classical ensembles. Smith taught in the New York City public school system from 1958 to 1968, at Third Street Settlement from 1960 to 1967, at Adelphi University in 1970–71, and at SUNY-Old Westbury from 1971. He remains connected to the music at 87.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Blaise Siwula was born in Detroit, Michigan on February 19, 1950. Growing up in a working/middle-class black neighborhood. His next-door neighbor practiced saxophone in the afternoon and occasionally allowed him inside to watch him play. He began studying the alto sax at the age of 14, playing in the middle school concert band.

Hearing the John Coltrane album Om in 1969 compelled him to take up the tenor saxophone. He was also influenced by hearing Art Pepper in San Francisco, as well as Ornette Coleman, Sonny Stitt, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Blue Mitchell, Elvin Jones, and Miles Davis in live performances in Detroit in the 1970s. Cecil Taylor’s recordings with Jimmy Lyons were inspirational in a later period along with  Ravi Shankar and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the Seventies.

At college on and off for an extended period from 1968 to 1980, he studied theory and composition at Wayne State University, and earned a BFA. His first personal encounter with jazz musicians came around 1971 while living in a hotel near the downtown campus like drummer Doc Watson. Moving to San Francisco, he started playing free improvised music in coffeehouses and writing poetry. After four years in Northern California, he returned to Detroit before heading for Europe in 1989. Working and traveling as a street musician for three months, then returning to the States and settling in New York City.

After periodic explorations of drama, poetry, architecture, and visual art, and quite unable to secure a recording contract initially, he recorded independently produced cassette tapes. He played with Amica Bunker, the Improvisers Collective, and the Citizens Ontological Music Agenda (COMA) series.

During the decade of the 2000s, Blaise composed music scores, played a number of saxophones, clarinets, flutes, percussion and string instruments, and computer-altered sound files as background for improvisation. His many collaborators have included Doug Walker’s Alien Planetscapes, Cecil Taylor’s Ptonagas, William Hooker’s ensembles, Judy Dunaway’s Balloon Trio, Dialing Privileges with Dom Minasi and John Bollinger, Ken Simon, Karen Borca, Jackson Krall, Tatsuya Nakatani, and William Parker, among others.

Avant-garde alto saxophonist, composer and bandleader Blaise Siwula, who has been a part of New York City’s underground jazz scene, continues to performa and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Francisco Aguabella was born on October 10, 1925 in Matanzas, Cuba. Demonstrating a special aptitude for drumming at an early age, he was initiated into several Afro-Cuban drumming traditions, including batá, iyesá, arará, olokún, and abakuá. Aguabella also grew up with rumba.

He is one of a handful of Cuban percussionists who came to the United States in the 1940s and 50s. In the 1950s, he left Cuba to perform with Katherine Dunham in the Shelley Winters film Mambo filmed in Italy. He immigrated to the United States in 1953, performing and touring with Peggy Lee for the next seven years. 

During his long career, he performed in Europe, Australia, South America, and throughout the United States, including the White House. Aguabella enjoyed extensive music performing and recording careers, delighted many audiences with his masterful and powerful rhythms.

Francisco performed with many great jazz artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Eddie Palmieri, Cachao, Lalo Schifrin, Cal Tjader, Nancy Wilson, Poncho Sanchez, Bebo Valdes, Carlos Santana, and numerous others. He is featured in two documentaries, Sworn to the Drum and Aguabella. He has also appeared with his ensemble on television programs.

During the Seventies, he was a member of the Jorge Santana Latin rock band Malo. Francisco was a widely recognized master conguero and bata artist, a caring and knowledgeable instructor. Aguabella was a faculty member at the annual Explorations in Afro-Cuban Dance and Drum workshop hosted by the Humboldt State University Office of Extended Education in Arcata, California. While living in Los Angeles, California, he taught Afro-Cuban drumming to undergraduate and graduate students at the University of California, Los Angeles.

A prolific session musician and recorded seven albums as a leader, throughout his career, he played congas, bata, quinto, coro, shekere, drums, claves, bongos, timbales, cajon, and other assorted percussion instruments. Percussionist Francisco Aguabella, who received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, passed away in Los Angeles on May 7, 2010 of a cancer-related illness.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ken Hyder was born on June 29, 1946 in Dundee, Scotland. He began playing jazz in Scotland before moving south to London, England where he played at the legendary Little Theatre Club – an avant-garde haunt run by the late John Stevens.

For over 40 years Hyder has been playing and composing music and has produced more than three dozen albums of original material. He formed the group Talisker and recorded six albums with this pioneering and proto-type Celtic jazz group. He has recorded with Elton Dean, Chris Biscoe, Tim Hodgkinson, Paul Rogers, Maggie Nicols, Don Paterson, and Frankie Armstrong.

The 1970s saw him moving away from jazz and into collaborations with musicians from different musical backgrounds including Irish, South African and South American players. Later, he became interested in exploring spiritual aspects of music with spiritual practitioners like Tibetan and Japanese Buddhist monks, and Siberian shamans.

Ken combines folk, ethnic and Celtic music with jazz. He has worked and recorded with Dick Gaughan, Vladimir Rezitsky, Phil Minton, Lindsay L. Cooper, Sainkho Namtchylak, Jo’burg Hawk, Marcio Mattos, Jim Dvorak, John Edwards, Dave Webster, John Rangecroft, Radik Tyulyush, Julian Bahula, Lucky Ranku, Larry Stabbins, Harry Beckett, Art Themen, Gary Windo, Pete McPhail, Keith Tippett, Harry Miller, Nick Evans, Raymond Macdonald, Ntshuks Bonga, Hamish Henderson, Jon Dobie, and Lello Colombo.

Fusion drummer and percussionist Ken Hyder continues with his current projects that include K-Space, with Tim Hodgkinson and Gendos Chamzyryn; Hoots and Roots with Scottish singer Maggie Nicols; RealTime with z’ev, Andy Knight and Scipio; Raz3 with Hodgkinson and Lu Edmonds; A revived Talisker, with Nicols and Raymond MacDonald and a duo with pianist Vladimir Miller.

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Three Wishes

Chief Bey told Baroness de Koenigswarter his three wishes were: 

1. 1. “To live in a world of complete freedom, where man does not lose his creative ability and his senses, and where his respect for the next man broadens by the day. And that the ultimate end of all his troubles, trials and tribulations would turn out to be for the good of every man. And that it will be a perpetuating thing, like the evergreen tree.”

   2. “That man should always worship in that which he believes, and live what he believes to such an extent that it shows in his every action. And  then he does not have to preach it to the world, that I am.”

   3. “My third and final wish: that there be no hunger. A little pain, a little suffering ~ enough to make one understand himself. So that I, as one of God’s creatures, that every time I perform, may it be for Him. And let me re-create again and yet again without repeating myself. And when I play, for dancers to dance to my drums. May there always be communication.”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

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