Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Uri Caine was born June 8, 1956 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began playing piano at seven, studying with French jazz pianist Bernard Peiffer at 12. He later studied at the University of Pennsylvania and gained great familiarity with classical music and worked in clubs around the city.
His professional career started in 1981 and a mere four years later saw his debut with the Rochester-Gerald Veasley band recording session. During the decade he moved to New York City, appeared on a klemzer album with Mickey Katz and played with Don Byron and Dave Douglas.
Caine has recorded 16 albums and is celebrated for his eclectic and inventive interpretations of the classical repertoire. His 1997 jazz tribute to Gustav Mahler received an award from the German Mahler Society, while outraging some jury members. Caine has also reworked Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Schumann and Mozart.
In 2001 he teamed up with drummer Zach Danziger to conceive an original project fusing live jungle and drum ‘n’ bass beats with fusion jazz called “Uri Caine Bedrock 3” and he worked with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots, Christian McBride, Pat Martino and Jon Swana.
Jazz pianist and composer Uri Caine has been named Composer-in-Residence of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, has received a nomination for a Grammy, been named U.S. Artists Fellow, has recorded twenty-eight albums as a leader and continues to perform and tour.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Monty Alexander was born Montgomery Bernard Alexander on June 6, 1944 in Kingston, Jamaica. Discovering the piano at the age of 4, Alexander began taking classical music lessons at 6 and became interested in jazz at the age of 14. He started playing in clubs, and on recording sessions by Clue J & His Blues Blasters, deputizing for Aubrey Adams. Two years later, he directed his dance orchestra Monty and the Cyclones and played in the local clubs. Performances at the Carib Theater in Jamaica by Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole left a strong impression on the young pianist.
In 1961 Alexander and his family moved to Miami, Florida, he went to New York in 1962 and started to play at the jazz club Jilly’s. In addition to performing with Frank Sinatra there, he also met and became friends with bassist Ray Brown and vibist Milt Jackson. In 1964, he went to California and recorded his first album “Alexander the Great” for Pacific Jazz at the age of 20.
He has recorded with Milt Jackson, Ernest Ranglin and Ed Thigpen, toured with Ernestine Anderson, steel pan player Othello Molineaux, Mary Stallings, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson, and Frank Morgan among others. In some of successive trios he has collaborated with Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Mads Vinding, and Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson.
Alexander married the late great jazz guitarist Emily Remler in 1981, a union that would last only three years. In the 90s, Alexander formed a reggae band featuring all Jamaican musicians, releasing several reggae albums, including “Yard Movement” and “Stir It Up”, a collection of Bob Marley songs. Monty Alexander, pianist and melodica player, influenced by Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly and Ahmad Jamal and the strong Caribbean influence and swinging feeling is consistently representative in his 67 albums as a leader and his numerous sideman collaborations as he continues to record, perform and tour.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oliver Edward Nelson was born on June 4, 1932 in St. Louis, Missouri. His brother played sax with Cootie Williams and his sister sang and played piano. He began playing the piano when he was six, the saxophone by eleven and by age 15 he was playing in territory bands around St. Louis. In 1950 he joined Louis Jordan’s big band, playing alto saxophone and arranging.
After military service Nelson returned to Missouri to study music composition and theory at Washington and Lincoln University graduating in 1958. He married, had a son, divorced, moved to New York City, and began playing with Erskine Hawkins and Wild Bill Davis, and arranged for the ApolloTheatre. In 1959 he briefly worked the West coast with Louie Bellson’s big band and played tenor for Quincy Jones.
After six albums as leader between 1959 and 1961 for Prestige with Kenny Dorham, Johnny Hammond Smith, Eric Dolphy, Roy Haynes and others. Oliver’s big break came with his Impulse album The Blues and The Abstract Truth featuring his now classic standard “Stolen Moments”. Propelling him into prominence as a composer and arranger, it opened up opportunities to arrange for Cannonball Adderley, Irene Reid, Sonny Rollins, Billy Taylor, Wes Montgomery, Johnny Hodges and many others.
Moving to Los Angeles in 1967 Nelson spent a great deal of time composing for television shows like Colombo, Ironside, Bionic Woman and films like Death of a Gunfighter and Last Tango In Paris. He produced for Nancy Wilson, James Brown, the Temptations and Diana Ross.
Less well-known is the fact that Nelson composed several symphonic works, and was also deeply involved in jazz education, returning to his alma mater, Washington University, in the summer of 1969 to lead a five-week long clinic that also featured such performers as Phil Woods, Mel Lewis, Thad Jones, Sir Roland Hanna, and Ron Carter.
Oliver Nelson, saxophonist, clarinetist, pianist, arranger and composer died of a heart attack on October 28, 1975, aged 43.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hilton Ruiz was born in New York City on May 29, 1952 of Puerto Rican heritage. He began playing piano at the age of eight, and gigged with Freddie Hubbard and Joe Newman when he was young. Later, he was Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s main pianist from 1974 to 1977 and was featured on such records as The Case of the 3 Sided Dream in Audio Color and The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man.
Hilton recorded several solo albums between the 1980s and 2000s. On May 19, 2006, found unconscious on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, police concluded that he stumbled and fell and was not attacked. As a result of the accident, he remained in a coma until eventually passing away on June 6, 2006 at the age of 54.
Hilton Ruiz, jazz pianist steeped in Afro-Cuban music, was also a talented bebop musician.
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Allen “Al” Tinney was born on May 28, 1921 in Ansonia, Connecticut. As a child he was taught piano, worked in local dance bands and as a stage actor/dancer in several Broadway plays and was an original cast member in the production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. His piano playing was so good that he became rehearsal pianist and assistant to Gershwin.
From 1939 to 1943 he held sway in the house band at Monroe’s Uptown House playing with young musicians who gravitated to him like Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Little Bennie Harris, George Treadwell and Victor Coulsen. An influential bebop pianist his playing was light, flowing and occasionally percussive, while his improvisations were harmonically advanced for the period and his style can be heard in the playing of Bud Powell, George Wallington, Al Haig, and Duke Jordan.
Abhorring the connection between jazz and drugs, by 1946 Tinney began to play less jazz and more in other styles. He was a member of The Jive Bombers who were one hit wonders with “Bad Boy” in 1957. He moved to Buffalo in 1968, played local jazz clubs, worked in the state prison music program, and lectured at SUNY Buffalo. He recorded one album as a leader with Peggy Farrell titled Peg & Al in 2000.
Pianist Allen Tinney passed away on December 11, 2002 in Buffalo, New York at age 81.
More Posts: piano