Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Arne Gunnar Valter Hülphers was born April 4, 1904 in Trollhättan, Sweden.  Early in his career he played at the club Felix-Kronprinsen from 1924 to 1927, and played in dance bands into the early 1930s.

He founded his own ensemble in 1934 which became one of Sweden’s most important jazz big bands. They toured Europe and recorded until 1940. Sidemen in his group included Miff Görling, Zilas Görling, and Thore Jederby.

Later in his career, he concentrated more on popular musical styles; he led an orchestra in which Fred Bertelmann played. Pianist and bandleader Arne Hülphers died on July 24, 1978 in Norrköping Municipality, Sweden.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

William James Finegan was born on April 3, 1917 in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in a household full of piano players. While growing up in Rumson, New Jersey, he attended Rumson-Fair Haven High School, and taught orchestration to schoolmate Nelson Riddle. He studied piano with Elizabeth Connelly, piano and musicianship with flautist/alto saxophonist Rudolph John Winthrop., and spent time studying at the Paris Conservatory.

He had his first professional experience leading his own piano trio before being offered a job as a staff arranger for Glenn Miller after Tommy Dorsey bought a copy of his Lonesome Road and recommended him. Finegan remained with Miller until 1942 and arranged such hits as Little Brown Jug, Sunrise Serenade, Song of the Volga Boatmen, Stardust, A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square and Jingle Bells. He arranged these songs in collaboration with Glenn Miller, but also arranged music for films in which the band appeared in the early Forties. He then worked off and on for Tommy Dorsey from 1942 to 1952.

In the late Forties Bill studied in New York City, then lived in Europe from 1948-1950 where he studied with Darius Milhaud and Valérie Soudères. After returning to the States in 1952, along with Eddie Sauter formed an ensemble, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, which remained active until 1957.

Following this collaboration, Finegan found work in advertising, writing music for commercials. In the Seventies, he arranged for the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Mel Lewis’s orchestra. He taught jazz at the University of Bridgeport in the 1980s. He wrote arrangements for cornetist Warren Vaché and the vocal group Chanticleer until his death in 2008.

Pianist, composer and arranger Bill Finegan died from pneumonia on June 4, 2008 in Bridgeport, Connecticut at the age 91.

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WCLK AT 50 | LIL JOHN & HIS ALL-STAR BAND

To celebrate WCLK 91.9’s 50th Anniversary the Atlanta Jazz Festival is presenting WCLK At 50: Featuring Lil John Roberts with an Atlanta All-Star Band.

Award-winning drummer Lil John Roberts will lead an Atlanta All-Star Band including these outstanding musicians: Phil Davis, Rodney Edge, Tres Gilbert, Derek Scott, Miguel Gaeten, Melvin Jones, Joe Gransden, Kebbi Williams, Jamel Mitchell, Mike Burton, Saunders Sermons, and Daniel Wytanis.

There will be special guest performances by Kathleen Bertrand, Cleveland Jones, Rhonda Thomas, Imani Grace-Cooper, Julie Dexter, Tony Hightower, Dashill Smith, and Alexandra Jackson.

As the Narrator, Jon Goode will weave in stories about the history and legacy of WCLK. Lil John Robert serves as the concert’s Music Director. The event is Co-Produced by Jamal Ahmad, Lil John Roberts, and Ray Cornelius.

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OMAR SOSA

Quarteto Americanos is Omar Sosa’s first U.S.-based jazz ensemble since the 1990s! The group came together in February 2021 when Omar was in the Bay Area for several live streams. Connecting with Josh and Sheldon was a gratifying reunion for Omar, as he played extensively with them during his early days in San Francisco and Oakland in the late 1990s. Josh Jones’ Trio at the time, including Omar and bassist Geoff Brennan, played frequently at Bay Area clubs. Josh remains one of Omar’s favorite drummers – a versatile musician and educator equally at home in Latin, jazz, hip-hop, and fusion styles.

Sheldon Brown was a member of Omar’s first Septet ensemble in the Bay Area, performing in San Francisco and Oakland and around the world in support of Omar’s earliest recording projects, ‘Free Roots’, ‘Spirit of the Roots’, and ‘Bembon’, also known as the Roots Trilogy. Sheldon is a talented composer, arranger and producer whose first recording, Shifting Currents, caught Omar’s ear when he initially moved to San Francisco in 1995. Ernesto Mazar Kindelan is a dynamic Cuban musician who came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014 following a ten-year stint with Charanga Habanera, the celebrated Cuban timba band from Havana.

Omar’s Quarteto Americanos plays a number of arrangements of Omar’s signature compositions from his early career, including ‘My Three Notes’, ‘Angustia’, and ‘Toridanzón’, as well as new songs written by Omar in Barcelona during the lockdown in 2020. Like Omar’s oeuvre, Quarteto Americanos’ repertoire is eclectic and energizing. Its improvisational approach seamlessly fuses elements of jazz, Latin, hip-hop, and electronica into an exciting, passionate, contemporary sound.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Andrzej Trzaskowski was born on March 23, 1933 in Kraków, Poland. He began playing piano at age four and founded his first jazz band, Rhythm Quartet. He attended Jan III Sobieski High School, passed his final exams cum laude, and eventually was admitted to Jagiellonian University where he earned his masters degree with his thesis being on Charlie Parker. Prior to his admittance he earned his living by playing in Kraków, Łódź and Zakopane night clubs.

By 1956 he was performing at jazz festivals and being recognized as the best jazz pianist by a Przekrój poll. From 1958, he played together with Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski in the band Jazz Believers. The following year Trzaskowski moved permanently to Warsaw, established his own hard bop band, The Wreckers, that drew inspiration from the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Horace Silver. In 1960, the Trzaskowski’s Trio accompanied saxophonist Stan Getz, and they recorded together the album Stan Getz & Andrzej Trzaskowski Trio.

At the end of the 1950s he began working with Polish cinema, arranging and recording music for the film Night Train, composed or created soundtracks for films and appeared on the screen, playing piano in Innocent Sorcerers in 1960 and Feliks Falk’s Był jazz in 1981. Andrzej moved to the United States in 1961 with a new configuration of The Wreckers and toured the country.

The Andrzej Trzaskowski Quintet would go on to perform with Don Ellis, Ted Curson, and in 1963 the Quintet gave concerts in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, East Germany and Belgium over the next year. By 1963, he began to move away from bop music towards free jazz.

In the Seventies he performed and recorded at the Polskie Radio Jazz Studio, and became the head of Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra Studio S-1. From 1992 he lectured at the Jazz Department of the State Music School of Warsaw and during the last years of his life he composed almost exclusively for cinema and television. In 1995, he was awarded the Cross of Merit for his artistic career.

Pianist, composer and musicologist Andrzej Trzaskowski, who from the mid-1950s onward was regarded as an authority on syncopated music,  died in Warsaw on September 16, 1998, aged 65.

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