Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Brian Colin Dee was born in London, England on March 21, 1936.  He came to prominence in 1959 playing at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London. At that time he was playing with Lennie Best, Dave Morse and Vic Ash.

He later joined the Jazz Five and played opposite Miles Davis on a nationwide tour and was voted Melody Maker’s ‘New Star of 1960’. Brian also appeared at the Establishment Club in 1962 where his trio played opposite Dudley Moore.

Throughout an uninterrupted career, Dee has played with many jazz musicians, including Ben Webster, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Benny Carter, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Chet Baker, Al Grey, Sonny Stitt, Victor Feldman and Joe Newman.

From the late 1960s onwards, Dee was in demand as a session musician, appearing on many orchestral recordings. Subsequently, he went on to play with the Ted Heath Orchestra, for the last 10 years of its existence and was also a member of Laurie Johnson’s London Big Band.

Renowned as a fine accompanist to singers, Brian has recorded or appeared alongside Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Johnny Mercer, Elton John, Peggy Lee, Frankie Laine, Joe Williams, Jimmy Witherspoon, Mark Murphy, Cleo Laine and Annie Ross. He was musical director for Lita Roza, Cilla Black, Rosemary Squires, and Elaine Delmar.

Working with Irving Martin they composed the theme for Return of the Saint. In 1978, their Good Times album was released on Bruton Music BRG 4.

Pianist and musical director Brian Dee, who played organ and/or harmonium on four of Elton John’s early albums, at 87 years old, continues to perform.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Michael Josef Longo was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 19, 1937 to parents who had a musical background. His father played bass, his mother played organ at church, and his music training began at a young age. Around four years old he heard Count Basie and Sugar Chile Mike, and the latter led him to begin researching boogie woogie bass lines. His parents took him for formal lessons at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music at four. He moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida soon after and by the age of 12, he won a local talent contest.

He received a scholarship from the Ft. Lauderdale Symphony Orchestra in 1955, a Downbeat Hall of Fame Scholarship in 1959 His career began in his father’s band, then Cannonball Adderley helped him get gigs of his own. Their working relationship pre-dated Adderley’s emergence as a band leader, having approached the white teenager to be the pianist at his black church in a town that was largely segregated. This led to recordings with Cannonball in the mid-1950s but he was too young to go to clubs with him. Longo played at Porky’s which was later portrayed in the movie of the same name. He would go on to receive his Bachelor of Music degree from Western Kentucky University.

He was a fan of Oscar Peterson from a young age and he studied with the pianist from 1961 to 1962. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1972. During the 1960s he began to lead the Mike Longo Trio, which would remain active for the next 42 years. He would go on to play with Roy Eldridge, Paul Chambers and Dizzy Gillespie, who first heard him playing with Red Allen at the Metropole. He would become musical director for the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet and later the pianist for the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Band. From 1966 until 1993 his music career would be linked to Gillespie who he was with on the night he died and later delivered a eulogy at his funeral.

Longo also taught a master class to upcoming jazz musicians, and his big band, the New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble, would play and provide upcoming musicians a chance to learn on stage. A big part of his mission was to re-establish the apprenticeship relationship in teaching jazz.

He recorded two dozen albums as a leader, four with Dizzy and one with LeeKonitz. In 2002 he was inducted into Western Kentucky University’s Wall of Fame in 2002.

Pianist, composer, educator and author Mike Longo died in Manhattan from complications of Covid~19, three days after his 83 birthday on March 22, 2020.

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VIJAY IYER

Composer-pianist Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music. His deeply interactive, powerfully expressive musical language is indebted to the composer-pianist lineage from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the creative music movement of the 60s and 70s, and rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa. As MinnPost recently observed, “twining composition and improvisation is rightfully his most celebrated métier.” He has released twenty-six widely praised albums; received three Grammy nominations, numerous national and international prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship; composed for orchestras, soloists, and chamber ensembles; and collaborated with poets, filmmakers, choreographers, and music-makers from across the planet.

Iyer’s artistry finds perhaps its purest expression in his most celebrated group, the Vijay Iyer Trio, praised by NPR as “truly astonishing” and by The New York Times as “one of the best bands in jazz.” Iyer’s ever-evolving trio conception, developed over the last 30 years, finds inspiration in the trio music of Ahmad Jamal, the Ellington/Mingus/Roach summit Money Jungle, Andrew Hill’s Smokestack, McCoy Tyner’s 1970s ensembles, the rhythm-section alchemies of James Brown, Fela Kuti, and the Meters, South Asian rhythmic forms, and the expressive nuance of chamber music. The results, over the span of his trio’s five pivotal recordings and hundreds of performances, have not only defied the old categories, but inaugurated entirely new ones.

The Trio: Piano: Vijay Iyer | Bass: Harish Raghavan | Drums: Jeremy Dutton

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JACKY TERRASSON

Jacky Terrasson, the most widely traveled of all jazz pianists, is the “piano player of happiness,” according to Telerama magazine in France. He is an exhilarating musician, one of those who play their public straight to euphoria. Born in Berlin, of an American mother and a French father, he grew up in Paris, France. He moved to America to study at Berklee College of Music, and in 1993, after winning the prestigious Thelonious Monk Award, he began touring with Betty Carter. He then decided to move to New York, where he still lives today.

One year later, Jacky was introduced in the New York Times Magazine as one of the 30 under 30 and signed with the Blue Note label. He made three initial trio recordings for Blue Note (Jacky Terrasson, Reach, and Alive). He then devoted himself to several collaborations: “Rendezvous”, with Cassandra Wilson, and “What it is”, with Michael Brecker and Mino Cinelu. Beginning in 2001, he recorded “A Paris” for Blue Note; a very personal interpretation of classics of French song “Smile,” (winning him Best Jazz Album of the Year); and finally a solo album, “Mirror.”

This Franco-American national has never stopped dazzling us, either by his prestigious collaborations with greats such as Dee Dee Bridgewater and Dianne Reeves, or with his minimalist and energetic music hammered out with drummer Leon Parker and bassist Ugonna Okegwo, in a trio that was considered one of the best jazz trios of the 90s. And this intuition, this instinct, this openness, leads him to the discovery of the great burgeoning talents of his many groups.

Terrasson has been compared to Bud Powell for his carefully controlled velocity on the piano keys and to Ahmad Jamal for his sense of phrasing. Jacky also possesses a deep knowledge of the great French composers savants, such as Ravel, Fauré and Debussy. Through his fingers, as he mingles and melts the colors and the inventions of the great pianists of yesterday and today, Jacky creates his own style, all in subtleties, freshness, facility and ease, with the desire to rewrite and reinvent, again, every day and forever.

In 2019, Jacky released “53,” a trio album (his favorite format), on Blue Note.

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The Jazz Voyager

Fortunately for this Jazz Voyager the next stop on the global road trip is an hour and a half up the interstate to the Big Apple. The destination is Carnegie Hall  where I’ll be sitting in the Weill Recital Hall. So many times have I strolled past this iconic venue on 57th Street to partake in lunch or dinner at the Russian Tea Room with friends. I have also on many occasions been in the audience for many concerts and tonight will be no exception to the fabulous performances offered.

Tonight this Jazz Voyager will be in attendance for the award-winning composer and pianist Lisa Hilton. She brings with her trumpeter Igmar Thomas, bassist Luques Curtis, and drummer Rudy Royston to round out her quartet. The music is slated to be  uplifting and new from the group’s latest release, Coincidental Moment.

The hall is located at 881 7th Avenue, New York City 10019. For those who want more info go to https://notoriousjazz.com/event/lisa-hilton.

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