Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lisa Sokolov was born on September 24, 1954 in Manhasset, Long Island and raised in nearby Roslyn, New York. She was exposed to jazz as a child through her father, who played stride piano and listened to recordings of jazz artists including Art Tatum, Mabel Mercer and Stan Getz. She began singing from a young age and soon took up piano, which she studied for many years.
1972 saw Sokolov attending Bennington College in Vermont and studying with Milford Graves, Bill Dixon, Jimmy Lyons, voice teacher Frank Baker, and composers Vivian Fine and Louis Calabro. While there she was exposed to Betty Carter and Meredith Monk who have influenced her style. Obtaining a double major in music/back music, she became interested in free jazz as well as avant-garde jazz, both of which she has incorporated into her vocal style.
After graduation Lisa moved to New York City in 1976, spent several months in Paris, France, returned to pursue graduate work in music therapy, met Jeanne Lee and was subsequently introduced to bassist William Parker and a decade long collaboration was begun.
She was part of the Studio Henry scene, a cooperative performance space, alongsideJohn Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, Elliot Sharpe and David Sewelson. The 1990s saw Sokolov recording music and releasing her debut as a leader, angel Rodeo, followed by her second release six years later in 1999 titled Lazy Afternoon. She has since released five more albums.
As an educator Sokolov has worked as a music therapist, has taught in NYU’s graduate music department and is currently a full arts professor at the Experimental Theater Wing at the Tisch School of the Arts, which is part of New York University, and is recognized in the music therapy world as a pioneer and innovator in the applications of the voice to human potential.
She has worked with Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Robin Holcomb, Rahn Burton, Rashid Ali, Bada Roy, Jeanne Lee, Jimmy Lyons, Wayne Hovitz, Hilton Ruiz, Irene Schweizer, Butch Morris, Blue Gene Tyranny, Jim Mc Neely, Gerry Hemingway and Cameron Brown to name a few. A courageous and adventurous vocalist, Lisa Sokolov continued to sing, compose and perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Henry Butler was born September 21, 1949 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Blinded by glaucoma in infancy and his musical training began at the Louisiana State School for the Blind, where he learned to play valve trombone, baritone horn and drums before focusing his talents on singing and piano,
Butler was mentored at Southern University in Baton Rouge by clarinetist and educator Alvin Batiste. He later earned a master’s degree in music at Michigan State University in 1974, receiving the MSU Distinguished Alumni Award in 2009.
Due to the devastation of his home and his vintage 1925 Mason & Hamlin piano by Hurricane Katrina, Henry moved to first Boulder then Denver, Colorado but by 2009 he relocated to New York City. He has pursued photography as a hobby since 1984,and his methods and photos are featured in a 2010 HBO2 documentary, Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers, that aired. His photographs also have been shown in galleries in New Orleans.
Pianist Henry Butler has recorded and released nine albums as a leader for Impulse, Windham Hill and Basin Street Records and as a sideman with James Carter and Corey Harris. He joins the lineage of Crescent City pianists like Professor Longhair, James Booker, Tuts Washington and Jelly Roll Morton. He continues to perform and record in a variety of styles of music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bruce Barth was born September 7, 1958 in Pasadena, California. He started banging on the piano almost before he could walk. By the age of five he started piano lessons though he preferred to play by ear. When he was eight his family moved to New York where he studied piano and musicianship with Tony and Sue LaMagra for the next decade. Turning 15 his older brother Rich gave him his first jazz record, Mose Allison’s Back Country Suite. The young lad fell in love with both the music and the genre and inspired, he taught himself to play jazz by listening to records and imitating his many favorite pianists and horn players.
He went on to study privately with Norman Simmons and Neil Waltzer, and eventually enrolled in New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with Jaki Byard, Fred Hersch, and George Russell. Barth’s first professional recording was Russell’s masterpiece, The African Game, captured live on Blue Note Records. Arriving on the New York jazz scene in 1988, he soon joined tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and their musical collaboration spanned a decade. Shortly thereafter, he toured Japan with Nat Adderley, and toured Europe and recorded with Vincent Herring’s quintet with Dave Douglas.
In 1990, Bruce joined the Terence Blanchard Quintet; the band toured extensively, and also recorded six CDs, as well as several movie soundtracks. In 1992, he played piano on-screen in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. While in Blanchard’s band, he recorded his first two CD’s as a leader, In Focus and Morning Call; both were chosen for the New York Times’ top ten lists.
Throughout his professional life, Bruce has performed and collaborated with Tony Bennett, Steve Wilson, Terell Stafford, Luciana Souza, and Karrin Allyson, David Sanchez, James Moody, Phil Woods, Freddie Hubbard, Tom Harrell, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Art Farmer, Victor Lewis, John Patitucci, Lewis Nash, the Mingus Big Band, Tim Armacost, Scott Wendholt, Dave Stryker, Carla Cook, Paula West, Rene Marie, Luis Bonilla, Doug Weiss, Ugonna Okegwo, Montez Coleman, Dana Hall and Dayna Stephens, among numerous others.
As an educator pianist Bruce Barth is on the jazz faculty of Temple University, has taught at Berklee College of Music, Long Island University, currently gives private lessons to City College University and New School students, and has participated in many workshops, clinics, and seminars in the U. S. and abroad. To date he has performed on over one hundred recordings and movie soundtracks, including ten as a leader, is a Grammy nominated producer, and has served two years on the panel for the U.S. State Department “Jazz Ambassadors” program,. He continues to play solo piano, lead an all-star septet and composed for a variety of ensembles.
Take A Dose On The Road
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Horace Silver was born Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva on September 2, 1928 in Norwalk, Connecticut to a mother from Connecticut and a father from Maio, Cape Verde. He began playing the piano as a child, receiving classical music lessons and Cape Verde folk music from his father. When he turned 11 he became interested in becoming a musician, after hearing the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra.
From ninth grade Silver played tenor saxophone in the Norwalk High School band and orchestra, influenced by Lester Young. He played gigs locally on both instruments while still at school and around 1946 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut, taking a regular job as house pianist in a nightclub. His big break came around 1950, backing saxophonist Stan Getz at a Hartford club. Liking what he heard, Getz took Silver’s band on the road. With Getz he made his recording debut on the Stan Getz Quartet album, along with bassist Joe Calloway and drummer Walter Bolden.
The following year Horace left Getz, moving to New York City and worked at Birdland on Monday nights. During that year, he met the executives of Blue Note Records, eventually signed with them, and remained there until 1980. He also co-founded the Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey.
From 1951 he free-lanced around New York, recorded mostly his own compositions with his trio, featuring Blakey on drums and Gene Ramey, Curly Russell or Percy Heath on bass. Throughout his career he would record with Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Junior Cook, Blue Mitchell, Louis Hayes, Carmell Jones, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Tyrone Washington, Michael and Randy Brecker, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Donald Byrd and Miles Davis All Stars.
He music reflected the social and cultural upheavals of the 60s and 70s as he briefly played electric piano and including lyrics in his compositions, and his interested in spiritualism also came into his music.
He received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award, recorded his final studio session in 1998 titled Jazz Has A Sense of Humor, was awarded the President’s Merit Award by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, penned his autobiography Let’s Get to the Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silver and published by University of California Press, and many of his compositions have become jazz standards.
Horace Silver, whose early influences were Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Nat King Cole and Thelonious Monk, and who and influence for Bobby Timmons, Le McCann, Ramsey Lewis and Cecil Taylor, passed away of natural causes in New Rochelle, New York on June 18, 2014. The pianist and composer known for his distinctive playing style and pioneering compositional contributions to hard bop, featured surprising tempo shifts from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic merged with funk long before that word could be used in polite company.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Keith Tippett was born Keith Graham Tippetts on August 25, 1947 in Bristol, England. He attended Greenway Boys Secondary Modern School in Southmead where he studied piano and formed his first jazz band called The KT7 whilst still at school, performing numbers popular at the time by The Temperance Seven. In the late 1960s, he led a sextet with saxophonist Elton Deanon, trumpeter Mark Charig and Nick Evanson on trombone.
By the early Seventies, Tippett formed the big band Centipede that brought together much of a generation of young British jazz and rock musicians. As well as performing some concerts, limited economically by the size of the band, they recorded one double-album, Septober Energy.
Keith, along with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo, put together a formidable rhythm section at the centre of some the most exciting combinations in the country, including the Elton Dean Quartet and the Elton Dean Ninesense. Around the same time, he was also in the vicinity of King Crimson and contributed piano to several of their records and appeared with them on Top of the Pops. His own groups, such as Ovary Lodge, leaned towards a more contemplative form of European free improvisation.
Pianist and composer Keith Tippett has recorded and performed on over 100 albums in variety of settings including duets with Stan Tracey, his wife Julie Tippetts, and solo performances. He continues to perform with the improvising ensemble Mujician and Work in Progress.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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