Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Karl Hanns Berger was born March 30, 1935 in Heidelberg, Germany and began playing piano when he was ten. By the time he reached young adulthood he had landed a job at Club 54 in his hometown as the house pianist and accompanied visiting American musicians such as Leo Wright, Lex Humphries and Don Ellis. During their stays he was able to learn the complexities of modern jazz.
Berger eventually picked up the vibraphone and in the early sixties became intrigued with free jazz. By 1965 he was a part of Don Cherry’s Paris-based quintet and the next year they came to New York to record Symphony For Improvisers on Blue Note. Staying in the U.S. Berger recorded his first album the following year.
Most of his output has been experimental in the free jazz circles playing with the likes of Carla Bley, Lee Konitz, John McLaughlin, Dave Holland, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders, The Mingus Epitaph Orchestra and many others. From 1969 to 1975 Karl Berger continuously won the Down Beat critics poll for best jazz vibraphone player of the year.
In 1972 along with his friend and mentor Ornette Coleman, he founded the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, which was geared toward encouraging young students to explore their own creative ideas instead of imposing traditional concepts upon them. With visiting educators like Jack DeJohnette, Sam Rivers, and Anthony Braxton amongst other prominent musicians the school flourished until the mid eighties when Berger decided to venture back into performing.
From 1985 on Berger has led a 28-piece big band, played festivals worldwide, recorded as a leader and sideman, extending his educator talents to teaching jazz and ensemble playing in Frankfurt, and chaired the Music Department at U Mass-Dartmouth.
The musicologist, composer, pianist and vibraphonist was directly influenced by Ornette Coleman and his playing eschews four-mallet technique with an understanding and ability to play any meter from standard time signatures to odd meters and polyrhythms based on core elements of swing and coherent melody. Karl Berger continues to pursue the range of his instrument through recording, performing and touring.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Guarnieri, born March 23, 1917 in New York City was a virtuoso jazz and stride pianist best known for his stints with the big bands of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw in the 1940s. Guarnieri is also noted for his embellishment and juxtaposition of jazz with classical piano, such as Scarlatti and Beethoven.
Throughout the 1940s Guarnieri was a busy sideman, recording with artists such as Charlie Christian, Cozy Cole, Ike Quebec, Charlie Kennedy, Hank D’Amico and Ben Webster. He also led his own group called the “Johnny Guarnieri Swing Men” and recorded with them on the Savoy label, a group that included Lester Young, Hank D’Amico, Billy Butterfield and Cozy Cole. He also led a trio in the 1940s composed of himself, Slam Stewart and Sammy Weiss.
In 1949 Guarnieri recorded an album with June Christy and recorded with numerous other artists over his career. In his later years he shifted more toward jazz education. In commemoration of his reputation as a teacher, Guarnieri’s students financed a label for him called “Taz Jazz Records” and in the ‘70s he recorded numerous albums on his new label, and until 1982 worked the “Tail of the Cock” nightclub in Studio City, California.
Pianist Johnny Guarnieri died doing what he loved to do, play jazz, onstage during a performance with Dick Sudhalter on January 7, 1985.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Amina Claudine Myers was born March 21, 1942 in Blackwell, Arkansas. The pianist, organist, vocalist, composer and musical arranger began singing and playing the piano and organ as a child in church choirs in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area where she grew up. She directed choirs at an early age and graduated in concert music and music education from Philander Smith College.
In the early sixties Amina moved to Chicago, teaching and attending classes at Roosevelt University. It was in Chicago that she began working with Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons, joined the AAMC, focused on vocal compositions and recorded her debut album with Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre in 1969. .
In 1976 Myers relocated to New York City, where she intensified her compositional work and expanded it into the realm of Off-Broadway productions. She also continued performing and recording as a pianist and organist with Lester Bowie and Muhal Richard Abrams into the early eighties. In 1985 she joined Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra and had notable collaborations on recordings with artists like Marian McPartland, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Archie Shepp, David Murray, Arthur Blytheand Ray Anderson to name a few.
Amina Claudine Myers, a virtuoso pianist and organist whose work is presented internationally and appears on scores of recordings, draws upon her backgrounds in classical music and the music of the black church of her native rural South to create a recombinant sensibility within improvisation-imbued extended compositions. Her work is insistently post-genre at a moment when re-inscriptive collage pretends to postmodern transgression.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harold Mabern was born on March 20, 1936 in Memphis, Tennessee and initially started learning the drums before turning his attention to the piano. Attending Douglass High School he played with Frank Strozier, George Coleman, Booker Little but was most influenced by the piano of Phineas Newborn Jr. After graduating from high school he moved to Chicago where he went to street school listening to Ahmad Jamal and others in clubs to increase his proficiency.
Early in his career Harold played in Chicago with Walter Perkins’ MJT + 3 in the late 1950s before moving to New York in 1959. Heading straight to Birdland where he met Cannonball Adderley who introduced him to Harry “Sweets” Edison who was looking for a replacement for Tommy Flanagan. A quick audition was followed by an offer and a few week later they were in the studio recording with Jimmy Forrest.
Mabern grew his reputation as a sideman and in the tradition of hard bop and soul jazz, the pianist worked with Lionel Hampton, the Jazztet, Donald Byrd, Miles Davis, J. J. Johnson, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, Wes Montgomery, Joe Williams and Sarah Vaughan to name a few.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mabern led four albums for Prestige Records and recorded with Stanley Cowell’s Piano Choir. Harold Mabern also recorded as a leader for DIW/Columbia and Sackville and toured with the Contemporary Piano Ensemble.
Pianist Harold Maben has twenty sessions as a leader and another six-dozen as a sideman in his catalogue. In more recent years, Harold is a frequent instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, has recorded extensively with his former William Patterson University student, the tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander and continues to perform and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tommy Flanagan was born Thomas Lee Flanagan on March 16, 1930 in Detroit, Michigan. He began playing clarinet at age six and switched to piano just five years later. By the ‘50s he had become a part of the fertile Detroit scene until moving to New York in 1956.
After his arrival and until his long association with Ella Fitzgerald beginning in 1963, Flanagan worked regularly as a sideman, cut leader sessions for New Jazz, Prestige, Savoy and Moodsville, worked with Oscar Pettiford, J. J. Johnson, Harry “Sweets” Edison and Coleman Hawkins.
It was in 1975 just three years prior to his leaving Ella Fitzgerald that he regained his soloist chops, leading superior recording sessions with his swinging and creative post-bop style.
Flanagan recorded for several American and Japanese labels but came to true prominence with his Sunset and The Mockingbird recording in 1998 followed a year later by Samba for Felix.
In his latter years Tommy Flanagan, known also for his flawless and tasteful playing, suffered from a heart condition. However, despite his health problems, the pianist continued to tour and perform until the end of his life when he passed away of an arterial aneurysm at age 71 on November 16, 2001 in Manhattan, New York.
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