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Don Abney was born John Donald Abney on March 10, 1923 in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied piano and French horn at the Manhattan School of Music, playing the latter in an Army band during military service.
After being honorably discharged from the Army he played in ensembles with Wilbur de Paris, Bill Harris, Kai Winding, Chuck Wayne, Sy Oliver, and Louis Bellson. He had a sustained career as a session musician recording with Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Oscar Pettiford, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Eartha Kitt and Pearl Bailey. His studio work included playing on a large number of recordings for more minor musicians such as Marilyn Moore, as well as on R&B, pop, rock, and doo-wop releases.
After moving to Los Angeles, California and settling in Hollywood, he worked as musical director for Universal Studios/MCA. He appeared as a pianist in the film Pete Kelly’s Blues behind Ella Fitzgerald. Additional credits include recording and arrangements for the film Lady Sings the Blues.
After touring with Anita O’Day in the 1980s he moved to Japan in the early Nineties and toured there with considerable success, and playing weekly at Tokyo’s Sanno Hotel. Upon his return to the United States in 2000, pianist Don Abney, who never recorded as a leader, passed away of complications due to kidney dialysis on January 20, 2000 in Los Angeles, California.
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Anthony Davis was born in Paterson, New Jersey on February 20, 1951. He has received acclaim as a free-jazz pianist, having co-leader or been a sideman with various ensembles, playing with Wadada Leo Smith from 1974 to 1977. He has worked with Anthony Braxton, Barry Altshul, Marion Brown, Chico Freeman, Jay Hoggard, Leroy Jenkins, George Lewis, David Murray, to name a few.
In 1981, Davis formed an octet called Episteme, wrote incidental music for the Broadway version of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and has incorporated into his music jazz, rhythm and blues, gospel, non-Western, African, European classical, Indonesian and experimental styles.
Davis is best known for his operas including X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Amistasd, Wakonda’s Dream, and Lilith, all composed between 1986 and 2009 and appeared at the New York City Opera, the Lyric Opera in Chicago, Opera Omaha, and Conrad Prebys Music Center at University of California, San Diego, respectively.
As an educator, he has taught at Yale and Harvard Universities, and is currently professor of music at the University of California, San Diego. In between teaching and performing, pianist and composer Anthony Davis has two orchestral works, seven for stage, and nineteen albums as a leader or co-leader.
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Dena DeRose was born on born February 15, 1966 in Binghamton, New York and began playing the piano at age three and soon became a fan of jazz. As a child she also played the organ and percussion, and played the piano in school bands. By her teenage years, she would to drive to New York City to see jazz musicians like Hank Jones and Mulgrew Miller.
After high school, Dena was offered a scholarship to Concordia College but chose to attend Binghamton University. At 21,she was diagnosed with capel tunnel syndrome and arthritis cusing her suffering severe pain in her right hand. Forced to stop playing the piano for close to a year she became depressed and turned to drugs and alcohol to help her cope. One night she was in a bar listening to Doug Beardsley’s trio when someone suggested that she get up and sing and she started singing regularly with the trio.
After approximately another 18 months, she had two surgeries on her right hand that enabled her to begin playing piano again. She moved to New York City in 1991 to further her career. Her debut album Introducing Dena DeRose came in 1995 on the Amosaya Records label and a year later was renegotiated and leased to the Sharp Nine label. Her sophomore album, Another World, was released in 1998 with a septet of musicians including Steve Davis, Steve Wilson, Ingrid Jensen and Daniel Sadownick, followed by two more releases. Moving to the MaxJazzlabel she released her fifth album with Martin Wind and Matt Wilson.
She has worked with Ray Brown, Clark Terry, Benny Golson, Bill Henderson, Houston Person, Bruce Forman, Judy Neimack, John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, Steve Turre, Mark Murphy, Gene Bertoncini, Wycliffe Gordon, Marvin Stamm, Jay Clayton, Alex Riel, Billy Hart and Ken Peplowski, to name a few.
As an educator, DeRose has been the Vocal Professor and Head of Jazz Vocals at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz, Austria, a regular teacher at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, and also teaches periodically at other summer camp and workshop programs including the Litchfield Summer Camp, Taller de Musics in Spain and the Prince Claus Conservatoire in Groningen, Holland.
Discography[edit]
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Keith Ingham was born February 5, 1942 in London, England. His first professional gigs occurred in 1964 playing with Sandy Brown, Bruce Turner, and Wally Fawkes throughout the decade.
Ingham played with Bob Wilber and Bud Freeman in 1974 and moved to New York City in 1978. During the 1980s he played with Benny Goodman, the World’s Greatest Jazz Band and Susannah McCorkle. He also worked with Maxine Sullivan, Marty Grsz, Harry Allen and Eddie Condon.
During the 1930s he record a series of albums for Jump Records, and in the 90s recorded a baker’s dozen sessions for Sackville, Stomp Off and Spotlight record labels. He continues to perform and record.
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Lil Hardin Armstrong was born Lillian Hardin on February 3, 1898 in Memphis, Tennessee and grew up with her grandmother learning hymns, spirituals and classics on the piano, but she was drawn to pop music and later blues. Her initial piano instruction came from her third grade teacher, Miss Violet White, followed by enrollment in Mrs. Hook’s School of Music, but it was while attending Fisk University that she was taught a more acceptable approach to the instrument.
In 1918, Lil moved to Chicago and landed a job as a sheet music demonstrator at Jones Music Store for $3 a week. Shortly afterward bandleader Lawrence Duhé offered her $22.50 she joined him. From cabaret to the De Luxe Café to Dreamland playing behind Alberta Hunter and Ollie Powers. Replace by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, he asked her to stay, which led to an engagement in San Francisco, back to Chicago playing eventually with Oliver again.
Hardin met Louis Armstrong when Oliver sent for him and subsequently were married in 1924. She took him shopping and taught him how to dress more fashionably, and finally convinced him to strike out on his own. Moving to New York City he joined Fletcher Henderson, while she stayed in Chicago with Oliver and then leading her own band.
Hardin, Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny St. Cyr and Johnny Dodds comprised the Hot Five recordings for Okeh Records. She would go on to record sessions with the same group as a leader for Vocalion, Columbia Records and New Orleans Wanderers. In the late 1920s Hardin and Louis parted ways and she formed a band with a cornet player she considered Louis equal, Freddie Keppard. In the 1930s, she sometimes billed herself as Mrs. Louis Armstrong, led an All Girl Orchestra, then a mixed-sex big band, which broadcasted nationally over the NBC radio network.
The same decade she recorded a series of sides for Decca Records as a swing vocalist, recorded with Red Allen, and back in Chicago collaborated with Joe Williams, Oscar Brown Jr., Red Saunders and Little Brother Montgomery. Throughout the rest of her career she continued to perform and record, and began writing an autobiography that she never completed. A month after attending Louis’ funeral in New York City, she was performing at a televised memorial concert for Louis, Lil Hardin Armstrong collapsed at the piano and died on the way to the hospital.
Pianist, composer, arranger, singer and bandleader Lil Hardin Armstrong, second wife and recording collaborator of Louis Armstrong in the 1920s, passed away on August 27, 1971. Her compositions have been sampled and revived by many and was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2014.
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