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Ronnie Boykins
Ronald Boykins (December 17, 1935 – April 20, 1980) was a jazz double bass, bassist and is best known for his work with pianist/bandleader Sun Ra, although he had played with such disparate musicians as Muddy Waters, Johnny Griffin, and Jimmy Witherspoon prior to joining Sun Ra's Arkestra. Biography Like his fellow Sun Ra bandmates, John Gilmore (musician), John Gilmore and Pat Patrick (musician), Pat Patrick, Boykins attended Chicago's DuSable High School and studied under its famed music teacher "Captain" Walter Dyett. He also studied with Ernie Shepard, who would later work with Duke Ellington. Boykins joined the Arkestra in 1958, during the Chicago period, and travelled with them to Canada and then to New York City. Boykins has been described as "the pivot around which much of Sun Ra's music revolved for eight years, as well as one of the most determining elements in the sound of the Arkestra." This is especially pronounced on the key recordings from 1965 (''The Magic City (S ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city.
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Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous Big band, jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become Standard (music), standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan (1937 song), Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty five-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writ ...
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Tenor Saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while the alto is pitched in the key of E), and is a transposing instrument in the treble clef, sounding an octave and a major second lower than the written pitch. Modern tenor saxophones which have a high F key have a range from A2 to E5 (concert) and are therefore pitched one octave below the soprano saxophone. People who play the tenor saxophone are known as "tenor saxophonists", "tenor sax players", or "saxophonists". The tenor saxophone uses a larger mouthpiece, reed and ligature than the alto and soprano saxophones. Visually, it is easily distinguished by the curve in its neck, or its crook, near the mouthpiece. The alto saxophone lacks this and its neck goes straight to the mouthpiece. The tenor saxophone is most recognized for ...
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Hard Bop
Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing. David H. Rosenthal contends in his book ''Hard Bop'' that the genre is, to a large degree, the natural creation of a generation of African-American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music. Prominent hard bop musicians included Horace Silver, Clifford Brown, Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino and others. Characteristics Hard bop is sometimes referred to as "funky hard bop". The "funky" label refers to the rollicking, rhythmic feeling associated with the style. The descriptor is also used to de ...
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Trombonist
The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the air column inside the instrument to vibrate. Nearly all trombones use a telescoping slide mechanism to alter the pitch instead of the valves used by other brass instruments. The valve trombone is an exception, using three valves similar to those on a trumpet, and the superbone has valves and a slide. The word "trombone" derives from Italian ''tromba'' (trumpet) and ''-one'' (a suffix meaning "large"), so the name means "large trumpet". The trombone has a predominantly cylindrical bore like the trumpet, in contrast to the more conical brass instruments like the cornet, the flugelhorn, the baritone, and the euphonium. The most frequently encountered trombones are the tenor trombone and bass trombone. These are treated as non-transposing instruments, reading at concer ...
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Allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Musical ensemble, bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All-Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar, and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as compact discs (CDs) replaced LP record, LPs and cassette (format), cassettes as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it, he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he res ...
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David Izenzon
David Izenzon (May 17, 1932 – October 8, 1979) was an American jazz double bassist. Biography Izenzon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, and later received a master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music. Izenzon began playing double bass at the age of twenty-four.Yanow, Scott "Artist BiographyAllMusic.Retrieved September 14, 2013. He played in his hometown before moving to New York City in 1961 where he played with Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, Sonny Rollins, and Bill Dixon. He is best known for his association with Ornette Coleman, which began in October 1961. He played in Coleman's Town Hall, 1962 concert and played with him frequently from 1965 to 1968, often in a trio format with drummer Charles Moffett. During this time, Izenzon also recorded with Harold McNair and Yoko Ono. From 1968 to 1971, he taught music history at Bronx Community College and played with Perry ...
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Alan Silva
Alan Lee da Silva (born 22 January 1939, in Bermuda) is an American free jazz multi-instrumentalist, best known as a double bassist. He has recorded on keyboards, violin, cello and trumpet among other instruments. Biography Silva was born a British subject to an Azorean/ Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as "Ruby". He emigrated to the United States at the age of five with his mother, eventually acquiring U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19. He adopted the stage name of Alan Silva in his twenties. Silva was quoted in a Bermudan newspaper in 1988 as saying that although he left the island at a young age, he always considered himself Bermudian. He was raised in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, where he first began studying the trumpet, and moved on to study the upright bass. Silva is known as one of the most inventive bass players in jazz and has performed with many in the world of avant-garde jazz, including Cecil Taylor, ...
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Horn Section
A horn section is a group of musicians playing horns. In an orchestra or concert band, it refers to the musicians who play the "French" horn, and in a British-style brass band it is the tenor horn players. In many popular music genres, the term is applied loosely to any group of woodwind or brass instruments, or a combination of woodwinds and brass. Symphonic In a symphony orchestra, the horn section is the group of symphonic musicians who play the French horn (or German horn or Vienna horn). These musicians are typically seated to the back of the ensemble and may be on either side at the director's discretion. Placing them to the left with their bells toward the audience increases the prominence of the section, whereas on the right, the sound reflects off the back of the stage. Most of the time, players are seated right to left from the director's view based on seating, with the principal horn (first horn) being seated on the right and fourth horn seated on the left. The sect ...
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Keyboard Instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers that are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term ''keyboard'' often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers and arrangers as well as work-stations. These keyboards typically work by translating the physical act of pressing keys into electrical signals that produce sound. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Modern keyboards, especially digital ones, can simulate a wide range of ...
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Electronics
Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield of physics and electrical engineering which uses Passivity (engineering), active devices such as transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits to control and amplify the flow of electric current and to convert it from one form to another, such as from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) or from analog signal, analog signals to digital signal, digital signals. Electronic devices have significantly influenced the development of many aspects of modern society, such as telecommunications, entertainment, education, health care, industry, and security. The main driving force behind the advancement of electronics is the semiconductor industry, which continually produces ever-more sophisticated electronic devices and circuits in respo ...
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The Heliocentric Worlds Of Sun Ra, Volume Two
''The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume Two'' is a 1965 recording by the jazz musician Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra. Where '' ''Volume One'''' of the ''Heliocentric Worlds'' series had predominantly featured short abstract pieces, ''Volume Two'' features longer pieces performed by a smaller group, making it closer in spirit to the contemporaneous '' The Magic City'', released on Ra's own Saturn label. The record has been widely bootlegged, some versions of which were retitled ''The Sun Myth''. The album was re-released on CD by ZYX-Music (ESP 1017–2) in the 1990s. The songs "The Sun Myth" is constructed around the intertwining of Ronnie Boykins's bowed bass and Ra's electronic keyboard. These predominantly low sounds contrast sharply with the interlude commentaries from the other Arkestra members. A rare alternative version – also on ESP, and with the same catalogue number – overlays African singing at the beginning and end of the piece. "A House of Beauty" is a feat ...
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