Daily Dose Of jazz…

Ralph Towner was born on March 1, 1940 in Chehalis, Washington. Born into a musical family, his mother a piano teacher and his father a trumpet player, Towner learned to improvise on the piano at the age of three. He started trumpet lessons at the age of five, but did not take up guitar until attending the University of Oregon.

Ralph first played jazz in New York City in the late 1960s as a pianist and was strongly influenced by the renowned jazz pianist Bill Evans. He began improvising on classical and 12-string guitars in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and formed alliances with musicians who had worked with Evans, including flautist Jeremy Steig, Eddie Gomez, Marc Johnson, Gary Peacock ad Jack DeJohnette.

He began his career as a conservatory-trained classical pianist, who picked up guitar in his senior year in college, then joined world music pioneer Paul Winter’s Consort ensemble in the late 1960s. Leaving Winter along with band mates Paul McCandless, Glen Moore and Colin Walcott, they formed the group Oregon, mixing folk, Indian classical, avant-garde jazz and frr improvisation.

Around the same time, Towner began a longstanding relationship with ECM Records, releasing virtually all of his non-Oregon recordings since his 1972 debut as a leader Trios / Solos.  As a sideman he has ventured int jazz fsion with Weather Report on the 1972 album I Sing The Body Electric.

Unlike most jazz guitarists, Ralph only uses 6-string nylon-string and 12-string steel-string guitars. He tends to avoid high-volume musical environments, preferring small groups of mostly acoustic instruments that emphasize dynamics and group interplay. He make significant use of overdubbing, allowing him to play piano or synthesizer and guitar on the same track. During the Eighties he used more synthesizer but has returned to the guitar in recent years.

Composer, arranger, bandleader and multi-instrumentalist Ralph Towner, who plays 12 string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion and trumpet, has an impressive catalogue of some five-dozen recordings spread between his role as a leader, with Oregon, and as a sideman with Paul Winter and Weather Report among others. He continues to perform, record and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Liam Sillery was born in Northvale, New Jersey, a suburb across the river from New York City on February 28, 1972. Introduced to music and the trumpet at an early age by his uncle, also a trumpet player, he considers himself fortunate to have been surrounded through the years by fine teachers and musicians.

Matriculating through the undergraduate program at the University of South Florida was most significant as he studied with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. Before going on to attend the Manhattan School of Music, he performed as a freelance musician. Once in New York at the Manhattan School, he studied with Ccil Bridgewater, Dave Liebman, Phil Markowitz, Joan Stiles, Mark Soskin, and Garry Dial.

In 2004 Liam released his first recording as a leader, Minor Changes, followed by his sophomore project On The Fly with the Dave Sills Quartet in 2006. The next summer he recorded a third CD, Outskirts, in which he moved away from his traditional style to explore freer material. Pursuing his expansion of style and knowledge of his instrument he combines textures, rhythms and sonorities to the details and intricacies of his playing.

Trumpeter and composer Liam Sillery has performed with is quintet at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam and continues to play in and around metropolitan New York City.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Wingy Manone was born Joseph Matthews Manone on February 13, 1900 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He lost an arm in a streetcar accident, which resulted in his nickname of “Wingy”. He used prosthesis so naturally and unnoticeably that his disability was not apparent to the public.

After playing trumpet and cornet professionally with various bands in his hometown, Manone began to travel across America in the 1920s, working in Chicago, New York City, Texas, Mobile, California, St. Louis and other locations; he continued to travel widely throughout the United States and Canada for decades.

Wingy’s was a frequently recruited musician for recording sessions. He played and recorded with Benny Goodman and recorded fronting various pickup groups under pseudonyms like “The Cellar Boys” and “Barbecue Joe and His Hot Dogs.” His hit records included “Tar Paper Stomp” was later used as the basis for Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood” and a hot 1934 version of a sweet ballad of the time “The Isle of Capri”.

In 1943 he recorded several tunes as “Wingy Manone and His Cats”, performed in Soundies movie musicals and his autobiography, Trumpet on the Wing, was published in 1948. From the 1950s he was based mostly in California and Las Vegas, although he also toured through North America and Europe appearing at jazz festivals. In 1957, he attempted to break into the teenage rock-and-roll market with his version of Party Doll but never rose higher than 56 on the Billboard pop charts.

He composed numerous songs and in 2008, “There’ll Come a Time (Wait and See)” was used in the soundtrack to the Academy Award-nominated movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Trumpeter, vocalist, composer and bandleader Wingy Manone remained active until his passing on July 9, 1982 in Las Vegas at the age of 82.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Roy Eldridge was born David Roy Eldridge on January 30, 1911 on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His mother was a gifted pianist with a talent for reproducing music by ear, a talent inherited from her. He began playing piano at age five, took up drums at six, played bugle in church and by eleven began seriously honing the instrument, especially the upper register. Though lacking a proficiency at sight-reading, he could replicate melodies by ear effectively.

Eldridge’s early years had him leading and playing in a number of Midwest bands and absorbed the influence of saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins in developing an equivalent trumpet style. Leaving home after expulsion from high school in ninth grade he joined a traveling show at sixteen until it folded in Youngstown, Ohio. He then joined a carnival, returned home and found work in another traveling show. By 20, he led an orchestra, auditioned for Horace Henderson, played in a number of territory bands, formed his own short-lived band once again, moved to Milwaukee and took part in a cutting contest with Cladys “Jabbo” Smith.

Eldridge moved to New York in 1930, playing in Harlem dance bands, and got the nickname “Little Jazz” from Ellington saxophonist Otto Hardwick. He laid down his first recorded solos with Teddy Hill in 1935, led his own band at the reputed Famous Door nightclub and recorded a number of small group sides with singer Billie Holiday. He would join Fletcher Henderson’s band, becoming his featured soloist because of his ability to swing a band. He would move to Chicago to form a band with his older brother, playing saxophone and arranging. In the 40s he joined the Gene Krupa Orchestra, staying until the band broke up after Krupa was jailed for marijuana possession.

Over the course of his career, Little Jazz would play with Anita O’Day, Jazz At The Philharmonic, Coleman Hawkins, Ella Fitzgerald, Earl Hines, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham, Max Roach, Count Basie, Artie Shaw and the list goes on and on. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of triton substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the smooth and lyrical style of earlier jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.

In 1971 trumpeter Roy Eldridge was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.  After suffering a heart attack in 1980, he gave up playing. He died at the age of 78 on February 26, 1989 at the Franklin General Hospital in Valley Stream, New York, three weeks after the death of his wife, Viola.

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Laura Kahle was born on January 20, 1979 in Michigan but her family moved to Australia as a baby where she lived until 2004. She received her Bachelor of Music in jazz trumpet with the great John Hoffman and a Master of Music Studies in Composition @ the QLD Conservatorium of Music.

Moving to New York in 2004 she found herself working with the Danish Radio Big Band in Copenhagen, arranging the music of Jeff “Tain” Watts and Michael Brecker. She recorded “Downstream” was recorded in 2004 with a ten-piece ensemble from Brisbane, “West End Composers Collective”.

In 2006 she had two arrangements premiered by Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra featuring Jeff “Tain” Watts in Rose Hall, New York City. In 2007 she arranged the music of Gil Evans for the Branford Marsalis Septet, and performed in the Allen Room in New York City. By 2011 she recorded “Circular” and continues to perform and record.

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