Jazz Bakery
The Jazz Bakery is a not-for-profit arts presenter in Los Angeles that has showcased many of the world's most acclaimed jazz artists since it was founded by jazz vocalist Ruth Price in 1992. History Price, President & Artistic Director of the Jazz Bakery, is a jazz singer from Philadelphia who toured with bassist/composer Charles Mingus and recorded with drummer Shelly Manne and guitarist Johnny Smith. She created the Jazz Bakery after booking several clubs and restaurants around Los Angeles. In its first incarnation the Jazz Bakery opened in photographer Jim Britt's studio located in the historic Helms Bakery complex, with concerts held on weekends. In 1994, the organization opened a dedicated venue in the Helms Bakery building itself and started presenting music seven nights a week in a semi-formal setting without interruptions for drink or food service. A rectangular theater with a café in the lobby, the venue booked Southern California jazz musicians and touring artis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, cultural center of Southern California. With an estimated 3,878,704 residents within the city limits , it is the List of United States cities by population, second-most populous in the United States, behind only New York City. Los Angeles has an Ethnic groups in Los Angeles, ethnically and culturally diverse population, and is the principal city of a Metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan area of 12.9 million people (2024). Greater Los Angeles, a combined statistical area that includes the Los Angeles and Riverside–San Bernardino metropolitan areas, is a sprawling metropolis of over 18.5 million residents. The majority of the city proper lies in Los Angeles Basin, a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Johnny Griffin
John Arnold Griffin III (April 24, 1928 – July 25, 2008) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Nicknamed "the Little Giant" for his short stature and forceful playing, Griffin's career began in the mid-1940s and continued until the month of his death. A pioneering figure in hard bop, Griffin recorded prolifically as a bandleader in addition to stints with pianist Thelonious Monk, drummer Art Blakey, in partnership with fellow tenor Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and as a member of the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band after he moved to Europe in the 1960s. In 1995, Griffin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. Early life and career Griffin studied music at DuSable High School in Chicago under Walter Dyett, starting out on clarinet before moving on to oboe and then alto saxophone. While still at high school at the age of 15, Griffin was playing with T-Bone Walker in a band led by Walker's brother. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Cables
George Andrew Cables (born November 14, 1944) is an American jazz pianist and composer. Early life Cables was born in New York City, United States. He was initially taught piano by his mother. He then studied at the High School of Performing Arts and later at Mannes College The New School for Music, Mannes College (1963–65). He formed the Jazz Samaritans at the age of 18, a band that included Billy Cobham, Steve Grossman (saxophonist), Steve Grossman, and Clint Houston. Cables' early influences on piano were Thelonious Monk and Herbie Hancock. Later life and career Cables has played with Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Joe Henderson, Frank Morgan and other well-established jazz musicians. His own records include the 1980 ''Cables' Vision'' with Freddie Hubbard among others. From 1983, Cables worked in the project Bebop & Beyond. He left later in the 1980s, but returned for guest appearances on two early 1990s albums, before rejoining in 1998. Cables is a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Randy Weston
Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection. Weston's piano style owed much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, whom he cited in a 2018 video as among pianists he counted as influences, as well as Count Basie, Nat King Cole and Earl Hines."Randy Weston talks about his new solo double CD Sound" YouTube video, March 27, 2018. Beginning in the 1950s, Weston worked often with trombonist and arranger Melba Liston. Described as "America's African Musical Ambassador", Weston once said: "What I do I do because it's about teaching and informing everyone about our most natural cultural phenomenon. It's really about Africa a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cedar Walton
Cedar Anthony Walton Jr. (January 17, 1934 – August 19, 2013) was an American hard bop jazz pianist. He came to prominence as a member of drummer Art Blakey's band, The Jazz Messengers, before establishing a long career as a bandleader and composer. Several of his compositions have become jazz standards, including "Mosaic", "Bolivia (Walton song), Bolivia", "Holy Land", "Mode for Joe" and "Ugetsu/Fantasy in D". Early life Walton was born and grew up in Dallas, Texas."Pianist-Composer Cedar Walton Dies at Age 79" , ''DownBeat'', August 20, 2013. His mother Ruth, an aspiring concert pianist, was his first teacher, and took him to jazz performances around Dallas. Walton cited Nat King Cole, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Art Tatum as his major influences on piano. He be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Roy Haynes
Roy Owen Haynes (March 13, 1925 – November 12, 2024) was an American jazz drummer. In the 1950s, he was given the nickname "Snap Crackle" for his distinctive snare drum sound and musical vocabulary. He is among the most recorded drummers in jazz. In a career spanning more than eight decades, he played swing, bebop, jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz. He is considered to be a pioneer of jazz drumming. Haynes led bands, including the Hip Ensemble. His albums ''Fountain of Youth'' and ''Whereas'' were nominated for a Grammy Award. He was inducted into the '' Modern Drummer'' Hall of Fame in 1999. Career Haynes was born in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, to Gustavas and Edna Haynes, immigrants from Barbados. His younger brother, Michael E. Haynes, became an important leader in the African American community in Massachusetts, working with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, representing Roxbury in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and for for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Art Farmer
Arthur Stewart Farmer (August 21, 1928 – October 4, 1999) was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination especially designed for him. He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while at high school in Los Angeles. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player. As Farmer's reputation grew, he expanded from bebop into more experimental forms through working with composers such as George Russell and Teddy Charles. He went on to join Gerry Mulligan's quartet and, with Benny Golson, to co-found the Jazztet. Continuing to develop his own sound, Farmer switched from trumpet to the warmer flugelhorn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dianne Reeves
Dianne Elizabeth Reeves (born October 23, 1956) is an American jazz singer, who has won five Grammy Awards for her albums. Early life and education Dianne Reeves was born in Detroit, Michigan, into a musical family. Her father sang, her mother played trumpet, her uncle is bassist Charles Burrell, and her cousin is George Duke. Her father died when she was two years old, and she was raised in Denver, Colorado, by her mother, Vada Swanson, and maternal family. Reeves was raised Catholic and attended Cure D'Ars Catholic School in Denver for much of her early schooling. Career In 1971, she started singing and playing piano. She was a member of her high-school band and while performing at a convention in Chicago was noticed by trumpeter Clark Terry, who invited her to sing with him. "He had these amazing all-star bands, but I had no idea who they all were! The thing I loved about it was the way they interacted with each other – the kind of intimate exchange that I wasn't part ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charlie Haden
Charles Edward Haden (August 6, 1937 – July 11, 2014) was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than fifty years. Haden helped to revolutionize the harmonic concept of bass playing in jazz, evolving a style that sometimes complemented the soloist, and other times moved independently, liberating bassists from a strictly accompanying role. In the late 1950s, he was an original member of the ground-breaking Ornette Coleman Quartet. In 1969, he formed his first band, the ''Liberation Music Orchestra'', featuring arrangements by pianist Carla Bley. In the late 1960s, he became a member of pianist Keith Jarrett's trio, quartet and quintet. In the 1980s, he formed his own band, ''Quartet West''. Haden also often recorded and performed in a duo setting, with musicians including guitarist Pat Metheny and pianists Hank Jones and Kenny Barron. German musicologist Joachim-Ernst Berendt wrote that Haden's "ability to create se ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brad Mehldau
Bradford Alexander Mehldau (; born August 23, 1970) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Mehldau studied music at The New School, touring and recording while still a student. He was a member of saxophonist Joshua Redman's quartet in the mid-1990s, and has led his own trio since the early 1990s. His first long-term trio featured bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy; in 2005 Jeff Ballard replaced Rossy. These bands have released more than a dozen albums under the pianist's name. Since the early 2000s, Mehldau has experimented with other musical formats in addition to trio and solo piano. '' Largo'', released in 2002, contains electronics and input from rock and classical musicians. Later examples include: touring and recording with guitarist Pat Metheny; writing and playing song cycles for classical singers Renée Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Ian Bostridge; composing orchestral pieces for 2009's '' Highway Rider''; and playing electronic ke ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Terence Blanchard
Terence Oliver Blanchard (born March 13, 1962) is an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He has also written two operas and more than 80 film and television scores. Blanchard has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Original Score for ''BlacKkKlansman'' (2018) and '' Da 5 Bloods'' (2020), both directed by Spike Lee, a frequent collaborator. Blanchard started his career in 1980 playing in the Lionel Hampton Orchestra while studying jazz at Rutgers University. In 1982, just before he turned 20, he dropped out of Rutgers to join The Jazz Messengers, launching a professional career now in its fifth decade. The Metropolitan Opera in New York staged Blanchard's opera '' Fire Shut Up in My Bones'' in its 2021–2022 season, the first opera by an African American composer in the organization's history. Blanchard is also a passionate educational mentor. From 2000 to 2011, Blanchard served as artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. In 2011, he was named artis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fred Hersch
Fred Hersch (born October 21, 1955) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and a 17-time Grammy nominée. He was the first person to play weeklong engagements as a solo pianist at the Village Vanguard in New York City. He has recorded more than 75 of his jazz compositions. Early life Hersch was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Jewish parents. He began playing the piano at age four, under the tutelage of Jeanne Kirstein. He began composing music at eight, and won national piano competitions starting at the age of ten. Hersch first became interested in jazz while at Grinnell College in Iowa. He dropped out of school and started playing jazz in Cincinnati. He continued his studies at the New England Conservatory under Jaki Byard, attracting attention from the press ("a fine showcase for Fred Hersch") in a college recital. On graduation, he became a jazz piano instructor at the college. In his 2017 autobiography, ''Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz'', Hersch talks ab ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |