Dianne Reeves Angélique Kidjo Lizz Wright - TVJazz.tv

Jon Hendricks - "Gimme That Wine" (featuring Wynton Marsalis) Live 1997

Cassandra Wilson, in "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars (Corcovado)".

Clora Bryant

Clora Bryant, a fiery trumpet player who broke gender barriers with her horn, swung with the Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie bands and led her own bands for decades. 

 Hailed as a “one-of-a-kind trailblazer, super-swinging, joyful, gifted, creative musical force” by drummer and DIVA Jazz Orchestra leader Sherrie Maricle, who posted a heartfelt Facebook tribute after her death, Bryant inspired countless female jazz players to follow her lead. 

 Before she staked her claim on Central Avenue, Bryant was a featured soloist in the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and other all-female swing ensembles popular in the 1940s. But she really came into her own in the 1950s at Central Avenue hotspots like The Downbeat, Club Alabam, and the Dunbar Hotel, where she played with Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday and dazzled Gillespie, who mentored Bryant. 

 Clora Larea Bryant May 30, 1927 – August 25, 2019, was an American jazz trumpeter. She was the only female trumpeter to perform with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. 

 Bryant was born in Denison, Texas to Charles and Eulila Bryant, the youngest of three children. Her father was a day laborer and her mother was a homemaker who died when Clora was only 3 years old. When Bryant was a young child, she learned to play piano with her brother Mel. As a child, Bryant was a member of the choir in a Baptist church. When her brother Fred joined the military, he left his trumpet, which she learned how to play.

 In high school, she played trumpet in the marching band. Bryant turned down scholarships from Oberlin Conservatory and Bennett College to attend Prairie View College in Houston starting in 1943, where she was a member of the Prairie View Co-eds jazz band. The band toured in Texas and performed at the Apollo Theater in New York City in 1944. 

Her father got a job in Los Angeles, and she transferred to UCLA in 1945. Bryant heard bebop for the first time on Central Avenue. In 1946 she became a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-female jazz band, earned her union card, and dropped out of school. Dizzy Gillespie became her mentor and provided her with work. 

She joined the black female jazz band the Queens of Swing as a drummer and went on tour with the band. In 1951 she worked in Los Angeles as a trumpeter for Josephine Baker and Billie Holiday. Two years later she moved to New York City. The Queens of Swing performed on television in 1951 as The Hollywood Sepia Tones, in a half-hour variety program on KTLA. They were the first women's jazz group to appear on television. After six weeks the show was dropped due to a lack of a sponsor. 

During filming Bryant was about seven months pregnant. After her daughter's birth she was called onto Ada Leonard's all-girl orchestra show; however, she only stayed for a week after calls demanding to "get that nigger off there".

 In 1954 she briefly moved to New York because she had lost inspiration from playing in bands. In 1951, she was a member of an all-female sextet led by Ginger Smock that was broadcast for six weeks on CBS. “Dizzy always gave me my props,” Bryant recalled, during a 2010 interview at the Central Avenue Jazz Festival. As Gillespie himself put it in Trumpetistically, Clora Bryant, a documentary by Zainabu Davis: “She has the feeling of the trumpet. The feeling, not just the notes.” 

 Armed with the trumpet mouthpiece Gillespie gave her, Bryant recorded her first and only album as a leader, 1957’s Gal With A Horn. As Mode Records demanded, Bryant also sang on all the tracks. But it’s the bold bebop voice of her trumpet, which explodes with piercing runs, that established her as a serious player.

 Still, without an agent or a label contract behind her, Bryant continued to face hurdles as a gal with a horn. Bryant recorded her first and only album, Gal with a Horn, in 1957 before returning to the life of a traveling musician. She worked often at clubs in Chicago and Denver. In Las Vegas she performed with Louis Armstrong and Harry James. She toured with singer Billy Williams and accompanied him on The Ed Sullivan Show.

 During the 1960s and 1970s, she toured around the world with her brother Mel, who was a singer, and they had a TV show in Australia. In 1989 Bryant became the first female jazz musician to tour in the Soviet Union after writing to Mikhail Gorbachev.

 After a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery in 1996, Bryant was forced to give up the trumpet but she continued to sing. She also began to give lectures on college campuses about the history of jazz, co-edited a book on jazz history in Los Angeles titled Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles, and worked with children in Los Angeles elementary schools.

 In 2002, she received a lifetime achievement award (the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Award) from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Two years later a documentary about her was released. In an interview with JazzTimes, Bryant said, "Nobody ever told me, 'You can't play the trumpet, you're a girl.' Not when I got started in high school and not when I came out to L.A. My father told me, 'It's going to be a challenge, but if you're going to do it, I'm behind you all the way.' And he was." 

                               

                            Clora Bryant /Gal With A Horn 1957  

                     Clora Bryant (Trumpetiste) - Interview - Ladies Behind the Beat.TV  

                                   Little Girl Blue · Clora Bryant  

                  Clora Bryant (1), Vienne (F) 1987 - Trumpet Legends  

 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/arts/music/clora-bryant-dead.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clora_Bryant https://downbeat.com/news/detail/in-memoriam-clora-bryant-1927-2019

Cannonball Adderley - Live 1963

Cannonball Adderley - Alto Sax
Nat Adderley - Cornet
Yusef Lateef - Tenor Sax, Flute, Oboe
Joe Zawinul - Piano
Sam Jones - Bass
Luis Hayes - Drums
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Song
Jive Samba (Live)
Artist
The Cannonball Adderley Sextet
Album
Live in Lugano, 1963
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Song
Bohemia After Dark (Live)
Artist
The Cannonball Adderley Sextet
Album
Live in Lugano, 1963
Writers
Oscar Pettiford
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Believe Music (on behalf of Blue Velvet); UMPG Publishing, BMI - Broadcast Music Inc., and 5 Music Rights Societies
Song
Dizzy's Business (Live)
Artist
The Cannonball Adderley Sextet
Album
Live in Lugano, 1963
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Believe Music (on behalf of Blue Velvet); BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, ARESA, and 2 Music Rights Societies
Song
Trouble in Mind (Live)
Artist
The Cannonball Adderley Sextet
Album
Live in Lugano, 1963
Writers
Richard M. Jones
Licensed to YouTube by
Believe Music (on behalf of Blue Velvet); UMPI, UMPG Publishing, and 5 Music Rights Societies
Song
Work Song (Live)
Artist
The Cannonball Adderley Sextet
Album
Live in Lugano, 1963
Licensed to YouTube by
Believe Music (on behalf of Blue Velvet); UMPI, EMI Music Publishing, SOLAR Music Rights Management, BMI - Broadcast Music Inc., and 12 Music Rights Societies
Song
Unit Seven (Live)
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The Cannonball Adderley Sextet
Album
Live in Lugano, 1963
Licensed to YouTube by
Believe Music (on behalf of Blue Velvet); EMI Music Publishing, ARESA, UMPI, BMI - Broadcast Music Inc., and 6 Music Rights Societies

Charles Mingus live 1964 - Jazz Icons DVD

Part 1:

Charles Mingus Bass
Eric Dolphy Alto Sax, Flute, Bass Clarinet
Clifford Jordan Tenor Sax
Jaki Byard Piano
Dannie Richmond Drums



 Part 2:

Charles Mingus Bass
Eric Dolphy Alto Sax, Flute, Bass Clarinet
Clifford Jordan Tenor Sax
Johnny Coles Trumpet
Jaki Byard Piano
Dannie Richmond Drums

Wynton Marsalis

                                               Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, and Pulitzer Prizewinner. He’s also built himself a longtime reputation as a jazz purist, one who refuses to integrate music like avant-garde jazz or fusion into his work, which is otherwise immersed in the genre’s history.

Talking to Marsalis  about playing jazz during a time of massive racial unrest like what we’re seeing today. Marsalis responded that racism has less to do with the Charlottesville attack or even with Donald Trump’s election and more to do with “how we’ve lost our grip on our morality in the black community… using pornography and profanity and addressing ourselves in the lowest, most disrespectful form.”

Wynton Learson Marsalis is an American virtuoso trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won at least nine Grammy Awards, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He is the only musician to win a Grammy Award in jazz and classical during the same year.

Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961 and grew up in the suburb of Kenner. He is the second of six sons born to Dolores Ferdinand Marsalis and Ellis Marsalis Jr., a pianist and music teacher.  He was named for jazz pianist Wynton Kelly.  Branford Marsalis is his older brother and Jason Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis are younger. All three are jazz musicians.  While sitting at a table with trumpeters Al Hirt, Miles Davis, and Clark Terry, his father jokingly suggested that he might as well get Wynton a trumpet, too. Hirt volunteered to give him one, so at the age of six Marsalis received his first trumpet.

In 1979, he moved to New York City to attend Juilliard. He intended to pursue a career in classical music. In 1980 he toured Europe as a member of the Art Blakey big band, becoming a member of The Jazz Messengers and remaining with Blakey until 1982. He changed his mind about his career and turned to jazz. He has said that years of playing Blakey influenced his decision.  He recorded for the first time with Blakey and one year later he went on tour with Herbie Hancock. After signing a contract with Columbia, he recorded his first solo album. In 1982 he established a quintet with his brother Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland, Charnett Moffett, and Jeff "Tain" Watts. When Branford and Kenny Kirkland left three years later to record and tour with Sting, Marsalis formed another quartet, this time with Marcus Roberts on piano, Robert Hurst on double bass, and Watts on drums. After a while the band expanded to include Wessell Anderson, Wycliffe Gordon, Eric Reed, Herlin Riley, Reginald Veal, and Todd Williams.

When asked about influences on his playing style, he cites Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Harry Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk, Cootie Williams, Ray Nance, Maurice Andre, and Adolph Hofner.

Marsalis spent ten years touring continuously with his band. He has virtually single-handedly revived the public's interest in jazz, which to many had become a lost art form. In addition to performing, Marsalis also focuses strongly on education by giving lectures and workshops to students on musicianship.

Wynton Marsalis created the PBS TV series Marsalis on Music (1995), as well as the National Public Radio 26-week series "Making the Music" in that same year. Marsalis played a major role in developing Ken Burns's TV mini-series Jazz (2001). These efforts played a significant role in helping to bring jazz forward in the public's mind.

Marsalis has been criticized by some for discounting the value of jazz forms that have emerged after 1965. Marsalis has countered by stating that attempts at a musical fusion of jazz with other pop forms yields a mixture of sounds that are simply not true jazz.

Wynton Marsalis has made major efforts to help revive and restore his home city of New Orleans following the disaster of hurricane Katrina, including organizing the benefit concert "Higher Ground" at Lincoln Center in New York City. Marsalis has promoted human rights for the people of Burma and their imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has declared Marsalis to be a U.N. Messenger of Peace.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (JLCO) comprises 15 of the finest jazz soloists and ensemble players today. Led by Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Managing and Artistic Director, this remarkably versatile orchestra performs a vast repertoire ranging from original compositions and Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works to rare historic compositions and masterworks by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, and many others. The JLCO has been the Jazz at Lincoln Center resident orchestra since 1988, performing and leading educational events in New York, across the United States, and around the globe.

Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed trumpeter, composer, bandleader and educator. He is the world’s first jazz artist to perform and compose across the full jazz spectrum, from its New Orleans roots to bebop to modern jazz. By creating and performing an expansive range of brilliant new music for quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras, tap dance to ballet, Wynton has expanded the vocabulary for jazz and created a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.

  Essentially Ellington 2020: Q&A with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra


   Concert: Celebrating Dizzy Gillespie — Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis


              Wynton Marsalis Plays Blue Note Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra 2015


                               Wynton Marsalis - Jazz in Marciac 2009


                          Wynton Marsalis - Live at the House of Tribes


                           Wynton Marsalis Haydn Trumpet Concerto


                     Baroque Duet - Kathleen Battle - Wynton Marsalis


              Take Five - (Paul Desmond & Dave Brubeck) Sachal studios and Wynton Marsalis


                                        Wynton Marsalis Classical



https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0550368/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynton_Marsalis
https://no1lyrics.com/artist/wynton-marsalis-42132/album
https://www.thetoptens.com/jazz-trumpet-players/
https://www.stereogum.com/1997383/wynton-marsalis-says-rap-is-more-damaging-than-a-statue-of-robert-e-lee/news/
https://ameliachambermusic.org/role-member/wynton-marsalis/

Nancy Wilson 2

                                        Nancy Wilson

Famed singer Nancy Wilson died this past Thursday Dec.13,2018,at her home in Pioneertown, Calif. at the age of 81, Ms. Wilson had been ill for some time. Nancy Wilson was an American singer with more than 70 albums, and three Grammy Awards. She has been labeled a singer of blues, jazz, cabaret and pop; a "consummate actress"; and "the complete entertainer." The title she prefers, however, is song stylist. She has received many nicknames including "Sweet Nancy", "The Baby", "Fancy Miss Nancy" and "The Girl With the Honey-Coated Voice". “I have a gift for telling stories, making them seem larger than life,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1993. “I love the vignette, the plays within the song.”
Per Wilson’s wishes, there will be no funeral. Her family will celebrate her life, most likely in February, her birth month.

She is survived by her three children and five grandchildren.

February 20, 1937, Nancy Wilson was the first of six children born to Olden Wilson (iron foundry worker) and Lillian Ryan (domestic worker) in Chillicothe, Ohio.  Nancy's father would buy records to listen to at home. At an early age Nancy heard recordings from Billy Eckstine, Nat Cole, and Jimmy Scott with Lionel Hampton's Big Band. Nancy says: "The juke joint down on the block had a great jukebox and there I heard Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, LaVerne Baker, Little Esther".  Wilson became aware of her talent while singing in church choirs, imitating singers as a young child,and performing in her grandmother's house during summer visits.  By the age of four, she knew she would eventually become a singer.

At the age of 15, while a student at West High School (Columbus, Ohio), she won a talent contest sponsored by local television station WTVN. The prize was an appearance on a twice-a-week television show, Skyline Melodies, which she ended up hosting.  She also worked clubs on the east side and north side of Columbus, Ohio, from the age of 15 until she graduated from West High School, at age 17.
Unsure of her future as an entertainer, she entered college to pursue teaching. She spent one year at Ohio's Central State College (now Central State University) before dropping out and following her original ambitions. She auditioned and won a spot with Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club Big Band in 1956. She toured with them throughout Canada and the Midwest in 1956 to 1958.  While in this group, Nancy made her first recording under Dots Records.

         Nancy Wilson - Jazz Scene USA 1962 - Complete Show

When Nancy met Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, he suggested that she should move to New York City, believing that the big city would be the venue in which her career could bloom. In 1959, she relocated to New York with a goal of obtaining Cannonball’s manager John Levy as her manager and Capitol Records as her label.  Within four weeks of her arrival in New York she got her first big break, a call to fill in for Irene Reid at "The Blue Morocco". The club booked Wilson on a permanent basis; she was singing four nights a week and working as a secretary for the New York Institute of Technology during the day. John Levy sent demos "Guess Who I Saw Today", "Sometimes I’m Happy", and two other songs to Capitol. Capitol Records signed her in 1960.

          Nancy Wilson  Music of Life playlist


Nancy’s debut single, "Guess Who I Saw Today", was so successful that between April 1960 and July 1962 Capitol Records released five Nancy Wilson albums. Her first album, Like in Love, displayed her talent in Rhythm and Blues, with the hit R&B song "Save Your Love for Me." Adderley suggested that she should steer away from her original pop style and gear her music toward jazz and ballads.

 In 1962, they collaborated, producing the album Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, which propelled her to national prominence, and Wilson would later appear on Adderley's live album In Person (1968). Between March 1964 and June 1965, four of Wilson's albums hit the Top 10 on Billboard's Top LPs chart.

 In 1963 "Tell Me The Truth" became her first truly major hit, leading up to her performance at the Coconut Grove in 1964 – the turning point of her career, garnering critical acclaim from coast to coast.  TIME said of her, "She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller."  In 1964 Nancy released what became her most successful hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am", which peaked at No. 11. From 1963 to 1971 Wilson logged eleven songs on the Hot 100, including two Christmas singles. However, "Face It Girl, It's Over" was the only remaining non-Christmas song to crack the Top 40 for Wilson (#29, in 1968)
           NANCY WILSON - (YOU DON'T KNOW) HOW GLAD I AM 


          Nancy Wilson, The Emotions - Don't Ask My Neighbors


          NANCY WILSON LIVE - GUESS WHO I SAW TODAY

After making numerous television guest appearances, Wilson eventually got her own series on NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show (1967–1968), which won an Emmy in 1975. Over the years she has appeared on many popular television shows from I Spy (more or less playing herself as a Las Vegas singer in the 1966 episode "Lori," and a similar character in the 1973 episode "The Confession" of The F.B.I. ), Room 222, Hawaii Five-O, Police Story, The Jack Paar Program, The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show (1966), The Danny Kaye Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Kraft Music Hall, The Sinbad Show,  The Cosby Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Soul Food, New York Undercover, and recently Moesha, and The Parkers. She also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffith Show, The Tonight Show, The Arsenio Hall Show and The Flip Wilson Show.  She was in the 1993 Robert Townsend's The Meteor Man and in the film, The Big Score. She also appeared on The Lou Rawls Parade of Stars and the March of Dime Telethon.  She was signed by Capitol records in the late 1970s and in an attempt to broaden her appeal she cut the album Life, Love and Harmony, an album of soulful, funky dance cuts that included the track "Sunshine", which was to become one of her most sought-after recordings (albeit among supporters of the rare soul scene with whom she would not usually register).
          Nancy Wilson (Someone to Watch Over Me)


         Satin Doll / Count Basie Orchestra Live in Tokyo 1985

Wilson married her first husband, drummer Kenny Dennis, in 1960. In 1963, their son, Kenneth (Kacy) Dennis, Jr., was born, and by 1970, they divorced. On May 22, 1973, she married a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Wiley Burton. She gave birth to Samantha Burton in 1975, and the couple adopted Sheryl Burton in 1976. As a result of her marriage, she abstained from performing in various venues, such as supper clubs. In this decade, she focused on her family, relocating to Pioneertown, California, to raise her children in a rural setting.

For the following two decades, she successfully juggled her personal life and her career. In November 1998, both of her parents died: she calls this year the most difficult of her life.  In August 2006, Wilson was hospitalized with anemia and potassium deficiency, and was on I.V. sustenance while undergoing a complete battery of tests. She was unable to attend the UNCF Evening of Stars Tribute to Aretha Franklin and had to cancel an engagement. All of her other engagements were on hold, pending doctors’ reports for that month. In March 2008, she was hospitalized for lung complications, recovered and claimed to be doing well. In the same year, her husband, Wiley Burton, died after suffering from renal cancer.

                       Celebrate A Legend Nancy Wilson


        Nancy Wilson Interview by Monk Rowe - 11/16/1995 - NYC

         Nancy Wilson- "Forbidden Lover"


         NANCY WILSON LIVE - I CAN'T MAKE YOU LOVE ME


         Nancy Wilson  - You Got the Move  


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wilson_(jazz_singer)
https://variety.com/2018/music/news/jazz-singer-nancy-wilson-dies-1203089722/
https://www.essence.com/celebrity/nancy-wilson-dead-at-81/
https://newsone.com/playlist/rest-in-peace-nancy-wilson-photos-videos/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2018/12/13/nancy-wilson-grammy-winning-jazz-singer-dies-81/2308468002/
https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/music/2018/12/14/Nancy-Wilson-Dies-at-81-Jazz-Singer-Who-Turned-Songs-Into-Stories/stories/201812140084
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/obituaries/nancy-wilson-dead-jazz-singer.html

Estival Jazz Lugano 2011 - Angelique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves - Lizz Wright

Angelique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves - Lizz Wright: Sing The Truth - Estival Jazz Lugano 2011
Lugano Estival Jazz is a music festival held in Lugano and Mendrisio, Switzerland, over 5 days. All concerts are open air, free and take place in the beautiful setting of Piazza della Riforma, in the heart of Lugano. Estival Jazz has always focused on the quality of the artists to whom it owes its prestige and its great popularity. It is the most important musical event in the south of and many others.

Switzerland. Some of the great talents that participated in the Festival: Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Ray Charles, Bobby McFerrin, BB King, Khaled, Miriam Makeba

Anthony Davis - composer, musican

Anthony Davis born February 20, 1951, is an American pianist and composer. He incorporates several styles including jazz, rhythm 'n' blues, gospel, non-Western, African, European classical, Indonesian gamelan, and experimental music. Davis is perhaps best known for his operas including X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which was premiered by the New York City Opera in 1986, Amistad, which premiered with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1997, and Wakonda's Dream, which premiered at Opera Omaha in 2007.

Anthony Davis blurs the lines between jazz, opera, world music, the avant-garde and other styles with unique skill and daring.

He has been doing so since even before his first opera, the Grammy-nominated “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” premiered at City Opera in New York in 1986. That was about 15 years after he was invited to become the keyboardist in the Grateful Dead.

Davis was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He taught at Yale University and Harvard University, and has played with Anthony Braxton and Leo Smith. In 1981, Davis formed an octet called Episteme. He also wrote the incidental music for the Broadway version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America.

Davis has received acclaim as a free-jazz pianist, a co-leader or sideman with various ensembles. Such ensembles include those that featured Smith as bandleader from 1974 to 1977.

Davis is professor of music at the University of California, San Diego. His opera Wakonda's Dream is a tale of a contemporary Native American family and the history that affects them.

His opera Lilith (libretto by Allan Havis) had its world premiere at the Conrad Prebys Music Center in UCSD on December 4, 2009. The story is about Adam's first wife, set in a modern era.

A seemingly forgotten fact about pianist and composer Anthony Davis: he was there at the beginning of the so-called “young lion” phenomenon in jazz during the early 1980s. Indeed, Tony was a member of a motley assortment of musicians that performed at the June 30, 1982, Carnegie Hall concert titled “The Young Lions,” an event produced by Nesuhi Ertegen and Bruce Lundvall for the Kool Jazz Festival.

In the liner notes of the live album from the concert, and told again in an interview a few years ago, Lundvall humorously claims that he talked Ertegen out of using the original title for the concert: “The Young Turks.” And what a difference this name change has made! Now the sine qua non for a generation of jazz “traditionalists” that rose to prominence in the 1980s, the term “young lions” operates as a kind of shorthand for marketing strategies employed by record labels and publicists as well as virtuoso performance practices that hew close to the trope of jazz as “America’s classical music.”

Remarkably, the Carnegie Hall concert busted open the orthodoxies of the “young lion” phenomenon before they were born. On the heels of his tenure with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Wynton Marsalis was there. But so too were baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett, vibraphonist Jay Hoggard, flutist James Newton, and cellist Abdul Wadud, among many others. In his contribution to the liner notes, Leonard Feather writes “[t]here are touches of Ellington/Carney where Anthony Davis’ piano is prominent,” noting the historical context for the piano and baritone saxophone interplay on Bluiett’s composition “Thank You.”

“It’s all music to me,” said Davis, who is now completing his ninth opera.
Davis’s latest opera, Five, is a work that documents the infamous case of the Central Park Five, which made its debut last year in New Jersey. Donald Trump plays a central role. “He started a cultural war with his rage back then that we haven’t really recovered from. He was demanding the death penalty for these young men [all five were exonerated after years in prison].”

The composer had a scare on the day following the election. “I was driving back to the city after rehearsals for Five and somehow my rental-car GPS took me through Central Park where they were having a massive anti-Trump demonstration. My van had West Virginia [red-state] plates and people were livid. They started pushing on my vehicle. I tried yelling that I was from California — ‘Don’t blame me!’ I wasn’t that far from Trump Tower.”

Davis believes in remaining aware. “We have to realize that racism and corruption were at the foundation of our country. It’s something we have to struggle to overcome and work against all of the time.”

Meanwhile, he’s optimistic about bringing Five to a larger audience. “I’m hoping that the New York City Opera will stage a full production next year. I know it will be controversial, and I’m sure I’ll hear from Donald Trump afterward


            Anthony Davis - A Walk Though the Shadow


  Anthony Davis - Variations in Dream-Time (Full Album 1983)


        Salon Series - Anthony Davis 10/16/2012


        Of Blues and Dreams - Anthony Davis Episteme


       Anthony Davis & James Newton Quartet live in Moers '79


Information Sources:
 http://destination-out.com/?p=2852
 https://tidal.com/browse/artist/4065424
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Davis_(composer)
 http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-anthony-davis-60-jazz-opera-and-     beyond-2011feb13-htmlstory.html
 http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/sd-et-spring-arts-    music-davis-20180325-story.html

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah

                            Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah 

 Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah born March 31, 1983, is an American trumpeter, composer and producer. Scott was born, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Cara Harrison and Clinton Scott  and also has a twin brother, Kiel. At the age of 13 he was given the chance to play with his uncle, jazz alto saxophonist Donald Harrison.  By 14, he was accepted into the New Orleans Center of Creative Arts where he studied jazz under the guidance of program directors, Clyde Kerr, Jr. and Kent J ordan.

Once he graduated NOCCA, Scott received a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he graduated in 2004. Between 2003 and 2004, while attending Berklee,  he was member of the Berklee Monterey Quartet, and recorded as part of the Art:21 student cooperative quintet, and studied under the direction of Charlie Lewis, Dave Santoro, and Gary Burton. He majored in professional music with a concentration in film scoring.

His debut album for Concord Records, Rewind That, received a Grammy nomination.  Scott received the Edison Award in 2010 and 2012.

Since 2002, Scott has released eight studio albums, and two live recordings.

This is the hundredth anniversary of the first commercial jazz recordings, and the trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah is using the opportunity to revisit some of that history. His new album, “Ruler Rebel,” which will be available for pre-order on Friday and released on March 31, is the first of what Mr. Scott is calling his “Centennial Trilogy,” designed to take stock of the present moment while highlighting how much has not changed in the past 100 years.

“A lot of what was going on when those guys were making those documents, it’s happening right here right now,” he said, referring to the 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. “If you’re honest, it’s very hard to differentiate between what was going on then socially, and what’s going on now socially.”

                     Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah playlist


Two-time Edison Award–winning and Grammy-nominated Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah—trumpeter, composer, producer, and designer of innovative instruments and interactive media—is set to release three albums to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the very first jazz recordings of 1917. Collectively titled The Centennial Trilogy, the series is at its core a sobering re-evaluation of the social and political realities of the world through sound. It speaks to a litany of issues that continue to plague our collective experiences: slavery in America via the prison–industrial complex, food insecurity, xenophobia, immigration, climate change, sexual orientation, gender equality, fascism, and the return of the demagogue.

Heralded by JazzTimes magazine as “jazz’s young style God” and “the architect of a new commercially viable fusion,” Adjuah is the progenitor of Stretch Music, a genre-blind musical form that stretches the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic conventions of jazz to encompass many musical forms, languages, thought processes, and cultures.

        Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert


    October 09, 2015 by PATRICK JARENWATTANANON
Artists don't usually tell long, rambling stories at the Tiny Desk, and if they do, those stories don't usually make the final cut. But this one felt different. It was about the time Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, a young black man, says he was stopped by New Orleans police late at night for no reason other than to harass and intimidate him. And how his pride almost made him do something ill-advised about it. And how he finally channeled that pent-up frustration into a piece of music whose long-form title is "Ku Klux Police Department."

"K.K.P.D." was the emotional peak of the septet's performance, though it wasn't a new tune. That's notable, because Scott stopped by the Tiny Desk on the very day his new album came out. It was played by something of a new band, though: Flutist Elena Pinderhughes, saxophonist Braxton Cook and guitarist Dominic Minix are new, younger additions to the group. It had new textures, too: Drummer Corey Fonville (another new member) used a djembe as a bass drum, and also brought a MIDI pad so he could emulate the sound of a drum machine. The effect was something like an evocation of African roots, juxtaposed with a trap beat.

The first two numbers were, in fact, from Scott's new album Stretch Music. That's his name for the particular type of jazz fusion he's up to: something more seamless than a simple collision of genre signifiers; something whose DNA is already hybridized and freely admits sonic elements which potentially "stretch" jazz's purported boundaries. (You may note that he showed up in a Joy Division sleeveless T-shirt and gold chain.) It's sleek and clearly modern, awash in guitar riffs, but also bold and emotionally naked. Scott is particularly good at getting you to feel the energy he sends pulsing through his horn, and he never shies away from going all-in on a solo. The least we could offer was to let him explain himself in doing so.

     Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah - Interview (Gent Jazz Festival 2017)


     Christian Scott - Christian aTunde Adjuah


     Stretch Music - Behind The Scenes


     Christian Scott - Stretch Music (Full Jazz Album)


Information sources:
 www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/acclaimed-musician-christian-scott-
atunde-adjuah/
 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 www.christianscott.tv/
 www.gq.com/story/christian-scott-atunde-adjuah
 www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/arts/music/christian-scott-atunde-adjuah-

No BS! Brass Band: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

 Just southeast of the Virginia Commonwealth University campus in Richmond, Va., lies a compact neighborhood called Oregon Hill. Historically, it's been a (white) working-class part of town, affordable for students and various bohemian types. Recording engineer Lance Koehler was drawn to the place when he moved to Richmond from New Orleans; it's where he eventually found a two-story garage and converted it into his own recording studio and home. It didn't take him long to start doing business across the Richmond music map: Koehler is good at his job, and he's affordable. His business is called Minimum Wage Studios for a reason.



He's also a drummer, and though he grew up in Southern California, his time in New Orleans left a deep impression. Inspired by the Crescent City's modern brass bands, in 2006 he started the NO BS! Brass Band with trombonist Reggie Pace. They had a place to fit between 10 and 13 musicians for rehearsal, and they had the means to document their work. And, owing to VCU and its conservatory program — with a history of producing top-notch jazz players — they had plenty of great horn players at their disposal.

Funky and danceable, the NO BS! Brass Band takes after the full black-music continuum you hear in groups like Rebirth or the Hot 8. But it's also proggy, and a bit brutalizing, and full of pride in a different Southern outpost. The group's new album is called RVA All Day, after all. And about that jazz cred: In July, it'll release another album called Fight Song, so named because it features the band's arrangements of Charles Mingus compositions.

Recently, Koehler, Pace and nine other musicians piled into a bus and journeyed up the freeway to NPR Music's Tiny Desk in Washington, D.C. They blasted us with songs from the new album — it was so loud, you could hear the music on the other side of the building, a floor down. And this summer, when Pace isn't out with Bon Iver's touring band, they'll strike out from Oregon Hill to fly the Richmond flag up and down the East Coast.
--PATRICK JARENWATTANANON

Nina Simone: She Cast a Spell and Made a Choice

             Nina Simone: She Cast a Spell and Made a Choice
By Silverfoxx
When Nina Simone died quietly in her home in southern France on 21 April 2003, the spiritual essence of three generations of freedom fighters passed on to the otherworld the proverbial crossroads with her. With a voice that embodied the pain and power of the scattered African Diaspora and classic West African facial features that suggested a short distance between the Tyron, North Carolina of her birth and Ghana.

She was the voice of a movement. Deep blues, even darker hues, from the Delta to Dakar. When the old guard of the Civil Rights Movement talked about the “voice” of the movement, they always invoked Nina Simone, Ms. Simone to all those who couldn't wrap their minds around this woman, Black woman, protest woman, iconic woman, the one woman whose very voice summoned the spirits of the Middle Passage, of those under the overseer's lash, of that charred fruit hanging from southern trees, the sprits of blues whisperers, sacred singers, heavenly shouters and insatiable desires. This woman, Black woman, was the voice of a people.

In the early 1960s, Simone's music began to more directly echo the tenor of the times. Once the darling of the supper club set, Simone was more likely to be foundperforming at a Civil Rights fundraiser. It was because of her experiences with the movement that Simone wrote and recorded her most potent critique of American racism, “Mississippi Goddamn” She was dramatically moved by the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four little Black girls. Simone restrained her own rage and transformed it into the scathing political anthem, “Mississippi Goddamn”. The song was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in March of 1964. Simone's career and her access to the supper club set would be radically altered by the recording. The brilliance of the song lies in the way she initially destabilized the immediate reception of the song, by placing the song's lyrics on top of a swinging show tune beat as she speak truth to power.
                        “Alabama's got me so upset / Tennessee makes me lose my rest /
                                    And everybody knows about Mississippi, Goddamn /
                                                         Don't tell me, I tell you /
                                                Me and my people just about due /
                                                        I've been there so I know /
                                                       You keep on saying go slow”

                                  Sister Nina Simone: Our Duty


Literally all of the mainstream protest music recorded by Black artists in the late 1960’s and early 1970s, like Sly and the Family Stone's “Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”, The Temptations' “Ball of Confusion”, Freda Payne's “Bring the Boys Home”, Roberta Flack's “Compared to What?,” Marvin Gaye's ‘What's Going On,” and Stevie Wonder's “Innervisions,” were indebted to “Mississippi Goddamn”. Simone would record other Black protest anthems like Billy Taylor's “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free,” which had been a long-time favorite of protest marchers. As a Black woman, Simone also spoke to the burgeoning Black feminist movements.

Simone presented a portrait of Black femininity that spoke to various intersections of race, color, caste, sexuality, and gender. In the song “Four Women”, Simone discusses the different though linked realities of Aunt Sarah (“my skin is black…my hair is wooly, my back is strong”), Saphronia (“my skin is yellow, my hair is long. Between two worlds I do belong”), Sweet Thing (“My skin is tan, my hair in fine, my hips invite you . . .”), and Peaches (“My skin is brown, my manner is tough, I'll kill the first mother I see”). The four women represented the prevailing, controlling images of Black womanhood.

                            Nina Simone Why The King of Love Is Dead (live)


In the 1970’s a whole generation of Black youth were introduced to Simone via her classic “Young Gifted and Black”. For many people in the post-soul and hip-hop generation, their introduction to Simone’s music and songwriting came via hearing “Young, Gifted, and Black”, which became a mantra for the first generations to come of age after the Civil Rights era. Nina Simone was a messenger to our heart and conscience; there’s no telling how many lives she touched with the simple affirmation of the beauty of being “Young, Gifted, and Black”. The interest in Simone’s music by a generation of artists, largely born after her recording of “Mississippi Goddamn,” is just further evidence of the potency of her spirit. The title of Simone's autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, paid tribute to her rendition of the Screaming Jay Hawkins composition. In the hands of Simone, the song was transformed into a moment of high catharsis. Nina Simone put her own spell on us, one that serves those from the Delta to Dakar, and beyond, well into the future. She is and will forever be the ultimate songstress and storyteller of our times.

                                My skin is Black, My arms are long /

                               My hair is wooly, My back is strong /

                  Strong enough to take the pain / Afflicted again and again /

                                       What do they call me?
 
                             — Nina Simone, “Four Women”

                                      Early Nina Simond


                                      Nina Simone Life Soul Playlist


                                         Nina Simone - The Legend                              Nina Simone interviewed on The Wire


                                Nina Simone - Interview 1984


                         Nina Simone on Shock


                       A Sit Down with Nina Simone

       Ifeyinwa portraying Nina Simone during an interview

Miles Davis

         

           Miles Davis - So What

For nearly six decades, Miles Davis has embodied all that is cool – in his music (and most especially jazz), in his art, fashion, romance, and in his international, if not intergalactic, presence that looms strong as ever today.  2006 – The year in which Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on March 13th – is a land­mark year, commemorating the 80th anniversary of his birth on May 26, 1926, and the 15th anniversary of his death on September 28, 1991.  In between those two markers is more than a half-century of brilliance – often exasperating, brutally honest with himself and to others, uncompromising in a way that transcended mere intuition.
                         Miles Davis The Miles Davis Story 

 
                       
                             Miles Davis: Walkin'
There's an eternal battle nearly every underground artist fights. In theory, achieving mainstream cultural acceptance and ubiquity for the art you create without having to change a note of it should be a major victory. But the taste is often bittersweet. You can't help but wonder what you've lost in becoming successful. Think of that little emocore trio from Seattle who's second album went on to become one of the most significant albums (and best selling) of all time despite being every bit as abrasive and-let's say-grungy as their first. But no originally revolutionary musical movement has gone so completely from the home of rebels to the toast of high society as the “Great American Art Form” known as jazz.

Jazz was originally the respite of absurdly talented musicians not welcomed by the white establishment in traditional orchestras. By the mid-60's the variant of jazz which emphasized small combos and long solos known as bebop wasn't just accepted by the establishment. It was the establishment. Codified in the “Real Book” and the “Fake Book;” two enormous volumes of simplified sheet music for the entire collection of traditionally accepted jazz standards. What in classical music and traditional theatre they call “the Canon.”
I often wonder what the heroin addicted rebel genius Charlie Parker would have thought had he lived long enough to see doctorate programs in jazz composition and performance and major universities, with his own music held up as the golden ideal. Though Parker may have lived fast and died young, one of his frequent collaborators, and another of the great innovators of bebop, Miles Davis survived to see his cultural victory was a Pyrrhic one. Witnessing the utter co-option of his art form at the hands of the mainstream Davis drew a line in the sand in 1970 when he released the landmark Bitches Brew.
He had been moving away from bop at that point for a decade at least, but his previous recordings (even the heavily electric In A Silent Way from 1969) still maintained a tenuous connection to the past. In A Silent Way, despite it's electric and free jazz leanings even borrowed the Sonata Form from classical music. Bitches Brew was a complete break from all this. It was an ugly, confrontational, emotionally brutal, noisy mess of an album.

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion.
On October 7, 2008, his 1959 album Kind of Blue received its fourth platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of at least four million copies in the United States. Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

 Davis was noted as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz". On December 15, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a symbolic resolution recognizing and commemorating the album Kind of Blue on its 50th anniversary, "honoring the masterpiece and reaffirming jazz as a national treasure.

Miles Dewey Davis was born on May 26, 1926, to an affluent African American family in Alton, Illinois. His father, Miles Henry Davis, was a dentist. In 1927 the family moved to East St. Louis, Illinois. They also owned a substantial ranch in northern Arkansas, where Davis learned to ride horses as a boy.

Davis' mother, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, wanted her son to learn the piano; she was a capable blues pianist but kept this fact hidden from her son. His musical studies began at 13, when his father gave him a trumpet and arranged lessons with local musician Elwood Buchanan. Davis later suggested that his father's instrument choice was made largely to irk his wife, who disliked the trumpet's sound. Against the fashion of the time, Buchanan stressed the importance of playing without vibrato; he was reported to have slapped Davis' knuckles every time he started using heavy vibrato.  Davis would carry his clear signature tone throughout his career. He once remarked on its importance to him, saying, "I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much bass. Just right in the middle. If I can’t get that sound I can’t play anything."

In the fall of 1944, following graduation from high school, Davis moved to New York City to study at the Juilliard School of Music.

Upon arriving in New York, he spent most of his first weeks in town trying to get in contact with Charlie Parker, despite being advised against doing so by several people he met during his quest, including saxophonist Coleman Hawkins.

Finally locating his idol, Davis became one of the cadre of musicians who held nightly jam sessions at two of Harlem's nightclubs, Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's. The group included many of the future leaders of the bebop revolution: young players such as Fats Navarro, Freddie Webster, and J. J. Johnson. Established musicians including Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke were also regular participants.

Davis dropped out of Juilliard, after asking permission from his father. In his autobiography, Davis criticized the Juilliard classes for centering too much on the classical European and "white" repertoire. However, he also acknowledged that, while greatly improving his trumpet playing technique, Juilliard helped give him a grounding in music theory that would prove valuable in later years.

Davis began playing professionally, performing in several 52nd Street clubs with Coleman Hawkins and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. In 1945, he entered a recording studio for the first time, as a member of Herbie Fields's group. This was the first of many recordings to which Davis contributed in this period, mostly as a sideman. He finally got the chance to record as a leader in 1946, with an occasional group called the Miles Davis Sextet plus Earl Coleman and Ann Hathaway—one of the rare occasions when Davis, by then a member of the groundbreaking Charlie Parker Quintet, can be heard accompanying singers. In these early years, recording sessions where Davis was the leader were the exception rather than the rule; his next date as leader would not come until 1947.

Around 1945, Dizzy Gillespie parted ways with Parker, and Davis was hired as Gillespie's replacement in his quintet, which also featured Max Roach on drums, Al Haig (replaced later by Sir Charles Thompson and Duke Jordan) on piano, and Curley Russell (later replaced by Tommy Potter and Leonard Gaskin) on bass.

Despite all the personal turmoil, the 1950–54 period was actually quite fruitful for Davis artistically. He made quite a number of recordings and had several collaborations with other important musicians. He got to know the music of Chicago pianist Ahmad Jamal, whose elegant approach and use of space influenced him deeply. He also definitively severed his stylistic ties with bebop.

In 1951, Davis met Bob Weinstock, the owner of Prestige Records, and signed a contract with the label. Between 1951 and 1954, he released many records on Prestige, with several different combos. While the personnel of the recordings varied, the lineup often featured Sonny Rollins and Art Blakey. Davis was particularly fond of Rollins and tried several times, in the years that preceded his meeting with John Coltrane, to recruit him for a regular group. He never succeeded, however, mostly because Rollins was prone to make himself unavailable for months at a time. In spite of the casual occasions that generated these recordings, their quality is almost always quite high, and they document the evolution of Davis' style and sound. During this time he began using the Harmon mute, held close to the microphone, in a way that grew to be his signature, and his phrasing, especially in ballads, became spacious, melodic, and relaxed. This sound was to become so characteristic that the use of the Harmon mute by any jazz trumpet player since immediately conjures up Miles Davis.
               Miles Davis - Flamenco Sketches


In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Davis recorded a series of albums with Gil Evans, often playing flugelhorn as well as trumpet. The first, Miles Ahead (1957), showcased his playing with a jazz big band and a horn section arranged by Evans. Songs included Dave Brubeck's "The Duke," as well as Léo Delibes's "The Maids of Cadiz," the first piece of European classical music Davis had recorded. Another distinctive feature of the album was the orchestral passages that Evans had devised as transitions between the different tracks, which were joined together with the innovative use of editing in the post-production phase, turning each side of the album into a seamless piece of music.

In 1958, Davis and Evans were back in the studio to record Porgy and Bess, an arrangement of pieces from George Gershwin's opera of the same name. The lineup included three members of the sextet: Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley. Davis called the album one of his favorites.

Sketches of Spain (1959–1960) featured songs by contemporary Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo and also Manuel de Falla, as well as Gil Evans originals with a Spanish flavor. Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall (1961) includes Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, along with other compositions recorded in concert with an orchestra under Evans' direction.




                Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain (Full Album) HD

Sessions with Davis and Evans in 1962 resulted in the album Quiet Nights, a short collection of bossa novas that was released against the wishes of both artists: Evans stated it was only half an album, and blamed the record company; Davis blamed producer Teo Macero, whom he didn't speak to for more than two years.  This was the last time Evans and Davis made a full album together; despite the professional separation, however, Davis noted later that "my best friend is Gil Evans."

MILES DAVIS IN HIS OWN WORDS

                                                                  
                                                                Miles 1


                Miles Davis In 1959 "Kind Of Blue"  
                  Nefertiti 1967


    Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams.


         Miles Davis - Around The Midnight (1967)
 
        Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (1970) - full album



               Miles Davis - Tutu. Live in Stuttgart 1988.


                 Miles Davis Time After Time Montreux 1988