Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Venissa Santi was born on May 10, 1978 in Ithaca, New York. As a child she grew up listening to the sounds of Ravel, Celia Cruz and Michael Jackson as well as theatrical productions and jazz. But it was her grandfather, Cuban composer Jacobo Ros Capablanca, who instilled in her a connection to her roots through his compositions and a life-long passion for music. So after completing high school, she moved to Philadelphia, where she enrolled at the University of the Arts and majored in Jazz Vocal Performance.
After graduation, she became actively involved in Philadelphia’s Latin community and music scene and began her career as a vocal instructor with the Asociación de Músicos Latino Americanos, better known as AMLA. Over time she performed with a variety of Latin, jazz and World music groups. It was from the support and encouragement of this community that inspired Venissa to embark on the first of four life changing visits to Cuba, where she conducted research and studied Afro Cuban song, dance and percussion.
It was while under the tutelage of Master Gregorio “El Goyo” Hernandez and master dancers from Yoruba Andabo, Arturo Clave y Guaganco, Afro-Cuba de Matanzas and Irosso Oba, that she reconnected with her relatives in Cuba. Santi began to compose the soundtrack of her life’s journey thus far, resulting in an audacious new sound that defies borders, language and categorization.
In 2008 Venissa won the Pew Fellowship for Folk and Traditional Arts. 2009 saw her signed to Sunnyside Records, releasing Bienvenida, and has been praised by Ruben Blades and pianist Danilo Perez. Vocalist Venissa Santi has released her sophomore project Big Stuff and is currently performing at venues and festivals and preparing new material for her next project.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joyce Collins was born on May 5, 1930 in Battle Mountain, Nevada. She began playing piano professionally at the age of 15 while still attending Reno High School. While studying music and teaching at San Francisco State College she played in groups and solo at various jazz clubs, eventually touring with the Frankie Carle band.
By the late 1950s, Collins settled in Los Angeles, California, working there Reno and in Las Vegas she became the first woman to conduct one of the resort’s show bands. During this period she worked in film and television studios, spending 10 years in the band on the Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart shows.
In 1975, she recorded with Bill Henderson garner Grammy nominations for their Street Of Dreams and Tribute To Johnny Mercer albums. Joyce continued to work in films, coached the Bridges brothers for their roles in The Fabulous Baker Boys. She appeared twice on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz radio show.
She performed mostly in solo, duo and trio work but occasionally sat in with big bands, such as that led by Bill Berry. She has recorded with Paul Horn and under her own name releasing her debut album in 1961, followed by her sophomore release Moment To Moment, after a long gap. She was an accomplished composer, arranger and singer with a delicate understanding of the lyricist’s intentions.
As an educator, in 1975 she taught jazz piano at the Dick Grove Music School. She wrote and arranged extensively, including a program, performed live and on radio, tracing the involvement of women in jazz as composers and lyricists. Pianist, singer and educator Joyce Collins passed away on January 3, 2010.
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Review: Niki Harris & EC3 | Time & Rhyme
Every now and then, if you’re lucky, you run across a bandleader who understands how to make a joyful noise. The days of the solo arranger and set configuration of players have been replaced with diversity bringing new ideas to eleven old songs. On his latest project Time & Rhyme, producer and drummer EC has collaborated with Niki Haris (Gene Harris’ daughter) and together have selected an incomparable set list that is no small feat to honor. Kicking off the set is a Tyrone Jackson arrangement with vocalist Niki Harris swinging an upbeat, straight-ahead version of the Hart/Rodgers tune Falling In Love With Love.
Traveling across the musical landscape Niki again takes center stage to present a poignant and tender rendition of another Jackson arrangement of the Bell/Creed composition Stop, Look, Listen. Not many vocalists have made me sit down and listen as intently as she did with the clarity and beauty of her interpretation. I could attempt to describe the emotional delivery Ms. Haris rendered on this song that five guys out of the Philly sound machine made famous, but the effort would be feeble at best and would be an injustice as you listen to her immense talent.
To challenge oneself to play a master is EC’s forte and he delivers with aplomb Dizzy’s Night In Tunisia opening with a strong bass line and sliding easily into an Afro-Cuban beat that can only be viewed as homage to a rhythm so dear to Mr. Gillespie’s heart. I was immediately transported to the backstreets of Havana and the raucous clubs full of flute, percussion and mambo.
Jackson steps in again with an easy bossa nova arrangement utilizing Frankie Quiñones percussive endowment to compliment Niki’s voice on Abbey Lincoln’s Throw It Away. Interestingly modal, they take it to a middle-eastern groove towards the end of the song, which gives Lincoln’s tune a refreshing outlook.
One can only think of the hapless scarecrow in the Wizard Of Oz when you see the words If I Only Had A Brain. Having heard this catchy Arlen/Yarburg tune many times, I was curious about the arrangement that would set this apart from the pack. Wade Beach set the tone for bassist Zack Pride’s conversation with EC’s drums. One can actually envision walking down the yellow brick road as they playfully execute the melody.
Billy Paul pulled the world’s heartstrings with Me & Mrs. Jones, however, Niki emotes a sense of fun and enjoyment in her relationship with Mr. Jones. One gets the sense that she is as comfortable with the relationship the way it is as she is relating it with an under beat of this collaborative mid-tempo bossa nova arrangement by EC and Jackson. Artia Lockett adds her enjoyment in the background like two girls having fun on a double date.
Not much more than the title needs to be said about Swinging At The Haven. EC puts his foot in the stew on this arrangement and the guys stir it up well. If you aren’t tapping a toe, shaking a hip or snapping your fingers, then you don’t know swing. Let this be your introduction.
Lionel Bart sits alongside the many resident masters of the Great American Songbook having penned the music and lyrics to Where Is Love for the 1960 Broadway musical Oliver. It’s a ballad of a young orphaned lad longing to find someone to love him and Niki quietly portrays the emotional depth of the lyric causing one to sympathize for the plight of this lost waif.
Changing tempos, EC, Dominique Patrick-Noel and A.T. take us back to our roots in the motherland as the trio drums and chants through Black Codes. One can visualize the movements of the dancers in a celebration of raising their ancestors. Nice & Easy is exactly what Niki and company do with this mid-tempo 7/8 meter of straight swing and Afro-Cuban undertones. If an encore was ever warranted on a recording then this Mandel/Mercer classic Emily would be a fitting adieu. The guys maintain the light and airy touch of the composers had in mind, leaving this listener with a vision of blue skies, sundresses, laughter and play in a field of wildflowers. Allow them to take you where your heart wants to go.
On this session drummer Ernest “EC” Coleman enlists vocalist Niki Harris, pianists Tyrone Jackson and Wade Beach, bassists Craig Shaw and Zack Pride, Sam Skelton on tenor saxophone and flute, saxophonist Teddy Baker, percussionists Frankie Quiñones, Dominique Patrick-Noel and Arch A.T. Thompson and Artia Locke holding down the background vocals.
For the uninitiated to EC’s genius, as you listen to this compendium of talent and music, I implore you to keep in mind, these are not shy schoolboys or coy girls on their first date. They are uncompromising professionals who know how to swing as well as be that gentle giant in the room with an equally tender touch. They may make it look easy but it is far from being that simple. Time, patience and the talent of eleven musicians committed to their craft have given birth to this seamlessly entrancing orchestration of sound.
carl anthony | notorious jazz | april 11, 2016
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Monty Waters was born on April 14, 1938 in Modesto, California. He received his first musical training from his aunt and first played in the church. After college, he was a member of a rhythm & blues band and in the late 1950s he worked with musicians like B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Little Richard and James Brown on tour.
In San Francisco Monty played with King Pleasure and initiated in the early 1960s a “Late Night Session” at Club Bop City. There he came into contact with musicians such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Red Garland and Dexter Gordon, who visited this club after their concerts. In addition, he and Pharoah Sanders, Dewey Redman and and Donald Garrett formed a big band.
By 1969 Waters had made a move to New York City and toured with Jon Hendricks. During the 1970s he participated in the Loft Jazz scene and recorded as a sideman with Billy Higgins, Joe Lee Wilson, Sam Rivers, and Ronnie Boykins. Like many other jazz musicians, he eventually left the States in the 1980s for Paris, where he worked with Chet Baker, Johnny Griffin and Sanders again.
Following Mal Waldron and Marty Cook to Munich, he continued to work with musicians such as Embryo, Gotz Tanferding, Hannes Beckmann, Titus Waldenfels, Suchredin Chronov and Joe Malinga. Saxophonist, flautist and singer Monty Waters passed away on December 23, 2008 in Munich, Germany.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Barbara Lea was born Barbara Ann LeCocq on April 10, 1929 in Detroit, Michigan. A musical family, her musical heritage is traceable to a great uncle, Alexandre Charles LeCocq, an important nineteenth-century composer of French light opera. Her father changed their surname to Leacock and she shortened it to Lea when she began working professionally.
Boston was a hotbed of jazz in the late 1940s and early 1950s, allowing Lea to sing with major instrumentalists including as Marian McPartland, Bobby Hackett, Vic Dickenson, Frankie Newton, Johnny Windhurst and George Wein. She worked with small dance bands there before majoring in music theory at Wellesley College on scholarship. She also sang in the college choir, worked on the campus radio station and newspaper, and arranged for and conducted the Madrigal Group and brass choir concerts.
Barbara’s professional career started upon graduation with her early recordings for Riverside and Prestige. They were met with immediate critical acclaim that led to her winning the DownBeat International Critics’ Poll as the Best New Singer of 1956. She appeared in small clubs in New York and throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada, as well as on radio and TV.
With the near-demise of classic pop in the early 60s, Lea turned to the legitimate theatre, performing an impressive list of leading and feature roles in everything from Shakespeare to Sondheim. Moving to the West Coast received her M.A. in drama at Cal State Northridge and then returned to New York and taught speech at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and acting at Hofstra University.
By the 1970s, with the resurgence of interest in show tunes and popular standards, Lea performed on NPR’s “American Popular Song with Alec Wilder & Friends”, appeared in two shows featuring the songs of Willard Robison and Lee Wiley, and received lengthy features in the New Yorker magazine. With her singing career was renewed she would consistently play the JVC, Kool and Newport Jazz Festivals as well as cabarets and concerts.
Jazz singer Barbara Lea, who also sang Dixieland, swing and cabaret, passed away on December 26, 2011 in Raleigh, North Carolina from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
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