Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Moore was born December 4, 1954 and raised in Eureka, California. He studied music at Humboldt State and in 1977 graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard and Gunther Schuller, and was a classmate of Marty Ehrlich. He played in a variety of musical contexts, especially those in support of theatre and dance groups.
By 1982 he was a regular member of Misha Mengelberg’s Instant Composers Pool and had moved to Amsterdam. He was also a member of Georg Gräwe’s Grubenklang Orchester. Michael is one-third of the Clusone Trio with cellist Ernst Reijseger and drummer Han Bennink. Originally meant only to play a single date at a festival in Clusone, Italy, the trio toured irregularly for several years and recorded six albums, including one of freely-interpreted Irving Berlin compositions.
His debut recording as a leader was in 1992 but it was with 1994’s Chicoutimi that he began to earn recognition as a composer. The drummerless trio on this album had Fred Herschon piano, and bassist Mark Helias was inspired by the duo recordings of Lee Konitz and Gil Evans.
He put together a jazz quintet in 2005 and the album Osiris. In 2013, he performed with InstanPool, a group of international musicians making improved music and occasionally playing a composition.
Saxophonist and clarinetist Michael Moore, who has recorded twenty-two albums as a leader, continues his journey in performing and recording.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ove Johansson was born on December 3, 1936 and didn’t start playing the tenor saxophone until the age of 13. However, he gave the clarinet a chance for a couple of years. Very early in his career he got into a professional jazz group playing before starting his own groups where he spent most of the time as a band leader.
For a short period Ove was a sideman with Swedish saxophonist Lars Gullin. From 1972 to 1994 he was a teacher of saxophone, improvisation, ensemble and harmony at the School of Music, Gothenburg University. He went on to start his own small record label LJ Records in 1989 and recorded his own and new Scandinavian jazz music internationally.
The end of the Fifties saw Johansson leading his own groups and a driving force of the Swedish jazz scene. He was musical director of Mwendo Dawa. His musical work stretched from straight ahead, free form and electronic jazz to the acoustic and electro acoustical mix of today.
He toured Europe, North and South America, and China, with Mwendo Dawa. He toured with the trio Natural Artefacts with performances both in the world of improvisation music as well as the world of electro acoustic music.
Tenor saxophonist and composer Ove Johansson, who produced 35 albums with his own material and with the group, died on December 25, 2015.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmy Lyons was born on December 1, 1931 in Jersey City, New Jersey and raised there until the age of nine, when his mother moved the family to Harlem and then the Bronx in New York City. In the mid-1940s he got his first saxophone and took lessons from Buster Bailey.
After high school he was drafted into the United States Army and spent 21 months on infantry duty in Korea before spending a year playing in army bands. Once discharged he enrolled at New York University but by the end of the Fifties, Lyons was supporting his music by working for the United States Postal Service.
1960 saw Jimmy followed Archie Shepp into the saxophone role in the Cecil Taylor Unit. His post-Parker sound and strong melodic sense became a defining part of the sound of that group, from the 1962 Cafe Montmartre sessions onwards. During the 1970s, he ran his own ensemble, with bassoonist Karen Borca and percussionist Paul Murphy and was part of the loft jazz movement.
Lyons’ group and Cecil Taylor Unit continued a parallel development throughout the 1970s and 1980s, often involving the same musicians, including trumpeter Raphe Malik, bassist William Parker and percussionist Murphy.
In 1976, Lyons performed in a production of Adrienne Kennedy’s A Rat’s Mass directed by Cecil Taylor at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan.
Alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, who recorded eight albums as a leader, twenty-nine as a sideman and performed in the free jazz genre, died from lung cancer at the age of 54.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michel Portal was born on November 27, 1935 in Bayonne, France into a musical family and home filled with several instruments growing up. His interest in jazz began after hearing it on the radio after World War II. He studied clarinet at the Conservatoire de Paris and conducting with Pierre Dervaux.
Gaining experience in light music with the bandleaders Henri Rossotti and with Perez Prado in Spain in 1958, Michel performed with drummer Benny Bennett, Raymond Fonsèque, Aimé Barelli and for many years, the singer Claude Nougaro.
Portal co-founded the free improvisation group New Phonic Art. During 1969, he played on a recording of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen.
He began scoring music for films in the 1980s. He won the César Award for Best Music Written for a Film three times. Playing both jazz and classical music and is considered to be “one of the architects of modern European jazz.
Composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist Michel Portal continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jon De Lucia was born on November 26, 1980 in Quincy, Massachusetts. He is predominantly a student of jazz, but also has a deep interest in the folkloric music and instruments of Cuba, Japan, Ireland and Italy. He has performed on a variety of ethnic flutes, drums and stringed instruments.
Having led his groups and played as a sideman in Boston, Massachusetts, New York City and all over Japan, he has worked with Tommy Crane, David Tronzo, Bob Moses, Bob Gullotti, John Lockwood and Thomas Morgan among others.
He leads the Jon De Lucia Group, and the baroque improvising Luce Trio. Saxophonist and composer Jon De Lucia, now based in Brooklyn, New York, continues to compose, perform and teach full time at BMCC in Tribeca, New York.
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