|
Jazzmobile
Jazzmobile, Inc. is based in New York City, and was founded in 1964 by Daphne Arnstein, an arts patron and founder of the Harlem Cultural Council and Dr. William "Billy" Taylor. It is a multifaceted, outreach organization committed to bringing "America's Classical Music"—Jazz—to the largest possible audience by producing concerts, festivals and special events worldwide. The Jazzmobile educational efforts are now being enhanced by the creation of a not-for-profit music publishing company and not-for-profit recording company. History Since 1964, Jazzmobile has been presenting Free Outdoor Summer Mobile Concerts, bringing jazz musicians to the five boroughs of New York City, Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Essex County, New Jersey, Westchester County, and several cities in upstate New York. Concerts are funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and corporate sponsors such as Anheuser-Busch, ASCAP Foundation, Louis A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Taylor
Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. A jazz activist, Taylor sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America, an organisation he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians who survived Hurricane Katrina. Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz." Biography Early life and career Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, Unite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lynette Washington
Lynette Washington is an American jazz vocalist. She was the winner in the Jazzmobile Anheuser-Busch Jazz Vocal Competition in 2005. Biography Washington is a native New Yorker and has had a career that has taken her across the globe. Her travel has also enabled her to learn to sing in quite a few international languages. Her singing style is heavily rooted in the jazz, R&B, and gospel arenas. Lynette began her early professional singing career performing in Russian nightclubs throughout New York City and Europe. She recorded on the early GRP releases of jazz trumpeter Tom Browne as well with her own R&B/Dance group Touché on Emergency Records. She has worked with artists such as Aretha Franklin, U2, and Peter Gabriel and was featured lead singer in New Voices of Freedom appearing in U2's Rattle & Hum, BBC's One World, One Voice, and Lenny Kravitz's "Give Peace A Chance" on Virgin Records. Lynette has also recorded radio commercials and appeared in national TV commercials ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Najee
Jerome Najee Rasheed (born November 4, 1957, New York City), known professionally as Najee, is an American Jazz-Smooth Jazz saxophonist and flautist. Early life Najee was born in the lower west side of Manhattan in New York City and lived his teenage years in Queens, New York. His father died at a young age, and Najee and siblings were raised by his mother Mary Richards. His mother was an important figure and supporter throughout his life and musical career. Najee's musical pursuits began in grade school at age eight, where he began playing the clarinet, but he had a deep desire to play saxophone. He was influenced at this age by listening to his mother's recordings of Miles Davis and other legendary American jazz artists. A pivotal moment in his life came when he made the decision to become a professional jazz musician. In high school, Najee began to study jazz as a student at the Jazzmobile program (co-founded by Dr. Billy Taylor) where he honed his skills on tenor saxophone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warren Benbow
Warren Benbow (born December 22, 1954, in New York City) is a drummer who has worked with Nina Simone, Jimmy Owens, Larry Willis, Eddie Gómez, Olu Dara, Michael Urbaniak, Teruo Nakamura, and was an original member of James Blood Ulmer's band 'Odyssey'. Career At the High School of Performing Arts, Benbow studied drums and percussion with Warren Smith and Morris Goldenberg of the New York Philharmonic. Later at Mannes College he studied with Walter Rosenberger, also of the Phil, and with Dong Wong Park. While studying in the Jazzmobile with Freddie Waits and Albert “Tootie” Heath Benbow was introduced by Waits to jazz vocalist Betty Carter, and his career as a professional drummer began. He toured with Ulmer and played on Ulmer's albums ''Odyssey'', ''Bloody Guitar'', ''Part Time'', ''Live At The Caravan Of Dreams'', and ''Reunion''. In addition to his jazz work, he has also worked on Broadway, and has also worked in pop with Whitney Houston, Gwen Guthrie, LL Cool ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Heath
James Edward Heath (October 25, 1926 – January 19, 2020), nicknamed Little Bird, was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger, and big band leader. He was the brother of bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert Heath. Biography Heath was born in Philadelphia on October 25, 1926.Allmusic biography/ref> His father, an auto mechanic, played the clarinet, performing on the weekends. His mother sang in a church choir. The family frequently played recordings of big band jazz groups around the house. Heath's sister was a pianist, while his brothers were bassist Percy Heath (older) and drummer Albert Heath (his youngest sibling). During World War II, Heath was rejected for the draft for being below the minimum weight. Heath originally played alto saxophone. He earned the nickname "Little Bird" after his work for Howard McGhee and Dizzy Gillespie in the late 1940s, during which his playing displayed influences from Charlie Parker (Parker's nickname was "Bird"). He then switched ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Count Basie Orchestra
The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16 to 18 piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie in 1935 and recording regularly from 1936. Despite a brief disbandment at the beginning of the 1950s, the band survived long past the Big Band era itself and the death of Basie in 1984. It continues under the direction of trumpeter Scotty Barnhart. Originally including such musicians as Buck Clayton and Lester Young in the line-up, the band in the 1950s and 1960s made use of the work of such arrangers as Neal Hefti and featured musicians such as Thad Jones and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Its recordings of this era included collaborations with singers such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. History Early years Count Basie arrived in Kansas City, Missouri in 1927, playing on the Theater Owners Bookers Association (TOBA) circuit. After playing with Walter Page's Blue Devils, in 1929 he joined rival band leader Bennie Moten's band ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Wess
Frank Wellington Wess (January 4, 1922 – October 30, 2013) was an American jazz saxophonist and flutist. In addition to his extensive solo work, Wess is remembered for his time in Count Basie's band from the early 1950s into the 1960s. Critic Scott Yanow described him as one of the premier proteges of Lester Young, and a leading jazz flutist of his era—using the latter instrument to bring new colors to Basie's music. Biography Wess was born in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, the son of a principal father and a schoolteacher mother. He began with classical music training and played in Oklahoma in high school. He later switched to jazz on moving to Washington, D.C. and by nineteen was working with big bands. His career was interrupted by World War II although he did play with a military band in the period. After leaving the military, he joined Billy Eckstine's orchestra. He returned to Washington D.C. a few years afterwards and received a degree in flute at the city's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terence Blanchard
Terence Oliver Blanchard (born March 13, 1962) is an American trumpeter and composer. He started his career in 1982 as a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, then The Jazz Messengers. He has composed more than forty film scores and performed on more than fifty. A frequent collaborator with director Spike Lee, he has been nominated for two Academy Awards for composing the scores for Lee's films ''BlacKkKlansman'' (2018) and ''Da 5 Bloods'' (2020). He has won five Grammy Awards from fourteen nominations. From 2000 to 2011, Blanchard served as artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. In 2011, he was named artistic director of the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami, and in 2015, he became a visiting scholar in jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music. In 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), named Blanchard to its Endowed Chair in Jazz Studies, where he will remain until 2024. The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ahmad Jamal
Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and educator. For six decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. Biography Early life Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1930. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity ("Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does," he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recogniz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nancy Wilson (singer)
Nancy Wilson may refer to: * Nancy Wilson (jazz singer) (1937–2018), American jazz singer and actress * Nancy Wilson (religious leader) (born 1950), Moderator of the Metropolitan Community Churches * Nancy Wilson (rock musician) (born 1954), American rock singer and guitarist for the band Heart * Nancy Wilson (journalist) Nancy Wilson (born c. 1955) is a Canadian television journalist. She was an anchor for CBC News Now before her retirement. She joined CBC Newsworld in 1991 as the host of ''This Country''. Prior to joining, Wilson worked on CBC Television's newsm ... (born 1955), Canadian television journalist * Nancy Wilson (basketball) (born 1969), professional and college basketball coach {{human name disambiguation, Wilson, Nancy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
