Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ivon Karel De Bie was born August 13, 1914 in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Brussels, Belgium. He received piano lessons from the age of six for ten years and around 1936 he began working as an amateur with Jimmy Turner, George Clais and with the Blue Blythe Players.
From 1938 onwards he directed his own bands as well as playing and recording beginning in the Forties in the groups of Fud Candrix, Jeff De Boeck and his metro band. In 1942 Ivon recorded his debut with a quartet with Andre Mersch, Gene Kempf and Jeff De Boeck on the Metrophone label. That same year he accompanied Django Reinhardt on a session for the Belgian label Rhythme, recording Vous et moi, Distraction, Blues en Mineur and Studio 24.
He went on to continue recording with Candrix in Berlin, with Hubert Rostaing in Brussels and with members of the Stanbrender Orchestra for the Olympia label. After the World War II De Bie directed a big band recordings for Decca Records, and also played with Robert De Kers.
From the 1950s, Ivon directed the orchestra recordings of the Middelkerke Casino played in bands led by David Bee, as well as with Brother Powell and His Dixie Rag-a-Jazz Band and The Original Syncopators Gang. In 1957 he became the artistic director of the Belgian department of RCA Victor and his last recordings were made in 1983 with the BRT Jazzorkest OLV under the direction of Etienne Verschueren.
Over the course of his career in the field of jazz he was involved in 41 recording sessions between 1941 and 1983. He wrote a series of jazz compositions such as Dixie Souvenir, partly under the pseudonym Don Bayo. His piano style was influenced by Billy Kyle, Bob Zurke, Earl Hines and Art Tatum. Pianist, composer and bandleader Ivon De Bie passed away in 1989 in Brussels.
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Claude Thornhill was born on August 10, 1909 in Terre Haute, Indiana and as a youth was recognized as an extraordinary piano talent and along with clarinet and trumpet prodigy Danny Polo, formed a traveling duo. While a student at Garfield High School he played with several theater bands before entering the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music at age sixteen.
He and clarinetist Artie Shaw started their careers together at the Golden Pheasant in Cleveland, Ohio playing in the Austin Wiley Orchestra. By 1931 they were in New York City and in 1935 he was playing on sessions with Glenn Miller, Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Ray Noble, Billie Holiday and arranged Loch Lomond and Annie Laurie for Maxine Sullivan.
Later in the decade he moved out to the West Coast with the Bob Hope Radio Show and arranged for Judy Garland in Babes in Arms. In 1939 he founded the Claude Thornhill Orchestra with his old friend Danny Polo was his lead clarinetist. Although the band was a sophisticated dance band, it became known for its superior jazz musicians and for his and Gil Evans’s arrangements.
Encouraging the musicians to develop cool-sounding tones, the band played without vibrato. The band was popular with both musicians and the public and Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool nonet was modeled in part on Thornhill’s sound and unconventional instrumentation. The band’s most successful records were Snowfall, A Sunday Kind of Love, and Love for Love.
1942 saw him enlisting in the Navy and playing across the Pacific Theater with Jackie Cooper as his drummer and Dennis Day as his vocalist. After his discharge in ‘46 he reunited his ensemble and Danny Polo, Gerry Mulligan and Barry Galbraith returned with new members, Red Rodney, Lee Konitz, Joe Shulman, and Bill Barber. For a brief time in the mid 1950s, Claude was briefly Tony Bennett’s musical director.
Pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader Claude Thornhill passed away on July 1, 1965. A large portion of his extensive library of music is currently held by Drury University in Springfield, Missouri and in 1984 he was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
Sponsored By
#preserving genius
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kamil Hála was born on August 1, 1931 in Most, Bohemia, Czechoslovakia and during his musical career he worked as a pianist and arranger with a number of renowned jazz and dance orchestras, among them he starred in the Zdeněk Barták Orchestra.
As a composer and arranger he spent time collaborating with the Karel Vlach Orchestra and also directed his own jazz big band. Together with Josef Vobruba, they worked as conductors at the Czechoslovak Radio Dance Orchestra and the Jazz Orchestra of Czechoslovak Radio .
Pianist, composer, conductor and arranger Kamil Hála, brother of trumpeter and music composer Vlastimila Hala, passed away on October 28, 2014 in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Simon was born July 27, 1969 in Punta Cardón, Venezuela into a musical family as both his brothers, Marlon and Michael Simon are also noted professional musicians. Sent to the United States by his father at the age of fifteen to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, he studied classical piano with Susan Starr. After that, beginning in 1989 he studied with Harold Danko at the Manhattan School of Music and played with Kevin Eubanks and Greg Osby.
His stay in New York City saw Simon playing with Herbie Mann, Paquito D’Rivera, Bobby Hutcherson, Jerry Gonzalez, John Patitucci, Arturo Sandoval, Manny Oquendo, and Don Byron. He was a member of Bobby Watson’s band Horizon from 1989 to 1994, and since 2002 has been a member of the Terence Blanchard Group.
Recording his debut album as a bandleader in 1994, that same year Edward was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. The following year he composed his Rumba Neurotica for the Relache Ensemble and composed his Venezuelan Suite on behalf of Chamber Music America.
He has since performed on several Grammy-nominated jazz albums. Besides his trio he also leads the Sexteto Venezuela, the Afinidad Quartet, and the group Simon, Simon & Simon, with his brothers, he teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York. Pianist Edward Simon is currently an artist in residence at Western Michigan University and continues to compose, record and perform.
Sponsored By
#preserving genius
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Delano Zollar was born July 24, 1959 in Kansas City, Missouri and studied after high school at San Diego City College, then at the University of California, San Diego . At the same time, he played in various radio and jazz bands and conducted his own quintet. By 1972 he had moved to San Francisco, California to study improvisation with Woody Shaw.
In 1984, he moved to New York City, played in the Cecil McBee band, and was involved in several big band projects by David Murray in the 1990s. During the decade he worked in the big band of Joe Haider & Bert Joris, recorded with Sam Rivers on his Inspiration album, played with JM Rhythm Four of Jürg Morgenthaler in Zurich and played in the Tom Harrell big band on Time’s Mirror.
By the turn of the century he was working on several projects with clarinetist Don Byron such as Bug Music and You Are # 6. He released his debut recording as a leader, Souring with Bird, on the Naxos Jazz label. James worked with Jon Faddis and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra and with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
Zollar appeared in Robert Altman’s film Kansas City and is known for his use of the plunger effect of the early trumpeters of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, in whose successor bands he also played. He also performed in Madonna’s music video My Baby’s Got a Secret and in Malcolm D. Lee’s film The Best Man. Trumpeter and pianist James Zollar continues to perform and record.
