HOLIDAY JAZZ VESPERS

Come celebrate the holiday season with the timeless sounds of jazz at the 2025 Holiday Jazz Vespers at historic First Congregational Church in downtown Atlanta. The Holiday Jazz Vespers has become a highly anticipated treat and an annual favorite among jazz enthusiasts.

All Proceeds benefit the Education and Outreach Programs of the First Church CDC.

Featured Guest Artists:
Kathleen Bertrand ~ Vocal
Doc Powell ~ Guitar
Will Scruggs ~ Bariton Saxophone
Phil Davis ~ Piano
Dwight Andrews ~ Flute
Atlanta Jazz Chamber Chorus

Tickets: $28.52

More Posts: adventure,bandleader,flute,genius,guitar,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,preserving,saxophone,travel,vocal

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bhumibol Adulyadej was born on December 5, 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, however, the family moved to Bangkok, Thailand where she briefly attended Mater Dei school. In 1933 his mother took the family to Switzerland, where he continued his education at the École nouvelle de la Suisse romande in Lausanne. In 1934 he was given his first camera, which ignited his lifelong enthusiasm for photography.

Before he became King of Thailand, titled Rama IX, in 1942, Bhumibol became a jazz enthusiast, and started to play the saxophone, a passion that he kept throughout his life. He received his high-school diploma with a major in French literature, Latin, and Greek from the Gymnase Classique Cantonal de Lausanne, and by 1945 had begun studying sciences at the University of Lausanne, when World War II ended and the family was able to return to Thailand.

Adulyadej became an accomplished jazz baritone saxophone player and composer, playing Dixieland and New Orleans jazz. He also played the clarinet, trumpet, guitar, and piano. It is widely believed that his father may have inspired his passion for artistic pursuits at an early age. Initially focusing on classical music exclusively for two years but eventually switched to jazz since it allowed him to improvise more freely. It was during this time that he decided to specialize in wind instruments, especially the saxophone and clarinet. By 18 he started composing his own music with the first being Candlelight Blues.

He continued to compose even during his reign following his coronation in 1946. Bhumibol performed with Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Benny Goodman, Stan Getz, Lionel Hampton, and Benny Carter. Throughout his life, Bhumibol wrote a total of 49 compositions, much of it is jazz swing but he also composed marches, waltzes, and Thai patriotic songs.

He initially received general music training privately while he was studying in Switzerland, but his older brother, then King Ananda Mahidol, who had bought a saxophone, sent Bhumibol in his place. King Ananda would later join him on the clarinet. On his permanent return to Thailand in 1950, he started a jazz band, Lay Kram, whom he performed with on a radio station he started at his palace. The band grew, being renamed the Au Sau Wan Suk Band and he performed with them live on Friday evenings, occasionally taking telephoned requests.

Many bands such as Les Brown and His Band of Renown, Claude Bolling Big Band, and Preservation Hall Jazz Band recorded some of his compositions and can still be heard in Thailand. A 1996 documentary, Gitarajan, was made about his music. Adulyadej still played music with his Au Sau Wan Suk Band in later years, but was rarely heard in public. In 1964, Bhumibol became the 23rd person to receive the Certificate of Bestowal of Honorary Membership on behalf of Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts.

Baritone saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, guitarist, pianist and composer and King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned for 70 years and 126 days and is the longest of any Thai monarch, died on October 13, 2016 in Bangkok, Thailand.

More Posts: bandleader,clarinet,composer,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,saxophone,trumpet

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.

More Posts: bandleader,clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone

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.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone

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.

More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone