Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leron Thomas was born on April 8, 1979 in Houston, Texas and his musical journey began with inspiration fro his family rich with respect and understanding of quality music. He graduated from Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and ventured to New York City to develop as a trumpet player and composer, enrolling in Manhattan’s The New School.
While studying, Leron’s own music was evolving and maturing and began performing professionally with various artists including Bilal, Billy Harper, Charles Tolliver and Roy Hargrove. The quality of his original compositions was enhanced when playing live alongside talented peers Robert Glasper, Damion Reid, Vicente Archer, Marcus Strickland, Harold O’Neal, Isaac Smith, Reggie Quinerly and Omer Avital.
After matriculation through The New School in 2003 he remained in Manhattan to pursue his professional career as a writer and trumpeter. Thomas expanded his scope of playing and has worked with many artists from a variety of genre’s including Michael Stipe, Lauryn Hill, Bobby Watson and Mos Def, to name a few. Subsequently he found ways to liberate himself through a natural, fluid progression into writing and performing ‘other music’. These compositions required his personal trumpet tone along with his vocals to emphasize the diverse sound.
Since 2004 he has developed this genre-crossing music incorporating jazz, blues, pop, country, electro-pop and rock. With eight independently released projects and critical acclaim, he explores a range of artistic media. Having composed for film, he is featured in an independent short film 2010 and appears on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Bubblers Eight. Trumpeter Leron Thomas continues to compose, perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herbert Alpert was born on March 31, 1935 and raised in the Boyle Heights section of East Los Angeles, California. His family was Jewish, emigrating from Radomyshl, now present day Ukraine and Romania. His father, a talented mandolin player, his mother taught violin, and his older brother a drummer. He began trumpet lessons at the age of eight and played at dances as a teenager. Acquiring an early wire recorder in high school, he experimented on this crude equipment.
Following graduation in 1952, he joined the U.S. Army and frequently performed at military ceremonies. After his service in the Army, Alpert tried his hand at acting, but eventually settled on pursuing a career in music. While attending the University of Southern California he became a member of the USC Trojan Marching Band, and appeared in the un-credited role as “Drummer on Mt. Sinai” in the film The Ten Commandments in 1056. In 1962, he had an un-credited part in a scene in the film Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation, playing a solo in a dance band.
In 1957, Alpert teamed up with Rob Weerts, co-wrote a number of Top 20 hits including Baby Talk for Jan & Dean and Wonderful World for Sam Cooke. By 1960 he was signed with RCA Records as a vocalist under the name of Dore Alpert.
In 1962 along with Jerry Moss they founded A&M Records and their very first hit was “The Lonely Bull” adapted from the mariachi bands and the cheers of bullfighting spectators. The title song reached No. 6 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and became A&M’s first album with the original release number being #101.
By the end of 1964, with top session players he began touring with the Tijuana Brass. Television specials followed by 1967, as well as two albums, Whipped Cream and Other Delights and Going Places. The single “A Taste Of Honey” won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
The Brass would go on to perform the title tack to the first movie version of Casino Royale in 1967. His music would be used on The Dating Game, bringing him greater exposure. The band would win six Grammy Awards, fifteen of their albums went gold, fourteen platinum, and in 1966 outsold the Beatles.
Alpert’s only No. 1 single during this period, and the first No. 1 hit for his A&M label, was a solo effort of “This Guy’s In Love With You” by Bacharach/David. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Alpert enjoyed a successful solo career. In 1979 he had his biggest instrumental hit titled “Rise”. He would go on to work with Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Janet Jackson and Lisa Keith. He performs with Gato Barbieri, Rita Coolidge, Brian Culbertson, and others. With his wife kani Hall (Sergio Mendes fame), they have released the live album Anything Goes. In 2013, he released a new album, Steppin’ Out which won a Grammy.
Herb and Moss received a Grammy Trustees Award, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in 2013, has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, and received the “El Premio Billboard” for his contributions to Latin music. Trumpeter, pianist, vocalist, composer, arranger, songwriter, record producer of jazz, Latin and pop music continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lonnie Hillyer was born on March 25, 1940 in Monroe, Georgia but moved with his family to Detroit at age three, and began studying music at 14 under Barry Harris. By 1960, he moved to New York City where he played with Charles Mingus, Yusef Lateef and Clifford Jarvis. His association with Mingus lasted more than a decade, performing on records such as “My Favorite Quintet” and “Let My Children Hear Music”.
In 1966, Lonnie and fellow Detroit friend Charles McPherson formed a quintet performed together during the years following. Around 1983 he and former Monk tenor saxophonist Charles Rouse formed a jazz quintet “Bebop Quintessence”, with drummer Leroy Williams, pianist Hugh Lawson and bassist Ben Brown.
Over the years of his career Hillyer performed with Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Willie Bobo, Barry Harris, Walter Davis Jr., Abbey Lincoln, Eric Dolphy and Pharoah Sanders among others.
Jazz trumpeter Lonnie Hillyer, who was strongly influenced by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk and other bebop legends of the era, passed away of cancer on July 1, 1985 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Orbert Davis was born on March 8, 1960 in Chicago and raised in Momence, Illinois. He began playing trumpet around the age of ten, but was not formally instructed until Charles Danish, an elementary school teacher, found him a trumpet teacher and drove him to lessons. He eventually graduated with a degree in trumpet performance from DePaul University and then received a master’s degree in jazz pedagogy from Northwestern University.
Davis has recorded over 3000 television and radio commercials, released three studio albums, very active in music education, particularly with at-risk students, is co-founder and director of MusicAlive!, an initiative associated with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, which he also founded and directs.
Winner of the 1995 Cognac Hennessy National Jazz Search, Orbert was chosen as one of Chicago Tribune’s “1995 Arts People of the Year” and Chicago Magazine named him “Y2k Best Trumpeter in Chicago”.
One of Chicago’s busiest and most sought after musician, the jazz trumpeter has performed and/or recorded many projects for such notable artists as Ramsey Lewis, Charles Earland, Kurt Elling, Bob Mamet and William Russo’s Chicago Jazz Ensemble, Wynton Marsalis, TS Monk, Stevie Wonder, Dr. John, Kurt Elling, Ernie Watts, Ramsey Lewis, Grover Washington Jr. and The Smithsonian Masterworks Jazz Orchestra. Davis performs regularly with various groups under his own name, including his critically acclaimed ensemble “Orbert Davis with Strings Attached”.
He was featured soloist at the 1996 Chicago Jazz Festival, performing Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ “Sketches of Spain”. In October 1999, along with Jon Faddis and Lester Bowie, Orbert was a featured performer for the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s “Tribute to Louis Armstrong: Legacy for the Millennium” where he performed compositions from Armstrong’s Hot 5 and Hot 7 recordings.
Along with his partner/manager Mark Ingram, Davis owns and operates Orbark Productions, whose credits include projects for Atlantic, Capitol, CBS, Epic, MCA and the Warner Brothers record labels. He has scored and performed on and off camera for such films as A League Of Their Own, The Babe and Road To Perdition. Trumpeter, composer, bandleader and educator Orbert Davis is currently an Associate Professor of music at the University of Illinois at Chicago and conducts and records the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic in between recording as a leader.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Shew was born Robert Shew on March 4, 1941 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He began playing the guitar at the age of eight but by ten switched to the trumpet. By thirteen he was playing at local dances with various groups and at fifteen put together his own group. This gave him the opportunity to play dances, concerts, jazz coffee houses and dinner clubs.
After leaving college in 1960 he was drafted into the U.S. Army and played trumpet with the NORAD band in Colorado Springs and on tour. After leaving the Army he joined the big bands of Tommy Dorsey and Woody Herman, Della Reese and followed by the Buddy Rich Big Band in the mid to late 1960s.
By 1972 Bobby had moved from Las Vegas to Los Angeles where he became a top shelf studio musician. He also played with some of the top big bands of the era through the end of the 1970s: Toshiko Akiyoshi, Lew Tabackin, Louis Bellson, Maynard Ferguson and numerous others. In addition to playing on several notable Big Band recordings starting in the 1960s, he recorded several albums as leader starting with his 1978 debut recording Telepathy.
Shew has held the position of Trumpet chairman of the International Association of Jazz Educators, has authored numerous books on trumpet performance and technique, andis on the Board of Directors of the International Trumpet Guild.
Trumpeter and flugelhorn player Bobby Shew, now living near his hometown of Albuquerque, spends time mentoring jazz musicians in the area and leading the local Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra. As an educator he is a member of the faculty at the Skidmore Summer Jazz Institute, a two-week residential jazz workshop primarily for high school students, located in Saratoga Springs, New York. He continues to perform, record and tour.
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