Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Charlap was born William Morrison Charlap on October 15, 1966 in New York City surrounded by a musical family. His mother was a singer, his father a Broadway composer and his distant cousin was pianist Dick Hyman. He began playing piano at age three and later studied classical music but he has remained most interested in jazz.
Charlap and his mother recorded two duet albums, Love Is Here To Stay and Something To Remember. He’ recorded seven albums as a leader or co-leader for the Blue Note label, including two Grammy nominated CDs: Somewhere, featuring the music of Leonard Bernstein and The Bill Charlap Trio, Live At The Village Vanguard. For Venus Records, the Japanese label, he has recorded two albums as a leader, as well as eight albums as a member of the New York Trio.
He has worked with Gerry Mulligan, Benny Carter, Tony Bennett, Phil Woods, Scott Hamilton Harry Allen, Ruby Braff, Brian Lynch, Warren Vache and numerous others. By the mid-90s, Bill became the musical director of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, A Celebration of Johnny Mercer, part of New York’s JVC Jazz Festival. In 1995 he joined the Phil Woods Quintet.
In 2008, he became part of The Blue Note 7, honoring the 70th anniversary of the label and playing the music of various artists from the label. He has recorded Double Portrait, a piano duets album with his wife Renee Rosnes. Pianist Bill Charlap regularly plays with his trio comprised of bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Brian Robert Jackson was born October 11, 1952 in Brooklyn, New York to a New York State parole officer and librarian at the Ford Foundation. Spending the first two years of his life in Bedford-Stuyvesant and later stayed with his uncle in Flatbush until his parents separated when he was five. Then with his mother they moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn until she remarried in 1968.
Jackson studied music in Fort Greene with his mother’s childhood teacher, Hepzibah Ross with whom he took lessons for seven years. From 1965-1969 Jackson attended Brooklyn’s Erasmus Hall High, where he met other musicians and began to form bands on the outside while participating in school music programs.
Brian met Gil Scott-Heron while the two were attending Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. They began a decade-long writing, producing, and recording partnership with Jackson composed most of the music that he and Scott-Heron together performed and recorded. In 1973, the two released their first album together, Pieces of A Man with bassist Ron Carter. Tey would go on to record the landmark albums Free Will and Winter In America. His biggest hit was with Scott-Heron, 1974’s The Bottle. By 1979, they had recorded ten albums, with other unreleased material surfacing on subsequent Scott-Heron releases following their 1980 split.
He remained active in the 1980s and 1990s, switching to R&B to work with Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, Will Downing, Gwen Guthrie, Kool & The Gang and Janis Siegel. Enlisting guest appearances by Gil and Roy Ayers, he recorded his first solo album Gotta Play in 2000. Pianist and flutist Brian Jackson is still actively performing and recording.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Chucho Valdés was born Jesús Valdés Rodríguez, the son of famed pianist Bebo Valdés, on October 9, 1941 in Quivican, La Habana, Cuba. His first recording sessions as a leader took place in early 1964 at Areíto Studios of Havana. These early sessions included Paquito D’Rivera on alto saxophone and clarinet, trombonist Alberto Giral, flutist Julio Vento, Carlos Emilio Morales on guitar, Kike Hernández on double bass, Emilio del Monte on drums and Óscar Valdés Jr. on congas.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, these would be the members of his jazz combo, whose lineup would often change, sometimes including bassists Cachaito and later Carlos del Puerto, and drummers Guillermo Barreto and later Enrique Pla. In 1967, Valdés and his band mates became founding members of Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna, together with many other well-known Cuban musicians. This all-star big band would back singers such as Elena Burke and Omara Portuondo.
By 1973, Chucho along with other members of the Orquesta founded Irakere that bridged songo and Afro-Cuban jazz. He would simultaneously continue his solo career, eventually signing with Blue Note Records, which allowed him to realize international exposure.
In the late 1990s, he focused on his solo career, leaving directorship of Irakere to his pianist son Chuchito. He played occasionally with his father until his death in 2013. Since 2010, Chucho performs with a backing band known as The Afro-Cuban Messengers.
Pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger Chucho Valdés, whose career spans over 50 years, has received critical media acclaim, won five Grammy Awards, contributed two original compositions to Roy Hargrove’s Crisol band’s Havana project, and was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He has two dozen albums recorded as a leader and continues to perform, compose record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jon Ballantyne was born on October 8, 1963 in Saskatchewan, Canada and started playing piano at a very early age with formal study at the age of six. His father Fred a pianist and both parents jazz enthusiasts, he was listening to Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and Duke Ellington records from the time he was born. His mother also took him to see Oscar Peterson when he was five.
After the early years of trying to understand his father’s blues-based approach to piano, classical piano studies, and a stint in a garage rock band as a young teenager, Jon decided to immerse himself in jazz and won a scholarship to North Texas State University. As an honors student there, he was asked to play in small group formats with visiting artists Elvin Jones, Ron Carter, Joe Henderson, Nat Adderley, Michael Brecker, Emily Remler, Bob Mintzer and Peter Erskine.
He went on to study at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada with Dave Holland, Dave Liebman, Ed Blackwell, Lee Konitz, Cecil Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, John Abercrombie, Don Thompson, Julian Priester, Karl Berger, Eddie Marshall and Steve Coleman. He also studied in New York with Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, Richie Beirach, Hal Galper and JoAnn Brackeen.
This led to a performance career sharing the stage and studio with Joe Henderosn, Roy Haynes, Dewey Redman, Pepper Adams, Billy Hart, Paul Bley, Phil Woods, Bill Goodwin, Drew Gress, Don Braden, Joe LaBarbera, Ray Drummond, Bennie Wallace, Avishai Cohen, Clark Terry, Jimmy Guiffre, P. J. Perry and a host of others.
An educator, Jon has conducted clinics at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Northern Colorado, McGill University, University of Toronto and Concordia University in Montreal. He has recorded nine jazz albums and received two Juno Awards. Based in Manhattan, pianist Jon Ballantyne continues to perform, record and lead a quartet featuring bassist Boris Kozlov, drummer Jeff Hirshfield and saxophonist/bass clarinetist Douglas Yates.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Aaron Parks was born on October 7, 1983 in Seattle, Washington. He studied piano at the University of Washington at the age of 14 through the Transition School and Early Entrance Program as a double major in computer science and music. At 15 he was selected to participate in the GRAMMY High School Jazz Ensembles, which inspired him to move to New York City and transfer to the Manhattan School of Music.
During his final year in school Aaron began touring with Terence Blanchard’s band and recorded three albums with him for Blue Note Records, including the Grammy-winning A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina). He went on to tour with Kurt Rosenwinkel, and he has recorded for Blue Note as a leader. He is a member of James Farm, a quartet with saxophonist Joshua Redman, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Eric Harland.
Parks has seven albums to his credit as a leader, and more the two-dozen as a sideman working with Daisuke Abe, Amanda Baisinger, Walter Smith III, Kendrick Scott, Christian Scott, Gretchen Parlato, Lage Lund and many others. He can be heard on the soundtracks to Their Eyes Were Watching God and Spike Lee films Inside Man, She Hate Me and When The Levees Broke.
He won first place as a Cole Porter Fellow of the American Pianists Association, and third place at the Jas Hennessy Piano Solo Competition at Montreux and in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. Pianist Aaron Parks continues to compose, record, perform and tour.
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