Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Garry Dial was born on July 2, 1954 in Montclair, New Jersey. He began piano lessons at the age of 10 with Elston Husk and his mother, a pianist helped him practice. His 7th grade teacher gave him his first jazz record The Oscar Peterson Trio which instilled in him the love of jazz. Entering high school at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, New Jersey where the priests at St. Benedict’s supported his love of jazz. While in church he met Mary Lou Williams who offered him free lessons, took him under her wing and for the next few years went into Harlem to study with her. It was there he learned of Miles, Monk, Bud Powell and Cecil Taylor.
As a junior in high school Garry took the Summer Jazz Workshop at Berklee College Of Music and realized that music and jazz would be his calling. After high school graduation he returned to Berklee where he met his teacher of 37 years, the late Charlie Banacos. After one year at Berklee fellow musician Kenny Werner recommended him for a gig in Bermuda as the pianist at The Princess Hotel from 1975 to 1978.
A move to New York saw Dial playing with Charli Persip, performing at Frank Sinatra’s private parties, joining Gerry Mulligan’s Big Band, the Mel Lewis Quartet and Joe Morello Quintet. He was enlisted by Ruth Ellington Boatwright, Duke’s sister, to perform and record on tape each composition in the entire Ellington archive, as many were never recorded or played by the composer and would have been lost to history. Shortly afterward, he met Red Rodney and where he first came to fame as an important modernizing force with the Red Rodney-Ira Sullivan Quintet. After a ten-year association Sullivan departed and was replaced by saxophonist Dick Oatts, and they eventually formed the group Dial & Oatts, recording for the DMP label. Garry has also recorded with his own trio for the Continuum label.
As an educator he has leant his talent and knowledge to the students at the Manhattan School of Music and the New School, has given private lessons with Stefon Harris, Jacob Sacks, Mary J. Blige, Bette Midler, Alexa Joel and Amanda Brecker, to name a few. Hard bop and post bop pianist Garry Dial continues to perform, record, tour and educate.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Otmaro Ruíz was born June 27, 1964 in Caracas, Venezuela. He began his formal musical studies at the age of eight on piano, classical guitar, harmony, history and aesthetics. He was exposed to other artistic activities such as drawing and acting and at the same time he studied organ.
Otmaro pursued a scientific career as a biologist at the Simón Bolívar University, but kept playing keyboards on the side, landing his first professional work in a pop group in 1980. Deciding to focus entirely on music, he dropped out of school in 1983, playing in his native Venezuela. He toured and recorded with local and visiting musicians, and also became a busy studio musician as a jingles composer and arranger.
By 1989 Ruíz had moved to Los Angeles, California, where he finished his academic training at CalArts, obtaining a master’s degree in jazz performance in 1993. He played with percussionist Alex Acuña, appearing in two albums during the early 1990s. He later recorded with Arturo Sandoval, which was followed in 1996 by a world tour supporting Gino Vanelli. The rest of the decade, he worked with Jon Anderson, Robbie Robertson, Herb Alpert and John McLaughlin. In the new millennium, he has recorded with Hubert Laws, Jing Chi and Jimmy Haslip among others and has recorded and toured with Dianne Reeves.
Pianist, keyboardist, composer and arranger Otmaro Ruíz remains active up to the present day, generally recording and touring with L.A.-based groups and vocalists, and commanding his own projects.
He has also participated in an international jazz-project “JB Project” with American bassist Brian Bromberg and Japanese drummer Akira Jimbo. They released two studio albums: Brombo, followed by Brombo II. In 2012, the Shepherd University at the Cornel School of Contemporary Music awarded Otmaro Ruiz with an Honorary Doctorate in Music Arts.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Baptiste Trotignon was born on June 17, 1974 near Paris, France. He started playing the violin at the age of 6 and the piano three years later attending the Nantes Conservatory. While there he won prizes for both piano and harmony. During his teen years he discovered and taught himself jazz and improvisation, playing his first concerts at the age of sixteen.
In 1994 he appeared in the movie Le Nouveau Monde as both actor and musician. Four years later he formed his own trio with bassist Clovis Nicolas and drummer Tony Rabeson. In 2000 he recorded his debut album Fluide winning the Django d’Or for Best First Album. His sophomore release Sightseeing picked up the Prix Django Reinhardt. He recorded his debut solo piano album was in 2003 titled Solo.
Over the course of his career he has performed with Eric Harland, Fabrizio Bosso, Russell Malone, Jeremy Pelt, Tom Harrell, Jeanne Added, Melody Gardot, onica Passos, Miossec, Donald Harrison, Billy Hart, Bireli Lagrene, Kenny Wheeler, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Gregory Hutchinson, Ari Hoenig, Brad Mehldau, David Murray, Stefano di Batista, Milton Nascimento, Didier Lockwood, Archie Shepp and the list goes on and on.
Pianist Baptiste Trotignon continues to compose music and and perform, often playing classical music as well as his own compositions and interpretations of music from Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan to Edith Piaf.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Stanley Aubrey Wrightsman was born on June 15, 1910 in Gotebo, Oklahoma. He began playing professionally in a Gulfport, Mississippi hotel, and in territory bands in Oklahoma. In 1930, he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana where he played with Ray Miller. From 1935–1936 he worked with Ben Pollack in Chicago, Illinois.
His career was interrupted by an illness, but then worked in California with the Seger Ellis Orchestra in 1937. He made his debut recordings were made soon thereafter with Spike Jones and his City Slickers. In the Forties and Fifties, Stan played with various big bands and ensembles in the traditional jazz genre, including Artie Shaw, Wingy Manone, Eddie Miller, Rudy Vallee, Nappy Lamare, Johnny Mercer, Harry James, Bob Crosby, Matty Matlock, Pete Fountain, The Rampart Street Paraders, Ray Bauduc, Wild Bill Davison, and Bob Scobey.
Wrightsman appeared in films and on the soundtrack of Blues in the Night, in which he stood in for Richard Whorf on piano, Syncopation, the Jack Webb film Pete Kelly’s Blues, the Red Nichols biopic The Five Pennies and in the feature film The Crimson Canary he appeared as a pianist.
During the 1960s, Wrightsman reunited with Pete Fountain and continued his work with Hollywood film studios. At the end of the decade, he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada where he played as a sideman for Wayne Newton and Flip Wilson.
From 1937 to 1971 he recorded 174 sessions that included Louis Armstrong, Eartha Kitt, George Van Eps, and Peggy Lee, whom he accompanied on the celesta for the song That Old Feeling in 1944. On December 17, 1975 pianist Stan Wrightsman passed away in Palm Springs, California.
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Hotep Idris Galeta was born Cecil Galeta on June 7, 1941 in Crawford, Cape Town, South Africa but according to local custom he was more commonly known as Cecil Barnard, using his father’s first name instead of a last name.
In his teens Hotep played with some of the best jazz musicians in South Africa; Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) and Lami Zokufa who introduced him to bebop and hard bop. Galeta left South Africa clandestinely for the United Kigdom after the Sharpeville Massacre made it impossible for anyone but white artists to have quality of life. After a year in the UK, he moved to the United States.
Once in the United States, he played and recorded with Herb Alpert, John Handy, Bobby Hutcherson, Elvin Jones, Hugh Masekela, Jackie McLean, Mario Pavone, Joshua Redman and Archie Shepp. Outside jazz he performed and recorded with David Crosby and the Byrds. In 1985, Jackie McLean invited him to teach at The Hartt School of the University of Hartford, where he taught until he returned to South Africa in 1991, following the collapse of apartheid.
Once home he recorded, performed, and taught at the University of Fort Hare, held the musical directorship of a national music education program for high schools, and coordinator of music outreach programs in Cape Town. He has been Project Manager for the establishment of a school of jazz and a multimedia audio visual production center at the University of Fort Hare’s new urban campus in the east coast South African city of East London in the Eastern Cape Province. Pianist, composer and bandleader Hotep Idris Galeta passed away in Johannesburg, South Africa on the November 3, 2010 following an asthma attack.
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