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Vocalese Singers
Vocalese is a style of jazz singing in which words are added to an instrumental soloist's improvisation. Definition Vocalese uses recognizable lyrics that are sung to pre-existing instrumental solos, as opposed to scat singing, which uses nonsense words such as "bap ba dee dot bwee dee" in solos. In the "first wave" of vocalese creation, that sometimes took the form of a tribute to the original instrumentalist. The word "vocalese" is a play on the musical term " vocalise"; the suffix "-ese" is meant to indicate a sort of language. The term was attributed to Jon Hendricks by the jazz critic Leonard Feather to describe the first Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross album, ''Sing a Song of Basie''. Most vocalese lyrics are entirely syllabic, as opposed to melismatic. That may lead to the use of many words sung quickly in a given phrase, especially in the case of bebop. Notable vocalese performers King Pleasure recorded several pioneering examples of vocalese beginning in 1949. Vocalese's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, and dance music. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Elling
Kurt Elling (born November 2, 1967) is an American jazz singer and songwriter. Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Rockford, Elling became interested in music through his father, who was Kapellmeister at a Lutheran church. He sang in choirs and played musical instruments. He encountered jazz while a student at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. After college, he enrolled in the University of Chicago Divinity School, but he left one credit short of a degree to pursue a career as a jazz vocalist. Elling began to perform around Chicago, scat singing and improvising his lyrics. He recorded a demo in the early 1990s and was signed by Blue Note. He has been nominated for ten Grammy Awards, winning Best Vocal Jazz Album for '' Dedicated to You'' (2009) and '' Secrets Are the Best Stories ''(2021). Elling often leads the ''Down Beat'' magazine Critics' Poll. He had a longtime collaboration with pianist Laurence Hobgood, leading a quartet that toured throughout the world ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mingus (Joni Mitchell Album)
''Mingus'' is the tenth studio album by Canadian musician Joni Mitchell. It was released on June 13, 1979, and was her last studio album for Asylum Records. The album is a collaboration between Mitchell and Charles Mingus. It was recorded in the months before and after Mingus' death in January 1979 and is wholly dedicated to him. The album is one of Mitchell's most experimental and jazz-centric works. Mingus originally wrote six compositions ("Joni I-VI") for Mitchell to write lyrics for, and three of these were included on the album. Two other tracks written exclusively by Mitchell are included, alongside a new version of Mingus' standard "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", featuring lyrics written by Mitchell. In addition to these, five spoken word tracks (denoted as "raps") are dispersed throughout the album. Mitchell is backed on the album by Jaco Pastorius (who had also contributed to Mitchell's two previous albums) on fretless bass, Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Herbie Hancock on electri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a jazz instrumental composed by Charles Mingus, originally recorded by his sextet in 1959 and released on his album '' Mingus Ah Um''. One of Mingus's best-known compositions, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" became a jazz standard, recorded by other jazz and jazz fusion artists. Mingus wrote it as an elegy for saxophonist Lester Young, who had died two months prior to the recording session and who was known for wearing unusually broad-brimmed pork pie hats. These were "busted down" by Young himself, from hats that might better be described as Homburgs, but which he only purchased in "Negro districts". This was since, according to an interview with Young in the November 1949 edition of '' Our World'', "You can't get the right type in a 'gray' neighborhood". Lyrics Originally written as an instrumental piece, lyrics have been added on a number of occasions. Rahsaan Roland Kirk performed lyrics for the song on his 1976 album, '' The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz Double bass, upright bassist, composer, bandleader, pianist, and author. A major proponent of collective Musical improvisation, improvisation, he is considered one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history,See the 1998 documentary ''Triumph of the Underdog'' with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Eric Dolphy. Mingus's work ranged from advanced bebop and avant-garde jazz with small and midsize jazz ensemble, ensembles to pioneering the post-bop style on seminal recordings like ''Pithecanthropus Erectus (album), Pithecanthropus Erectus'' (1956) and ''Mingus Ah Um'' (1959) and progressive big band experiments such as ''The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady'' (1963). Mingus's compositions continue to be played by contemporary musicians ranging from the repertory bands Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty (b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joni Mitchell
Roberta Joan Mitchell (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian and American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter. As one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitchell became known for her personal lyrics and unconventional compositions, which grew to incorporate elements of pop music, pop, jazz, rock music, rock, and other genres. Among her accolades are eleven Grammy Awards, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. ''Rolling Stone'', in 2002, named her "one of the greatest songwriters ever", and AllMusic, in a 2011 biography, stated "Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century." Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatoon and throughout western Canada, before moving on to the nightclubs of Toronto. She moved to the United States and began touring in 1965. Some of her original songs ("Urge for Going", "C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bobby McFerrin
Robert Keith McFerrin Jr. (born March 11, 1950) is an American singer, songwriter, and conductor (music), conductor. His Vocal pedagogy, vocal techniques include singing fluidly but with quick and considerable jumps in Pitch (music), pitch—for example, sustaining a melody while also rapidly alternating with arpeggios and harmonies—as well as scat singing, Polyphony, polyphonic overtone singing, and improvisational vocal percussion. He performs and records regularly as an unaccompanied solo vocal artist. He has frequently collaborated with other artists from both the jazz and Classical music, classical scenes. McFerrin's song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" is the only A cappella, acapella track to ever reach No. 1 in the US, which it reached in 1988 and additionally won Grammy Award for Song of the Year, Song of the Year and Grammy Award for Record of the Year, Record of the Year honors at the 31st Annual Grammy Awards, 1989 Grammy Awards. McFerrin has also worked in collaboration ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Benson
George Washington Benson (born March 22, 1943) is an American jazz fusion guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist. A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, playing soul jazz with Jack McDuff and others. He then launched a successful solo career, alternating between jazz, pop, rhythm and blues, R&B singing, and scat singing. His album ''Breezin''' was certified triple-music recording sales certification, platinum, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard (magazine), ''Billboard'' album chart in 1976. His concerts were well attended through the 1980s, and he still has a large following. Benson has won ten Grammy Awards and has been honored with a List of stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame#B, star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Biography Early career Benson was born and raised in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the age of seven, he first played the ukulele in a corner drug s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birdland (composition)
"Birdland" is a jazz/pop song written by Joe Zawinul of the band Weather Report as a tribute to the Birdland nightclub in New York City, which appeared on the band's 1977 album '' Heavy Weather''. The Manhattan Transfer won a Grammy Award with their 1979 version of the song, which had lyrics by Jon Hendricks. Quincy Jones won two Grammy Awards for the version of the piece he included on his 1989 album '' Back on the Block''. The leading Cuban band Los Van Van included an extended interpolation of the piece in their song Tim Pop/Birdland. History "Birdland" opens '' Heavy Weather'', the 1977 album that marked the commercial peak of Weather Report's career. The composition is a tribute to the famous New York City jazz club named Birdland that operated on Broadway from 1949 through 1965 and hosted many great jazz musicians of the era. This was where Zawinul, who visited the club almost daily, heard performances by Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weather Report
Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band active from 1970 to 1986. The band was founded in 1970 by Austrian keyboardist Joe Zawinul, American saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš, American drummer Alphonse Mouzon as well as American percussionists Don Alias and Barbara Burton. The band was initially co-led by Zawinul and Shorter but as the 1970s progressed, Zawinul became the primary composer and creative director of the group. Other prominent members throughout the band’s history included bassists Jaco Pastorius, Alphonso Johnson and Victor Bailey (musician), Victor Bailey, drummers Chester Thompson and Peter Erskine, and percussionists Airto Moreira and Alex Acuña. A quintet of Zawinul and Shorter plus a bassist, a drummer and a percussionist was the standard formation for Weather Report. The band started as a free improvising group with avant-garde and experimental electronic leanings (pioneered by Zawinul); when Vitouš left Weather Report (d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Manhattan Transfer
The Manhattan Transfer was an American vocal group founded in 1969 in New York City, performing music genres like a cappella, Brazilian jazz, Swing music, swing, vocalese, rhythm and blues, Pop music, pop, and standards. They have won eleven Grammy Award, Grammy Awards. There have been several incarnations and formations of the Manhattan Transfer, with each edition having different styles. The first and original rendition was in the 1960s, consisting of a mostly a cappella-tinged style; it featured Tim Hauser, Erin Dickins, Marty Nelson, Pat Rosalia, and Gene Pistilli. The second version of the group, formed in 1972, incorporating a more vocal jazz approach, consisted of Hauser, Alan Paul, Janis Siegel, and Laurel Massé. The third, and most commercially perceived, formation of the group happened in 1979, because Massé had to leave the group after being badly injured in a car crash and was replaced by Cheryl Bentyne. This edition of the Manhattan Transfer performed electron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York Voices
New York Voices is a jazz vocal group that was founded in 1987 by Peter Eldridge, Caprice Fox, Sara Krieger, Darmon Meader, and Kim Nazarian. All except Krieger were members of an alumni group from Ithaca College that toured Europe in 1986. They began performing as the New York Voices in 1988 and issued their debut album the following year. Sara Krieger left in 1992 and was replaced by Lauren Kinhan. After Caprice Fox left, the group became a quartet. Discography * ''New York Voices'' (GRP, 1989) * ''Hearts of Fire'' (GRP, 1991) * ''What's Inside'' (GRP, 1993) * ''New York Voices Sing the Songs of Paul Simon'' (RCA Victor, 1998) * ''Sing! Sing! Sing!'' (Concord Jazz, 2001) * '' Brazilian Dreams'' with Paquito D'Rivera, Claudio Roditi (MCG Jazz, 2002) * ''A Day Like This'' (MCG Jazz, 2007) * ''Let It Snow'' (Five Cent, 2013) * ''Meeting of Minds'' with Bob Mintzer Big Band (MCG Jazz, 2018) * ''Reminiscing in Tempo'' (Origin, 2019) As guest * Count Basie, ''Live at Manchester Cra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
