Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leroy Jenkins was born on March 11, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois and began playing violin at eight years old, often in church. Another graduate of DuSable High under the tutelage of Walter Dyett, Leroy also played alto saxophone. He went on to graduate from Florida A&M, where he dropped the alto to concentrate on violin.
He returned to Chicago and divided his time from 1965 to 1969 between being involved in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and teaching in the public school system. By the end of the decade he gave up Chicago for Europe and while in Paris, along with Anthony Braxton, Leo Smith and Steve McCall, he founded the creative Construction Company. Jenkins followed this with the Revolutionary Ensemble and formed a trio with Anthony Davis and Andrew Cyrille.
During 1987 he toured Europe as part of Cecil Taylor’s group. He gained recognition for music-theatre works such as “The Mother of Three Sons” and “The Negros Burial Ground”, two collaborations with Ann T. Greene, also “Fresh Faust”, and “The Three Willies”.
Leroy has played with Archie Shepp, Alice Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk; was a driving force in the free jazz circles and has written numerous pieces for soloists, small groups and large ensembles. Leroy Jenkins, composer, violist and free jazz violinist passed away February 24, 2007.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tanya Kalmanovitch was born in Fort McMurray, Alberta on July 5, 1970 and learned to play the viola as a child and would go on to master the violin. She attended and graduated in 1992 from Juilliard School with a degree in viola performance and soon after debuted her jazz chops with the Turtle Island String Quartet.
Her 2003 debut recording with her quartet Hut Five was hailed by the Montreal Gazette as “an exceptional recording, one of the more engaging recordings heard in some time” and was garnished with a number of stars by DownBeat magazine. Actively performing in New York City since 2004, Tanya has been named “Best New Talent” by All About Jazz New York, while Time Out New York identified her from a small pool of suspects as “the Juilliard-trained violist who’s been tearing up the scene”.
Tanya has performed with Mark Turner, Benoît Delbecq, Mark Helias, Dominique Pifarély, Andy Laster, Tom Rainey, Ernst Reijseger, Mat Maneri, and the Turtle Island String Quartet, Martin Hayes, John Cage and Shujaat Husain Khan. She has travelled frequently to India where she has studied Karnatic music with violinist Lalgudi G. J. R. Krishnan and veena player Karaikudi S. Subramanian while conducting doctoral dissertation research on jazz exotica.
Teaching regularly at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London UK, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag NL, and as a member of the faculty of the department of Creative Improvisation at Boston’s New England Conservatory, she also conducts workshops on improvisation.
She is a founding member of the Brooklyn Jazz Underground, a collective of ten independent bandleaders based in New York City. She is also the Canadian representative to the International Association of Schools of Jazz, a founding member of the Jazz String Caucus of the International Association for Jazz Education, and a mentor to the Sisters in Jazz Program. Violist and violinist Tanya Kalmanovitch now lives in the spaces between modern jazz, classical music and free improvisation as she continues to compose, perform and educate.
