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Cork Jazz Festival
The Cork Jazz Festival is an annual music festival held in Cork City, Ireland in late October. The first festival began on Friday 27 October 1978, and has been held every year (except in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The festival is Ireland's biggest jazz event and attracts hundreds of musicians and thousands of music fans to the city each year. Jim Mountjoy founded the festival in October 1978. Mountjoy was a marketing manager of the Metropole Hotel in the city at the time, and, faced with filling his property for the weekend, scheduled the first jazz festival to coincide with the newly instituted October bank holiday. A small committee was formed and obtained sponsorship from John Player & Sons. The country's first jazz festival successfully attracted thousands of jazz fans. Guinness became the major sponsor in the 1980s. As festival director between 1978 and 1986, Mountjoy also introduced a Pub Trail, a Jazz Boat (from the UK) and a Jazz Train (from Dublin) to expand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddy Rich
Bernard "Buddy" Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer, songwriter, conductor, and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time. Rich was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He discovered his affinity for jazz music at a young age and began drumming at the age of two. He began playing jazz in 1937, working with acts such as Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James. From 1942 to 1944, Rich served in the U.S. Marines. From 1945 to 1948, he led the Buddy Rich Orchestra. In 1966, he recorded a big-band style arrangement of songs from ''West Side Story''. He found lasting success in 1966 with the formation of the Buddy Rich Big Band, also billed as the Buddy Rich Band and The Big Band Machine. Rich was known for his virtuoso technique, power, and speed. He was an advocate of the traditional grip, though he occasionally used matched grip when playing the toms. Despi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Di Meola
Albert Laurence Di Meola (born July 22, 1954) is an American guitarist. Known for his works in jazz fusion and world music, he began his career as a guitarist of the group Return to Forever in 1974. Between the 1970s and 1980s, albums such as '' Elegant Gypsy'' and '' Friday Night in San Francisco'' earned him both critical and commercial success. Early life Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, into an Italian family with roots in Cerreto Sannita, a small town northeast of Benevento, Di Meola grew up in Bergenfield, where he attended Bergenfield High School. He has been a resident of Old Tappan, New Jersey. When he was eight years old, he was inspired by Elvis Presley and the Ventures to start playing guitar. His teacher directed him toward jazz standards. He cites as influences jazz guitarists George Benson and Kenny Burrell and bluegrass and country guitarists Clarence White and Doc Watson. Career He attended Berklee College of Music in 1971. At nineteen, he was hire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonny Rollins
Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a leader. A number of his compositions, including " St. Thomas", " Oleo", " Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards. Rollins has been called "the greatest living improviser" and the "Saxophone Colossus". Early life Rollins was born in New York City to parents from the United States Virgin Islands. The youngest of three siblings, he grew up in central Harlem and on Sugar Hill, receiving his first alto saxophone at the age of seven or eight. He attended Edward W. Stitt Junior High School and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946. During his high school years, he played in a band with other fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli (; 26 January 1908 – 1 December 1997, born Stefano Grappelli) was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties. For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a gallicised spelling of his last name, ''Grappelly'', reverting to ''Grappelli'' in 1969. The latter, Italian spelling is now used almost universally when referring to the violinist, including reissues of his early work. Biography Early years Grappelli was born at Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris, France, and christened with the name Stefano. His father, Italian marchese Ernesto Grappelli, was born in Alatri, Lazio, while his French mother, Anna Emilie Hanoque, was from St-Omer. Ernesto was a scholar who taught Italian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerry Mulligan
Gerald Joseph Mulligan (April 6, 1927 – January 20, 1996), also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz—Mulligan was also a significant arranger, working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. His pianoless quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the best cool jazz groups. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments. Several of his compositions, such as "Walkin' Shoes" and "Five Brothers", have become standards. Biography Early life and career Gerry Mulligan was born in Queens Village, Queens, New York, United States, the son of George and Louise Mulligan. His father was a Wilmington, Delaware native of Irish descent; his mother a Philadelphia native of half-Irish and half-German descent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", " 500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post- John Coltrane era. Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He won 27 Grammy Awards and was nominated more than 60 times. Early life and education Armando Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on June 12, 1941, to parents Anna (née Zaccone) and Armando J. Corea. He was of southern Italian descent, his father having been born to an immigrant from Albi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dave Brubeck
David Warren Brubeck (; December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasting rhythms, Metre (music), meters, and tonality, tonalities. Born in Concord, California, Brubeck was drafted into the US Army, but was spared from combat service when a International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Red Cross show he had played at became a hit. Within the US Army, Brubeck formed one of the first racial integration, racially diverse bands. In 1951, Brubeck formed the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which kept its name despite shifting personnel. The most successful—and prolific—lineup of the quartet was the one between 1958 and 1968. This lineup, in addition to Brubeck, featured saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello. A U.S. Department of State-sponsored tour in 1958 featuring the band inspir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleo Laine
Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth (born Clementine Dinah Bullock; 28 October 1927)Cleo Laine birth registry in Uxbridge via Free UK Genealogy CIO, a charity registered in England and Wales, Number 1167484, under the auspices of the General Register Office of England and Wales Accessed 22 November 2022. is an English and pop singer and an actress, known for her scat singing and for her vocal range. Though her natural range is that of a |
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996. Biography Early life Lionel Hampton was born in 1908 in Louisville, Kentucky, and was raised by his mother. Shortly after he was born, he and his mother moved to her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. He spent his early childhood in Kenosha, Wisconsin, before he and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1916. As a youth, Hampton was a member of the Bud Billiken Club, an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which was off-limits because of racial segregation. During the 1920s, while still a teenager, Hampton took xylophone lessons from Jimmy Bertrand and began to play drums. Hampton was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, scat singing, bent horn, pouched cheeks, and light-hearted personality provided one of bebop's most prominent symbols. In the 1940s, Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione, and balladeer Johnny Hartman. He pioneered Afro-Cuban jazz and won several Grammy Awards. Scott Yanow wrot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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