Daily Dose Of Jazz…

David Werner Amram III was born November 17, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1948–1949, and earned a bachelor’s degree in European history from George Washington University in 1952. In 1955 he enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied under Dimitri Mitropoulos, Vittorio Giannini, and Gunther Schuller. Under Schuller he studied French horn.

As a sideman or leader, David has worked with Aaron Copland, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Jack Kerouac, Sonny Rollins, Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz, George Barrow, Jerry Dodgion, Paquito D’Rivera, Pepper Adams, Arturo Sandoval, Oscar Pettiford, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Lou Williams, Kenny Dorham, Ray Barretto, Wynton Marsalis, and others that included a wide range of folk, pop, and country figures.

In 1956, producer Joseph Papp hired Amram to compose scores for the New York Shakespeare Festival, the next year staged one of the first poetry readings with jazz, and in 1966 Leonard Bernstein chose Amram as the New York Philharmonic’s first composer-in-residence.

He went on four international musical tours to Brazil, Kenya, Cuba and the Middle East. He conducted a 15 piece orchestra for Betty Carter’s What Happened To Love? album, became an advocate for music education. He composed scores for the Elia Kazan films Splendor in the Grass, and The Arrangement and for the John Frankenheimer films The Young Savages and The Manchurian Candidate.

French hornist and pianist David Amram, who also plays Spanish guitar, penny whistle, sings and composes, has recorded nineteen albums as a leader and twenty-eight as a sideman.

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The Jazz Voyager

Saying farewell to DC always gives me a melancholy feeling having spent so many years there having so much fun. This week the Jazz Voyager is heading for a little jazz in the Buckeye State and for those who don’t know I’m talking about Ohio. The city is Cincinnati and it sits at the confluence of Licking and Ohio Rivers, the latter which has the city looking at Kentucky.

The venue is Caffè Vivace, a coffee house by day and a jazz lounge by night. It provides a space for Queen City residents to gather, work, socialize and herald the musical art form of jazz and a destination for jazz lovers. Located in the Walnut Hills neighborhood and has gained a reputation that hosts the area’s finest local jazz musicians, young and old, as well as the occasional regionally or nationally known artists.

So tonight I will be in the audience to check out vocalist Mandy Gaines who has been singing since an early age, getting her initial training school and church. She then continued studies with private vocal instruction and an assortment of workshops that enhanced her skillset. Joining her is pianist Sergio Pamies from Spain who fuses traditional jazz language with flamenco music of his childhood. He has takenhis knowledge and became a college professor at several universities in America, Europe and Asia.

The venue is located at 975 E McMillan Street, 45206 and for more information you can visit https://notoriousjazz.com/event/mandy-gaines-sergio-pamies

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Janet Lawson was born on November 13, 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland to a Jewish father and Catholic mother from Eastern Europe. Her father was a jazz drummer and her mother was a singer and lyricist who sometimes sang in her father’s band. At home, they worked on songs together at the piano. She performed on the radio and regional television as a child.

Lawson began singing with a local big band in her teens. When she was eighteen, she moved to New York City and got a job as a secretary at Columbia Records. She appeared regularly on Steve Allen’s television show between 1968 and 1969 and worked in theater.

Living across the street from Al Jeter, the head of Riverside Records, gave her access to make contacts when she attended parties at his penthouse apartment. While going to jazz clubs she found inspiration from seeing Thelonious Monk and made her debut at the Village Vanguard with Art Farmer.

In 1976 she formed the Janet Lawson Quintet, which in 1983 included saxophonist and flutist Roger Rosenberg, pianist Bill O’Connell, Ratzo Harris on bass, and drummer Jimmy Madison. She became known as a scat singer and improviser.

Lawson has worked with Art Farmer, Chick Corea, Ron Carter, Bob Dorough, Duke Ellington, Tommy Flanagan, Sheila Jordan, Barry Harris, Milt Hinton, Eddie Jefferson, Barney Kessel, Dave Liebman, Joe Newman, Rufus Reid, Clark Terry, Ed Thigpen, Cedar Walton, Duke Pearson and David Lahm.

She has taught voice at New York University and the New School, given private lessons, taught elementary school children, and has made trips every year to Latvia to attend a youth music camp.

In 1977 she recorded with Eddie Jefferson and by the Eighties she recorded two albums as a leader. In 1982 she was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Female Jazz Vocal Performance, and in 2007 received a Hall of Fame nomination from the International Association for Jazz Education.

Vocalist Janet Lawson, who in the early 2000s was diagnosed with Lyme disease, Bell’s palsy, Parkinson’s disease and suffered damage to her vocal cords, transitioned on January 22, 2021 in New Jersey.

Confer a dose of a Baltimore vocalist to those seeking a greater insight about the musicians around the world who are members of the pantheon of jazz…

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MANDY GAINES & SERGIO PAMIES

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CAMILLE SABA SMITH 4~TET

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