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Steve Lacy (saxophonist)
Steve Lacy (born Steven Norman Lackritz; July 23, 1934 – June 4, 2004) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone. Coming to prominence in the 1950s as a Dixieland, progressive dixieland musician, Lacy went on to a long and prolific career. He worked extensively in experimental jazz and to a lesser extent in free improvisation, but Lacy's music was typically melodic and tightly-structured. Lacy also became a highly distinctive composer, with compositions often built out of little more than a single questioning phrase, repeated several times. The music of Thelonious Monk became a permanent part of Lacy's repertoire after a stint in the pianist's band, with Monk's works appearing on virtually every Lacy album and concert program; Lacy often partnered with trombonist Roswell Rudd in exploring Monk's work. Beyond Monk, Lacy performed the work of jazz composers such as Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington and Herbie Nicho ... [...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] |
Herbie Nichols
Herbert Horatio Nichols (January 3, 1919 – April 12, 1963) was an American jazz pianist and composer who wrote the jazz standard " Lady Sings the Blues". Obscure during his lifetime, he is now highly regarded by many musicians and critics. Life He was born in San Juan Hill, Manhattan, New York, United States, to parents from St. Kitts and Trinidad, and grew up in Harlem. During much of his career, he took work as a Dixieland musician while also pursuing the more adventurous kind of jazz he preferred. He is best known today for music that combines bop, Dixieland, and music from the Caribbean with harmonies from Erik Satie, Béla Bartók and other modernist composers. His first known work as a musician was with the Royal Barons in 1937, but he did not find performing at Minton's Playhouse a few years later a very happy experience, as the competitive environment did not suit him. However, he did become friends with pianist Thelonious Monk. Nichols was drafted into the Army in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enrico Rava
Enrico Rava (born 20 August 1939), is an Italian jazz trumpeter. He started on trombone, then changed to the trumpet after hearing Miles Davis. Career He was born in Trieste, Italy. His first commercial work was as a member of Gato Barbieri's Italian quintet in the mid-1960s; in the late 1960s he was a member of Steve Lacy (saxophonist), Steve Lacy's group. In 1967, Rava moved to New York City and, one month later, became a member of the group Gas Mask, which had one album released on Tonsil Records in 1970. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked with John Abercrombie (guitarist), John Abercrombie, Andrea Centazzo, Gil Evans, Richard Galliano, Joe Henderson, Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, Michel Petrucciani, Cecil Taylor, and Miroslav Vitouš. He has also worked with Carla Bley, Lee Konitz, Jeanne Lee, Paul Motian, and Roswell Rudd. Chiefly an exponent of bebop jazz, Rava has also played in avant-garde jazz settings. With trumpeter Paolo Fresu, Rava recorded four albums on the influence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenny Drew
Kenneth Sidney "Kenny" Drew (August 28, 1928 – August 4, 1993) was an American-Danish jazz pianist. Biography Drew was born on August 28, 1928, in New York City, United States, and he received piano lessons from the age of five. Feather, Leonard, & Ira Gitler (2007). ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz'', Oxford University Press. He attended the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan. His first recording, in 1950, was with trumpeter Howard McGhee, and over the next two years Drew worked in bands led by Buddy DeFranco, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker, among others. After a brief period with his own trio in California, Drew returned to New York, playing with Dinah Washington, Johnny Griffin, Buddy Rich, and several others over the following few years. He led many recording sessions throughout the 1950s, and appears on John Coltrane's 1958 album '' Blue Train''. Drew was one of the American jazz musicians who settled in Europe around this period: he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Band And Quartet In Concert
''Big Band and Quartet in Concert'' is a live album by American jazz musician Thelonious Monk, released in March 1964 by Columbia Records. Recorded at the Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall on December 30, 1963, it features a large ensemble with 10 musicians, including the four members of the Thelonious Monk Quartet and six additional brass and reed players. Like the earlier '' The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall'' album, the large ensemble pieces were arranged by Hall Overton. Monk toured Europe in 1967 with a similar ensemble and played many of the same pieces featured on ''Big Band and Quartet in Concert''. Recordings of a Paris concert with the 1967 group were later released as '' Thelonious Monk Nonet Live in Paris 1967''. ''Big Band and Quartet in Concert'' was called by reviewer Scott Yanow "essential for all jazz collections". Track listing 1964 LP 1994 CD reissue The 1994 reissue on CD and LP restored the entire concert, including selections and drum solos l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflections (Steve Lacy Album)
''Reflections'' (subtitled ''Steve Lacy Plays Thelonious Monk'') is the second album by Steve Lacy which was released on the Prestige label in 1959. It features performances of Thelonious Monk's compositions by Lacy, Mal Waldron, Buell Neidlinger and Elvin Jones. (According to biographer Robin Kelley, this was the first album devoted entirely to Monk's music recorded by another artist.) Reception The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow stated: "All of soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy's early recordings are quite fascinating, for during 1957-1964, aspects of his style at times hinted at Dixieland, swing, Monk, and Cecil Taylor, sometimes at the same time. For this CD reissue (a straight reproduction of the original New Jazz LP), Lacy teams up with pianist Mal Waldron, bassist Buell Neidlinger, and drummer Elvin Jones for seven Thelonious Monk compositions. The typical standbys (such as 'Round Midnight,' 'Straight No Chaser,' and 'Blue Monk') are avoided in favor of more complex works su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gil Evans
Ian Ernest Gilmore Evans (né Green; May 13, 1912 – March 20, 1988) was a Canadian Americans, Canadian–American jazz pianist, Music arranger, arranger, composer and bandleader. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest orchestrators in jazz, playing an important role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, and jazz fusion. He is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with Miles Davis. Early life Gil Evans was born in Toronto, Canada, on May 13, 1912, to Margaret Julia McConnachy. Little is known about Evans's biological father, although a family friend said that he was a doctor who died before Evans was born. Originally named Gilmore Ian Ernest Green, Evans took the last name of his step-father, John Evans, a miner. The family moved frequently, living in Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Washington (state), Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon, migrating to wherever Evans's father could find work. Eventually, the family ended up in California, firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newport Jazz Festival
The Newport Jazz Festival is an annual American multi-day jazz music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. Elaine Lorillard established the festival in 1954, and she and husband Louis Lorillard financed it for many years. They hired George Wein to organize the first festival and bring jazz to Rhode Island. Most of the early festivals were broadcast on Voice of America radio, and many performances were recorded and released as albums. In 1972, the Newport Jazz Festival was moved to New York City. In 1981, it became a two-site festival when it was returned to Newport while continuing in New York. From 1984 to 2008, the festival was known as the JVC Jazz Festival; in the economic downturn of 2009, JVC ceased its support of the festival and was replaced by CareFusion. The festival is hosted in Newport at Fort Adams State Park. It is often held in the same month as the Newport Folk Festival. Festival's establishment at Newport 1950s In 1954, the first Newport Jazz Fes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz Advance
''Jazz Advance'' is the debut album by pianist Cecil Taylor, recorded for the Transition label in September 1956. The album features performances by Taylor with Buell Neidlinger, Denis Charles and Steve Lacy. Music The album contains three Taylor originals, three standards, and one standard-to-be, Thelonious Monk's " Bemsha Swing," first recorded only four years before Taylor's version. This track is played "cryptically and succinctly, the lines breaking up into jagged fragments and jutting chords." "Charge 'Em Blues" is in 4/4 time. The chords and light treble playing towards the beginning of "Azure" are similar to the sound of Abdullah Ibrahim, but then "the cross-rhythmic improvised piano patterns clattering chords typical of later Taylor emerge." Reception ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' selected the album as part of its suggested "Core Collection," stating "Taylor's first record remains one of the most extraordinary debuts in jazz, and for 1956 it's an incredible effor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an ''advance guard'' identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus, the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times. As a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists promote progressive and radical politics and advocate for societal reform with and through works of art. In the essay "The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist" (1825), Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues's political usage of ''vanguard'' identified the moral obligation of artists to "ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Rushing
James Andrew Rushing (August 26, 1901 – June 8, 1972) was an American singer and pianist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948. Rushing was known as " Mr. Five by Five" and was the subject of an eponymous 1942 popular song that was a hit for Harry James and others; the lyrics describe Rushing's rotund build: "he's five feet tall and he's five feet wide". He joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927 and then joined Bennie Moten's band in 1929. He stayed with the successor Count Basie band when Moten died in 1935. Rushing said that his first time singing in front of an audience was in 1924. He was playing piano at a club when the featured singer, Carlyn Williams, invited him to do a vocal. "I got out there and broke it up. I was a singer from then on," he said. Rushing was a powerful singer who had a range from baritone to tenor. He has sometimes been classified as a blues shouter. He could projec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dicky Wells
William Wells (June 10, 1907 or 1909 – November 12, 1985), known professionally as Dicky Wells (sometimes Dickie Wells), was an American jazz trombonist. Early life Wells was born in Centerville, Tennessee. Early in his life, he lived in Centerville with his farmer father, George Washington Wells, and mother, Florence. Wells had a brother, Charlie or Henry Wells (musician), Henry Wells, and three sisters, Leona, Tenny, and Georgia.Wells, Dicky, and Stanley Dance. ''The Night People : The Jazz Life of Dicky Wells''. [Rev. and Expanded ed.]., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Wells and his family moved to Nashville, Tennessee for some time where he started drinking whiskey from a bar. When Wells was ten years old his stepfather Felix Murray moved the family to Louisville, Kentucky. Wells' mother was absent as she was traveling with his stepfather so his sister, Leona, took care of him and his brother. Both of Wells' parents died within a year of each other which took its t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
