LINER NOTES

RENAISSANCE

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Tue, 8 Apr 2014 20:00:00 -0400

NASIR DICKERSON

To listen to this show click above!

Nasir Dickerson, BA, MA the youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Dickerson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Camden, New Jersey. He is a 2002 graduate and 4^th of his class in Camden High School. He has achieved high academic accomplishments, especially, in math, science and music education. He was a member of the National Honor Society, with perfect attendance, and has been the president of his class since his freshman year. Nasir has also earned many academic scholarships and awards, such as the Alexander Oaks Award, which was given to the number one senior student who has won the respect and approval of the administration, faculty, staff and student body, for academic scholarship, character, personality and athletic interest. Nasir was accepted into the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a Bachelor Degree in Music Performance in May of 2006. May of 2007 Nasir earned and received his Master Degree in MUSIC EDUCATION at the UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS, with high academic honors.

Presently, Nasir is employed at the Camden Public Schools (Creative Arts Morgan Village Academy) in Camden, New Jersey as a Music Teacher. He earned the award of the Best Teacher of the Year in 2010. In 2002 he formed his own jazz group called Nasir Dickerson and the Renaissance Messengers. Today Nasir produced two wonderful CD’s (albums) called the Journey to the Fatherland and The Revealer. Nasir performed and/or actively performs for many legendary greats such as the Philadelphia Legends of Jazz Orchestra (Leon Mitchell), Stylistics, Intruders and Urban Guerilla Orchestra. He also open for legendary jazz greats, such as Dr. Donald Byrd, Robert “Bootsie” Barnes, Wallace Roney, Jimmy Heath, Cyrus Chestnut Trio, Duane Eubanks, Jymie Merritt, Mickey Roker, Stanley Wilson and Sid Simmons. Also, today Nasir performs for wedding bands called the CTO World Entertainment Group (Park Avenue), Bounce - The New Evolution, and The Tony Grandberry Project in the Philadelphia area.

Nasir has been playing and studying musical instruments, such as the tuba, tenor, baritone, alto and soprano saxophones since the second grade. He was inspired and taught by many great professors and teachers, such as Mr. Leon Mitchell, Mr. Charles Bowen Sr., Mr. Charles Elliott, Mr. Ronald Kerber, Mr. Tony Salicondro, Mr. Chris Farr, Mr. Danny Muller, Mr. Ben Schachter, Mr. Dennis Wasko, Mr. Tony Miceli, Mr. John Swanna, Ms. Trudy Pitts, Lovett Hines and his older brother Mr. Jamal Dickerson. Nasir was also part of a musical team winning an Emmy Award on Saturday, September 24, 2011.

Nasir is also a World Champion 5^th Degree Master Black Belt in Karate and a member of a Discipline Military Style Drill Team called the World Champion UPK Pasha Generals. Nasir is also a long standing and key member of the Universal African Dance & Drum Ensemble, which is famous for its electrifying drummers, sensational dancers, exciting masquerade and acrobatic show performing all over America also in Africa and the Caribbean.

Contact:         (856) 236-6217
E-mail:           nasir83@aol.com
Web-Site:      www.unitycommunity.com
Order CD’s   www.cdbaby.com
Facebook and You Tube / Nasir Dickerson and Nasir Dickerson and the Renaissance Messengers

TO LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM CLICK HERE

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:45:00 -0400

SPOTLIGHT CONVERSATIONS

Please join me for a very informative conversation with poetess, writer, vocalist, author, activist and my friend;

Rebecca "Butterfly" Vaughns

To listen to the conversation CLICK HERE

Butterfly will be performing as part of

Spotlight On Jazz and Poetry's

SPRING EVENT!

"JAZZTRONOMIC FEAST"

May 30 - 31, 2014 right here in

Philadelphia, Pa.

For more information and for tickets

click above!

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 00:04:00 -0400

THE FIERCE BUTTERFLY

Rebecca "Butterfly" Vaughns
To listen to the show click title above

Rebecca "Butterfly" Vaughns was born in Miami, FL. Her love for music started at age 5 and she has been married to poetry since the age of ten. There are no words that can explain the passion and love Rebecca has for poetry. She holds Langston Hughes accountable for turning her into a fiend. Rebecca leaves audiences amazed at her ability to freestyle poetry leaving one to think its been inked for awhile.

She impressed Bruce George ~ Co-Founder of Def Poetry Jam in 2002 at the 2nd Annual Spoken Word Expo held in St. Louis, MS when she came hard from the dome in the midst of a cipher out in the parking lot after an open mic session. Rebecca has tapped many of mics on various stages from elementary schools to high schools to colleges to jails to festivals and is in high demand for weddings, funerals, baby christenings, retirement parties, church galas and everything else in between.

She's an International Spoken Word Artist with people appreciating her work in Canada, The Bahamas, Jamaica, Belize, Africa, and Argentina just to name a few. She's appeared on internet and mainstream radio as well as underground radio. She's done live broadcasting performances on Haitian and Spanish television locally and has appeared on various radio stations and television in other cities throughout the USA . Her work is supported and loved by the likes of Shang~comedian/ poet, Betty Wright ~ singer/songwriter, Floetry, MC Lyte, Joss Stone, and Robert Townsend just to name a few. Rebecca has truly made a name for herself in the arena of spoken word and poetry since taking the stage May, 1997. Rebecca holds several accolades for her craft to include 2003 Spoken Word Artist of The Year, two slam wins, and her work is featured on compilations in New york, Chicago, and Miami just to name a few as well as appearances in anthologies to include Drumvoices Revue ~ spring,summer, fall 2004 issue with a tribute to Katherine Dunham.

A member of the poetry circuit for 16 years, she's seen the scene change quite a bit. "There was more passion and love, now it's become more of a competition and I guess namely a situation of product," Vaughns said of the new age of poets who turn out CDs faster than they've had time to learn the scene of the beat in their own community. "The hard work and the grinding, we've branded ourselves, but we have these new age kids on open mic, they come and learn the ropes, then get one big gig and it goes to their head...they look at it and see the money side of it, and it's deeper than that," she said.

"I'm out of the box, I perform at funerals, weddings, graduation parties, divorce parties; wherever words are desired, I'm there," Vaughns said. She's even been plucked from the crowd at high profile functions to step in and save the day with her impromptu, freestyle poetry when programming experienced setbacks.

"You have raw talent right here in your backyard...introduce untapped, unheard artists that are right here in the community, and trust me, they're here," she said.

Each month, "Expressions" will feature one male and one female artist who will perform a 20-minute set. A mini open mic will follow with a maximum of five artists, whether singers or poets, who have the opportunity to perform two pieces each. Each month will fluctuate between poets and singers, especially in genres of R&B, jazz, blues, and neo soul.

"The vision is to bring that culture and entertainment vibe back to Overtown like in the era of my mom and the '30s, '40s, and '50s, when the Hampton House was the place to go for good blues, good jazz, and all that kind of stuff," Vaughns said.

Rebecca will be performing in Philadelphia, Pa. on May 30 - 31, 2014 as part of Spotlight On Jazz and Poetry's Spring event "JAZZTRONOMIC FEAST" For tickets CLICK HERE

Rebecca "Butterfly" Vaughns has a brand new CD out entitled "POETICALLY SPEAKING"
To visit Butterfly's page on CD Baby CLICK HERE

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 13:54:00 -0500

VISCERAL POWER

^ CLICK ABOVE TO LISTEN TO SHOW ^

Sallie Jayne Richardson, always called Jayne, was born on the Army base at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., on May 10, 1934. (The year of her birth is often misreported as 1936.) Her father was a career soldier who would serve in both world wars; her mother was a secretary.

Reared in Los Angeles, young Jayne Richardson reveled in the jazz and Latin recordings that her parents collected. She studied art, music and drama in high school and later attended Compton Community College. She took the surname Cortez, the maiden name of her maternal grandmother, early in her artistic career.

In the summers of 1963 and 1964, Ms. Cortez worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, registering black voters in Mississippi. It was this work as much as anything, she later said, that caused her to regard art and political action as an indivisible whole.

She gave her first public poetry readings with the Watts Repertory Theater Company, a Los Angeles ensemble she founded in 1964. Ms. Cortez, who had homes in Manhattan and Dakar, Senegal, was also a founder of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, established in 1991.

Ms. Cortez’s marriage to Mr. Coleman ended in divorce in 1964, after 10 years. Besides her son, she is survived by her second husband, Melvin Edwards, a prominent sculptor whom she married in 1975; a sister, Shawn Smith; three stepdaughters, Ana, Margit and Allma Edwards; and a grandson.

Her volumes of poetry, many illustrated by Mr. Edwards, include “Festivals and Funerals” (1971), “Coagulations” (1984) and “Jazz Fan Looks Back” (2002); her albums include “Everywhere Drums” (1990) and “Taking the Blues Back Home” (1996).

Ms. Cortez, who taught at universities throughout the United States, including Rutgers, was among the artists featured — others include Amiri Baraka, Charles Bukowski, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg — in Ron Mann’s esteemed 1982 documentary film, “Poetry in Motion.”

Despite her work’s eclecticism, Ms. Cortez was comfortable invoking a single genre to describe it, precisely because that genre was itself so encompassing.

“Jazz isn't just one type of music, it’s an umbrella that covers the history of black people from African drumming to field hollers and the blues,” she told The Weekly Journal, a black newspaper in Britain, in 1997. “In the sense that I also try to reflect the fullness of the black experience, I’m very much a jazz poet.”

Jayne Cortez, a poet and performance artist whose work was known for its visceral power, its political outrage and above all its sheer, propulsive musicality, died on December 28, 2012 in Manhattan, NYC. She was 78.

Her death, at Beth Israel Medical Center, was from heart failure, her son, the jazz drummer Denardo Coleman, said.

One of the central figures of the Black Arts Movement — the cultural branch of the black power movement that flourished in the 1960s and ’70s — Ms. Cortez remained active for decades afterward, publishing a dozen volumes of poetry and releasing almost as many recordings, on which her verse was seamlessly combined with avant-garde music.

She performed on prominent stages around the world, including, in New York, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Museum of Modern Art and Carnegie Hall.

Ms. Cortez’s work was beyond category by virtue of embodying so many categories simultaneously: written verse, African and African-American oral tradition, the discourse of political protest, and jazz and blues. Meant for the ear even more than for the eye, her words combine a hurtling immediacy with an incantatory orality.

Starting in the 1960s, Ms. Cortez began performing her work to musical accompaniment. For the past three decades she toured and recorded with her own band, the Firespitters, whose members include her son, from her first marriage, to the saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman.

As performed, Ms. Cortez’s poems were not so much set to music as they were a part of the music. They were chanted more than recited, employing carefully calibrated repetitions, shifts in tempo and modulations of vocal tone.

It was as if her verse, which often took on large, painful subjects like racism and misogyny, had become an instrument itself — an instrument, Ms. Cortez felt strongly, to be wielded in the service of social change.

In one of her best-known works, “If the Drum Is a Woman,” for instance, she indicts violence against women. (The title invokes Duke Ellington’s 1956 composition “A Drum Is a Woman”):

why are you pounding your drum into an insane babble

why are you pistol-whipping your drum at dawn

why are you shooting through the head of your drum

and making a drum tragedy of drums

if the drum is a woman

don’t abuse your drum don’t abuse your drum

don’t abuse your drum

To visit the website of the late Jayne Cortez CLICK HERE.

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 9 Feb 2014 13:54:00 -0500

SUBTLE VIRTUOSITY

To listen to program CLICK HERE

In 1951, Mr. Ahmad Jamal first recorded 'Ahmad's Blues' on Okeh Records. His arrangement of the folk tune 'Billy Boy', and 'Poinciana' (not his original composition), also stem from this period. In 1955, he recorded his first Argo (Chess) Records album that included 'New Rhumba', 'Excerpts From The Blues', 'Medley' (actually 'I Don't Want To Be Kissed'), and 'It Ain't Necessarily So' --all later utilized by Miles Davis and Gil Evans on the albums “Miles Ahead” and “Porgy and Bess.” In his autobiography, Mr. Davis praises Mr. Jamal's special artistic qualities and cites his

influence. In fact, the mid-to-late 1950's Miles Davis Quintet recordings notably feature material previously recorded by Mr. Jamal: 'Squeeze Me', 'It Could Happen To You', 'But Not For Me', 'Surrey With The Fringe On Top', 'Ahmad's Blues', 'On Green Dolphin Street' and 'Billy Boy'.

In 1956, Mr. Jamal, who had already been joined by bassist Israel Crosby in 1955, replaced guitarist Ray Crawford with a drummer. Working as the “house trio” at Chicago's Pershing Hotel drummer Vernell Fournier joined this trio in 1958 and Mr. Jamal made a live album for Argo Records entitled “But Not For Me”. The resulting hit single and album, that also included 'Poinciana' -- his rendition could be considered his “signature”. This album remained on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks -- unprecedented then for a jazz album. This financial success enabled Mr. Jamal to realize a dream, and he opened a restaurant/club, The Alhambra, in Chicago. Here the Trio was able to perform while limiting their touring schedule and Mr. Jamal was able to do record production and community work.

Mr. Jamal was born on July 2, 1930, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A child prodigy who began to play the piano at the age of 3, he began formal studies at age 7. While in high school, he completed the equivalent of college master classes under the noted African-American concert singer and teacher Mary Caldwell Dawson and pianist James Miller. He joined the musicians union at the age of 14, and he began touring upon graduation from Westinghouse High School at the age of 17, drawing critical acclaim for his solos. In 1950, he formed his first trio, The Three Strings. Performing at New York's The Embers club, Record Producer John Hammond “discovered” The Three Strings and signed them to Okeh Records (a division of Columbia, now Sony Records).

Mr. Jamal has continued to record his outstanding original arrangements of such standards as 'I Love You', 'A Time For Love', 'On Green Dolphin Street' (well before Miles Davis!), 'End of a Love Affair', to cite a few. Mr. Jamal's own classic compositions begin with 'Ahmad's Blues' (first recorded on October 25, 1951!), 'New Rhumba', 'Manhattan Reflections', 'Tranquility', 'Extensions', 'The Awakening', 'Night Mist Blues' and most recently 'If I Find You Again', among many others..

In 1994, Mr. Jamal received the American Jazz Masters award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The same year he was named a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University, where he performed commissioned works with the Assai String Quartet. A CD is available of these works.

In 1970, Mr. Jamal performed the title tune by Johnny Mandel for the soundtrack of the film “Mash!”; and in 1995, two tracks from his hit album “But Not For Me” -- 'Music, Music, Music', and 'Poinciana' -- were featured in the Clint Eastwood film “The Bridges of Madison County”.

Mr. Jamal's CD entitled “The Essence” features tenor saxophonist George Coleman -- Mr. Jamal's first recording made with a horn! Critical acclaim and outstanding sales resulted in two prestigious awards: D'jango D'or (critics) and Cloch (for sales) in France. Its success generated a concert at Salle Pleyel, and a CD has been released “Ahmad Jamal a Paris” (1992) and a second “live” concert by Mr. Jamal in l996 under the same title, unissued except in France and available on the Dreyfus Records on the Internet, Mr. Jamal rightly considers one of his best recordings. Ahmad Jamal's 70th Birthday “live” concert recording Olympia 2000, is known as “The Essence Part III”. “The Essence, Part II”, featured Donald Byrd on the title track, and on his CD entitled “Nature”, Stanley Turrentine is featured on 'The Devil's In My Den', and steel drummer Othello Molineaux augments the trio format. Continuing his recording career, Mr. Jamal released “In Search of” on CD, and his first DVD “Live In Baalbeck”.

For students of the piano, Hal Leonard Publications has published “The Ahmad Jamal Collection”, a collection of piano transcriptions. Mr. Jamal continues to record exclusively for the French Birdology label, and his albums are released on Verve and Atlantic in the United States.

Mr. Jamal is an exclusive Steinway piano artist.

Mr. Jamal's 'About My Life' story in his own words:

At three years of age, my wonderful Uncle Lawrence stopped me while I was walking past the piano in my parents' living room. He was playing the piano and challenged me to duplicate what he was doing. Although I had never touched this or any piano, I sat down and played note for note what I had heard. “The rest is history.”

What a thrilling ride it has been and continues to be. I was born in one of the most remarkable places in the world for musicians and people in the arts - Pittsburgh, PA. At seven years, I was selling newspapers to Billy Strayhorn's family. Billy had already left home; I didn't get to meet him until years later. Following is a partial listing of “Pittsburghers:”

George Benson
Roy Eldridge
Art Blakey
Errol Garner
Kenny Clarke
Earl “Fatha” Hines
Billy Eckstein
Phyllis Hyman
Maxine Sullivan
Gene Kelly
Stanley Turrentine
Joe Kennedy, Jr.
Earl Wild
Oscar Levant
Mary Loe Williams
Lorin Maazel
George Hudson (his orchestra was my first job away from home, I was 17 and just out of high school.) - Dodo Marmarosa
Dakota Staton
Billy Strayhorn

At seven years of age I began my studies with a wonderful woman, Mary Cardwell Dawson. In addition to her great influence on me, she was very influential in the careers of many musical personalities on a local, as well as worldwide basis. One of her students is my life long friend, violinist, Joe Kennedy, Jr. Later, while still in my teens, I began studying with James Miller, as a result of Mrs. Dawson's relocation to Washington, D.C.

After touring with George Hudson's Orchestra, I traveled to Chicago with The Four Strings, a group headed by violinist, Joe Kennedy, Jr. Unfortunately, the group disbanded because of a lack of employment and in 1951, I formed The Three Strings.

The year 1951 was the beginning of my recording career. “Ahmad's Blues,” which I wrote in 1948 during my stint with a song and dance team out of East St. Louis, was one of my first recordings; “Ahmad's Blues” has been heard in the stage play, “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” and recorded by Marlena Shaw, Natalie Cole, Red Garland and others. The first session also included my arrangement of the folk tune, “Billy Boy,” which arrangement was copied by many of my peers. I wrote “New Rhumba” around 1951 and it has also been recorded and performed by many others, most notably Miles Davis. My most famous recording was done in Chicago in 1958 at the Pershing Hotel with two of the most talented musicians of the century, Israel Crosby and Vernell Fournier.

Five decades covering my career are most interesting to me and contain some of the historical data that you can find by clicking the indicated categories of my web page menu. What you can't find won't be available until my proposed autobiography goes to print.

To Visit Ahmad Jamal's website CLICK HERE

Remembrance; A Tribute to Amiri Baraka

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:47:00 -0500

AMIRI BARAKA

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SHOW

Poet, writer, teacher, and political activist Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University and Howard University, spent three years in the U.S. Air Force, and returned to New York City to attend Columbia University and the New School for Social Research. Baraka was well known for his strident social criticism, often writing in an incendiary style that made it difficult for some audiences and critics to respond with objectivity to his works. Throughout most of his career his method in poetry, drama, fiction, and essays was confrontational, calculated to shock and awaken audiences to the political concerns of black Americans. For decades, Baraka was one of the most prominent voices in the world of American literature.
Baraka’s own political stance changed several times, thus dividing his oeuvre into periods: as a member of the avant-garde during the 1950s, Baraka—writing as Leroi Jones—was associated with Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; in the ‘60s, he moved to Harlem and became a Black Nationalist; in the ‘70s, he was involved in third-world liberation movements and identified as a Marxist. More recently, Baraka was accused of anti-Semitism for his poem “Somebody Blew up America,” written in response to the September 11 attacks.

Baraka incited controversy throughout his career. He was praised for speaking out against oppression as well as accused of fostering hate. Critical opinion has been sharply divided between those who agree, with Dissent contributor Stanley Kaufman, that Baraka’s race and political moment have created his celebrity, and those who feel that Baraka stands among the most important writers of the twentieth century. In the American Book Review, Arnold Rampersad counted Baraka with Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison “as one of the eight figures . . . who have significantly affected the course of African-American literary culture.”

Baraka did not always identify with radical politics, nor did his writing always court controversy. During the 1950s Baraka lived in Greenwich Village, befriending Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, and Gilbert Sorrentino. The white avant-garde—primarily Ginsberg, O’Hara, and leader of the Black Mountain poets Charles Olson—and Baraka believed in poetry as a process of discovery rather than an exercise in fulfilling traditional expectations. Baraka, like the projectivist poets, believed that a poem’s form should follow the shape determined by the poet’s own breath and intensity of feeling. In 1958 Baraka founded Yugen magazine and Totem Press, important forums for new verse. He was married to his co-editor, Hettie Cohen, from 1960 to 1965. His first play, A Good Girl Is Hard to Find, was produced at Sterington House in Montclair, New Jersey, that same year. Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Baraka’s first published collection of poems appeared in 1961. M.L. Rosenthal wrote in The New Poets: American and British Poetry since World War II that these poems show Baraka’s “natural gift for quick, vivid imagery and spontaneous humor.” Rosenthal also praised the “sardonic or sensuous or slangily knowledgeable passages” that fill the early poems. While the cadence of blues and many allusions to black culture are found in the poems, the subject of blackness does not predominate. Throughout, rather, the poet shows his integrated, Bohemian social roots. The book’s last line is “You are / as any other sad man here / american.”

With the rise of the civil rights movement Baraka’s works took on a more militant tone. His trip to Cuba in 1959 marked an important turning point in his life. His view of his role as a writer, the purpose of art, and the degree to which ethnic awareness deserved to be his subject changed dramatically. In Cuba he met writers and artists from third world countries whose political concerns included the fight against poverty, famine, and oppressive governments. In Home: Social Essays (1966), Baraka explains how he tried to defend himself against their accusations of self-indulgence, and was further challenged by Jaime Shelley, a Mexican poet, who said, “‘In that ugliness you live in, you want to cultivate your soul? Well, we’ve got millions of starving people to feed, and that moves me enough to make poems out of.’” Soon Baraka began to identify with third world writers and to write poems and plays with strong political messages.

Dutchman, a play of entrapment in which a white woman and a middle-class black man both express their murderous hatred on a subway, was first performed Off-Broadway in 1964. While other dramatists of the time were wedded to naturalism, Baraka used symbolism and other experimental techniques to enhance the play’s emotional impact. The play established Baraka’s reputation as a playwright and has been often anthologized and performed. It won the Village Voice Obie Award in 1964 and was later made into a film. The plays and poems following Dutchman expressed Baraka’s increasing disappointment with white America and his growing need to separate from it. Critics observed that as Baraka’s poems became more politically intense, they left behind some of the flawless technique of the earlier poems. Richard Howard wrote of The Dead Lecturer (1964) in the Nation: “These are the agonized poems of a man writing to save his skin, or at least to settle in it, and so urgent is their purpose that not one of them can trouble to be perfect.”

To make a clean break with the Beat influence, Baraka turned to writing fiction in the mid-1960s, penning The System of Dante’s Hell (1965), a novel, and Tales (1967), a collection of short stories. The stories are “‘fugitive narratives’ that describe the harried flight of an intensely self-conscious Afro-American artist/intellectual from neo-slavery of blinding, neutralizing whiteness, where the area of struggle is basically within the mind,” Robert Elliot Fox wrote in Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany.The role of violent action in achieving political change is more prominent in these stories, as is the role of music in black life.

In addition to his poems, novels and politically-charged essays, Baraka is a noted writer of music criticism. His classic history Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963) traces black music from slavery to contemporary jazz. Finding indigenous black art forms was important to Baraka in the ‘60s, as he was searching for a more authentic voice for his own poetry. Baraka became known as an articulate jazz critic and a perceptive observer of social change. As Clyde Taylor stated in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch, “The connection he nailed down between the many faces of black music, the sociological sets that nurtured them, and their symbolic evolutions through socio-economic changes, in Blues People, is his most durable conception, as well as probably the one most indispensable thing said about black music.” Baraka also published the important studies Black Music (1968) and The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues (1987). Lloyd W. Brown commented in Amiri Baraka that Baraka’s essays on music are flawless: “As historian, musicological analyst, or as a journalist covering a particular performance Baraka always commands attention because of his obvious knowledge of the subject and because of a style that is engaging and persuasive even when the sentiments are questionable and controversial.”

After Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was killed in 1965, Baraka moved to Harlem and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. The Black Arts Movement helped develop a new aesthetic for black art and Baraka was its primary theorist. Black American artists should follow “black,” not “white” standards of beauty and value, he maintained, and should stop looking to white culture for validation. The black artist’s role, he wrote in Home: Social Essays (1966), is to “aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.” Foremost in this endeavor was the imperative to portray society and its ills faithfully so that the portrayal would move people to take necessary corrective action. He married his second wife, Amina, in 1967. In that same year, Baraka published the poetry collection Black Magic,which chronicles his separation from white culture and values while displaying his mastery of poetic technique. There was no doubt that Baraka’s political concerns superseded his just claims to literary excellence, and critics struggled to respond to the political content of the works. Some felt the best art must be apolitical and dismissed Baraka’s newer work as “a loss to literature.” Kenneth Rexroth wrote inWith Eye and Ear that Baraka “has succumbed to the temptation to become a professional Race Man of the most irresponsible sort. . . . His loss to literature is more serious than any literary casualty of the Second War.” In 1966 Bakara moved back to Newark, New Jersey, and a year later changed his name to the Bantuized Muslim appellation Imamu (“spiritual leader,” later dropped) Ameer (later Amiri, “prince”) Baraka (“blessing”).

By the early 1970s Baraka was recognized as an influential African-American writer. Randall noted in Black World that younger black poets Nikki Giovanni and Don L. Lee (later Haki R. Madhubuti) were “learning from LeRoi Jones, a man versed in German philosophy, conscious of literary tradition . . . who uses the structure of Dante’s Divine Comedy in his System of Dante’s Hell and the punctuation, spelling and line divisions of sophisticated contemporary poets.” More importantly, Arnold Rampersad wrote in the American Book Review, “More than any other black poet . . . he taught younger black poets of the generation past how to respond poetically to their lived experience, rather than to depend as artists on embalmed reputations and outmoded rhetorical strategies derived from a culture often substantially different from their own.”

After coming to see Black Nationalism as a destructive form of racism, Baraka denounced it in 1974 and became a third world socialist. He produced a number of Marxist poetry collections and plays in the 1970s that reflected his newly adopted political goals. Critics contended that works like the essays collected in Daggers and Javelins (1984) lack the emotional power of the works from his Black Nationalist period. However, Joe Weixlmann, in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch, argued against the tendency to categorize the radical Baraka instead of analyze him: “At the very least, dismissing someone with a label does not make for very satisfactory scholarship. Initially, Baraka’s reputation as a writer and thinker derived from a recognition of the talents with which he is so obviously endowed. The subsequent assaults on that reputation have, too frequently, derived from concerns which should be extrinsic to informed criticism.”

In more recent years, recognition of Baraka’s impact on late 20th century American culture has resulted in the publication of several anthologies of his literary oeuvre.The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (1999) presents a thorough overview of the writer’s development, covering the period from 1957 to 1983. The volume presents Baraka’s work from four different periods and emphasizes lesser-known works rather than the author’s most famous writings. Transbluency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1961-1995), published in 1995, was hailed by Daniel L. Guillory in Library Journal as “critically important.” And Donna Seaman, writing inBooklist, commended the “lyric boldness of this passionate collection.” Kamau Brathwaite described Baraka’s 2004 collection, Somebody Blew up America & Other Poems, as “one more mark in modern Black radical and revolutionary cultural reconstruction.” The book contains Baraka’s controversial poem of the same name, which he wrote as New Jersey’s poet laureate. After the poem’s publication, public outcry became so great that the governor of New Jersey took action to abolish the position. Baraka sued, though the United States Court of Appeals eventually ruled that state officials were immune from such charges.

Baraka’s legacy as a major poet of the second half of the 20th century remains matched by his importance as a cultural and political leader. His influence on younger writers has been significant and widespread, and as a leader of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s Baraka did much to define and support black literature’s mission into the next century. His experimental fiction of the 1960s is considered some of the most significant African-American fiction since that of Jean Toomer. Writers from other ethnic groups have credited Baraka with opening “tightly guarded doors” in the white publishing establishment, noted Maurice Kenney in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch, who added: “We’d all still be waiting the invitation from the New Yorker without him. He taught us how to claim it and take it.”

Baraka was recognized for his work through a PEN/Faulkner Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, and the Langston Hughes Award from City College of New York. He was awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Amiri Baraka crossed over on January 9, 2014

To visit Amiri Baraka's website CLICK HERE

Sweet Moment's

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Wed, 4 Dec 2013 23:00:00 -0500

RHENDA FEARRINGTON

Originally from Queens, New York, Rhenda Fearrington always delivers an authentic and warm presentation of Jazz Standards mixed with Soulful originals. She is "true" to her roots which includes performing on the International stage as a back-up singer for Roberta Flack and MTUME, respectively! When Rhenda sings, it's quite evident there's a story being told...and it begins and ends with Joy!

She has also spent years as a Commercial/Jingle Singer; 15 years performing for schools with her "Feel Sooo Good Tour;" a motivational program that focuses on building the self-esteem of children!

Rhenda Co-produced her first solo CD, "This Moment's Sweetness," in 2012, with prolific Philadelphia Jazz Bassist, Mike Boone, featuring Tenor Saxophone Legend, Larry McKenna.

Rhenda is also a writer who had a published column, "The ABC of it," in the Suburban & Wayne Times, for 6 years as well as writing Children's Book Reviews for Kids Can Press, LTD (Canada). Rhenda writes independent blogs/reviews about the Philadelphia Jazz scene, and is currently pursuing having her two children's books published, in 2014.

Rhenda was honored for her patronage and voice at Chris’s Jazz Café here in Philadelphia, where she has a special place on their Wall of Fame. “It’s such an honor. I feel like Cinderella coming out of a pumpkin when I walk in at Chris’s “ Rhenda says

For the little girl from Queens who belted out Roberta Flack tunes, the time has come for her to wear the glass slipper.

Cecile McLorin Salvant

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 15:29:00 -0500

DEEP EMOTION

Cécile McLorin Salvant was born on August 28, 1989 and raised in Miami, Florida of a French mother and a Haitian father. She started classical piano studies at 5, and began singing in the Miami Choral Society at 8. Early on, she developed an interest in classical voice, began studying with private instructors, and later with Edward Walker, vocal teacher at the University of Miami.

In 2007, Cécile moved to Aix-en-Provence, France, to study law as well as classical and baroque voice at the Darius Milhaud Conservatory. It was in Aix-en-Provence, with reedist and teacher Jean-François Bonnel, that she started learning about improvisation, instrumental and vocal repertoire ranging from the 1910s on, and sang with her first band. In 2009, after a series of concerts in Paris, she recorded her first album "Cécile", with Jean-François Bonnel's Paris Quintet. A year later, she won the Thelonious Monk competition in Washington D.C.

Cécile performs unique interpretations of unknown and scarcely recorded jazz and blues compositions. She focuses on a theatrical portrayal of the jazz standard and composes music and lyrics which she also sings in French, her native language as well as in Spanish. She enjoys popularity in Europe and in the United States, performing in clubs, concert halls, and festivals accompanied by renowned musicians like Jean-Francois Bonnel, Rodney Whitaker, Aaron Diehl, Dan Nimmer, Sadao Watanabe, Jacky Terrasson (with an a noted collaboration in his "Gouache" Universal CD), Archie Shepp, and Jonathan Batiste. She sings for the 2nd consecutive year for the Chanel’s « Chance » ad campaign. In August 2012, Cécile recorded at the Avatar Studios a CD to be released early next year for the Mack Avenue Label with Aaron Diehl, Rodney Whitaker, Herlin Riley and James Chirillo.

Cécile has performed at numerous festivals such as Jazz à Vienne, Ascona, Whitley Bay, Montauban, Foix, with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in New York’s Lincoln Center and Chicago’s Symphony Center and with her own band at the Kennedy Center, the Spoleto Jazz Festival, Detroit Jazz Festival and other venues.

Ben Ratliff writes in The New York Times “she sings clearly, with her full pitch range, from a pronounced low end to full and distinct high notes, used sparingly — like the one I heard a few weeks ago at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola on the last word of “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” the spire in a magnificent set. Her voice clamps into each song, performing careful variations on pitch, stretching words but generally not scatting; her face conveys meaning, representing sorrow or serenity like a silent-movie actor. She also presents a lot of jazz history, and other things…”

To visit the Cecile McLorin Salvant website CLICK HERE

Feelin' Kind Of Blue

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 3 Nov 2013 22:13:00 -0500

OMAR SOSA

Omar Sosa (born April 10, 1965, in Camagüey, Cuba) is a composer, bandleader, and jazz pianist. Sosa began studying marimba at age eight, then switched to piano at the Escuela Nacional de Musica in Havana, where he studied jazz. Sosa moved to Quito, Ecuador, in 1993, then San Francisco, California, in 1995. In San Francisco he became deeply involved in the local Latin jazz scene and began a long collaboration with percussionist John Santos. He also made a series of recordings with producer Greg Landau, including the ground-breaking Oaktown Irawo, featuring Tower of Power drummer Dave Garibaldi, Cuban saxophonist Yosvany Terry and Cuban percussionist Jesus Diaz. Sosa and Landau recorded with Carlos “Patato” Valdes and Pancho Quinto and worked on several film scores. Around 1999 Sosa moved to Barcelona, Spain.

Omar Sosa is one of the most versatile jazz artists on the scene today: composer, arranger, producer, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. He fuses a wide range of world music and electronic elements with his native Afro-Cuban roots to create a fresh and original urban sound – all with a Latin jazz heart. On stage, Mr. Sosa is a charismatic figure, inspiring his fellow musicians with his dynamic playing and improvisational approach to the music – an approach full of raw emotional power and humor. Mr. Sosa invariably inspires audiences to their feet and to join him in chorus vocals, heightening the sense of spontaneity and connection.

Mr. Sosa’s latest CD on Otá Records, Mulatos , features Latin jazz master Paquito D’Rivera on clarinet. The recording is an adventurous, finely wrought, and wholly delightful mélange of Cuban jazz, Latin dance grooves, French chanson, North African trance music, and European folk. It dances with rhythmic inspirations of Indian tabla, jazz drums, and studio mixing. Also featured is the delicate voice of the Arabic lute, the oud, and the composer himself on marimba. “Mulatos” was recently nominated for Latin Jazz Album of the Year by the NYC-based Jazz Journalists Association.

Mr. Sosa’s music is a unique style of Afro-Cuban jazz, and while it is rooted in the folkloric traditions of the African Diaspora, he always takes an exploratory approach – never one to let orthodoxy stand in the way of his pursuit of freedom. Sosa offers a joyful mix of jazz and Afro-Caribbean rhythms, combining percussive forays inside the piano and a series of electronic effects with his inspired, passionate playing at the keyboard. His tempos are fluid, and his moods change freely. Sosa revels in the irresistible clave grooves of Latin jazz, while adding experimental touches to keep his listeners on their toes.

Omar Sosa has released 15 recordings on the Oakland-based Otá Records label since 1997, including 2002’s GRAMMY-nominated Sentir . He performed recently with his Octet at the opening of Carnegie Hall’s new Zankel Hall, about which Alex Ross of The New Yorker remarked that Sosa has “a ferocious flair for rhythm and a keen musical wit”. Composer John Adams, who curated the opening of Carnegie Hall’s new venue, commented that “Sosa is a deeply creative musician with an extraordinary harmonic sense. His piano playing is sui generis : It has obvious roots in Cuban music, but he’s taken his approach to the keyboard into completely new regions”. And Don Heckman of The Los Angeles Times recently wrote “Sosa’s vision of contemporary jazz reaches across every imaginable boundary”. For more information, please visit www.melodia.com.

Omar Sosa was nominated in 2003 for a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in the ‘Americas’ category, along with Ibrahim Ferrer, Caetano Veloso, and Os Tribalistas. He began 2004 with the debut of his first work for symphony orchestra, entitled From Our Mother , performed at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland by the Oakland East Bay Symphony under the direction of Michael Morgan. The 45-minute work in three movements, which combines folkloric elements from Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador with modern jazz harmonies, was co-commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Oakland East Bay Symphony, with partial funding from the Rockefeller Foundation

EGGUN released 2013 (OTA1024)

EGGUN: The Afri-Lectric Experience began as an Omar Sosa commission from the Barcelona Jazz Festival in 2009. The assignment: to compose and produce a tribute performance to Miles Davis’ classic recording, Kind Of Blue, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Inspired by various musical elements and motifs from Kind Of Blue, Omar wrote a suite of music honoring the spirit of freedom in Davis’ seminal work.

Featuring trumpet and two saxophones, Eggun provides a medium for musical elements from Africa to shape and develop the music. The resulting jazz textures are further enhanced by the subtle and expressive use of electronic elements. At the heart of the recording is the spirit of Mother Africa.

The featured horn players are Joo Kraus on trumpet (Germany),Leandro Saint-Hill on alto saxophone and flute (Cuba), and Peter Apfelbaum on tenor saxophone (U.S.A.). Omar’s longtime rhythm section of Marque Gilmore on drums (U.S.A.) and Childo Tomas on electric bass (Mozambique) create the foundation.

Special guests on the project include Lionel Loueke on guitars (Benin),Marvin Sewell on guitars (U.S.A.), Pedro Martinez on Afro-Cuban percussion (Cuba), John Santos on percussion (U.S.A.), and Gustavo Ovalles on Afro-Venezuelan percussion (Venezuela). The CD was recorded primarily in Brooklyn, NY. Of particular interest is a set of sixInterludios interspersed among the primary tracks of the recording, inspired by melodic elements from the solos of Bill Evans.

Eggun, in the West African spiritual practice of Ifá and its various
expressions throughout the African Diaspora, are the spirits of those whohave gone before us, both in our immediate families and those who serve as our Spirit guides.

From the liner notes, by Joan Cararach, artistic director of theBarcelona Jazz Festival:

Harmony, peace, respect, freedom. That has been Omar Sosa’s
response to our proposal: to revisit Kind of Blue, by Miles Davis, from his own (quite exceptional) aesthetic assumptions. The year was 2009. The 41st Voll-Damm Barcelona International Jazz Festival had hired drummer Jimmy Cobb – the only surviving member of the group’s original line-up who created that record – and a tribute band committed to revive, in concert, the memory of that iconic jazz piece. But Kind of Blue, rather than a museum piece, is a mysterious record with an intimacy to be disclosed very slowly, generation after generation, beyond the commonplaces of history books.

That’s why we asked two artists who are familiar with our festival to revisit Kind of Blue from another perspective, following the artistic principles evoked by Bill Evans in his notes to the record signed by Davis: be yourself, be spontaneous, give all you have to give, everything you learned from those who came before and those you are sharing the road with. We selected Chano Domínguez, from Andalucía, who contributed Flamenco Sketches (Blue Note, 2012), and Cuban Omar Sosa, who did a powerful research of Miles Davis’ record.

Eggun (ancestors) is not a typical record, just as Sosa is not a typical pianist. The artist, at first reluctant, became obsessed probing into Kind of Blue to find nothing else but the paradoxes of a never-ending search: love and indifference; exile and emigration; being here and now with the lessons of those who illuminated us; restless energy and deliberate contemplation; the uncanny twists and turns of our souls and the shades of our lives; the constant strain between grief and joy, contradictory and supplementary at the same time.

Eggun essentially derives from the melodic cells of Kind of Blue’s solos and has the aim of honoring that record, which, let’s say it once more, is hardly known in spite of having been used and abused. Eggun is like all of Sosa’s works, an invitation to a journey plentiful with luxury, peace and sensuality (thanks, Baudelaire!). We have a welcome withAlejet – whitein Arabic – and El Alba. All the sounds of the African diaspora – where Moroccan bendir meets Dominican merengue and Puerto Rican plena: So All Freddie. The interludes, almost sacred invocations to the genius of Bill Evans. And a passionate desperation in the finale, as in records conceived the old way, like a narrative, followed by the final rest, grace in a religious sense, like an overflowing energy which at the end of the journey becomes pure togetherness. Kindness, in short.

To visit Omar Sosa's website CLICK HERE

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 17:51:00 -0400

Click the artists name or picture below and listen to

SPOTLIGHT CONVERSATIONS

with

Clayton "Bigtrigger" Corley

featuring

RONI BEN-HUR

RONI BEN-HUR

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 00:29:00 -0400

TRANSFORMATIONS

Jazz guitarist Roni Ben-Hur has earned a sterling reputation as a musician and educator, renowned for his golden tone, improvisational brilliance, compositional lyricism and ability to charm peers, students and listeners alike. Eminent jazz critic Gary Giddins wrote in the Village Voice: "A limber and inventive guitarist, Ben-Hur keeps the modernist flame alive and pure, with a low flame burning in every note... [He's] a guitarist who knows the changes and his own mind." Ben-Hur - born in Israel in 1962 but a longtime American citizen, now based in New Jersey - has released nine albums as leader or co-leader, with Time Out New York calling him "a formidable and consummately lyrical guitarist." The Star-Ledger of New Jersey summed him up this way: "A deep musician, a storyteller, Ben-Hur works with a warm, glowing sound and has an alluring way of combining engaging notes with supple rhythm." Along with releasing acclaimed educational products - including the instructional DVD Chordability and method book Talk Jazz: Guitar - Ben-Hur has directed international jazz camps for nearly 15 years. Jazz guitar star Russell Malone got it right when he said: "Everything Roni does is beautiful. He has the magic touch."

Ben-Hur's latest album is Our Thing (Motéma Music, 2012), a co-led trio project with Panamanian-born bassist Santi Debriano that also features Brazilian drummer Duduka Da Fonseca. Marked by soulful grooves, telepathic interplay and a rich, organic ensemble sound, Our Thing ranges from deeply swinging interpretations of Thelonious Monk's "Green Chimneys" and Irving Berlin's "Let's Face the Music and Dance" to a pair of poetic tunes by Antonio Carlos Jobim and several beautiful originals that channel the players' Middle Eastern, Latin and Brazilian heritages through a post-bop prism. One of Ben-Hur's compositions is a fresh rendition of a longtime favorite in his songbook: "Anna's Dance," written for one of his two daughters. DownBeat called Our Thing "mesmerizing," while New York City Jazz Record captured it colorfully: "Ben-Hur, Debriano and Da Fonseca sway with the grace of palm trees, exuding a laidback introspection." The Buffalo News encapsulated the album by describing it as "delectable jazz internationalism of near-Olympic variety. Ben-Hur and Debriano are players of first-rate fluency and taste."

Ben-Hur's family relocated from Tunisia to Dimona, Israel, where he was born into large family - teaching him good ensemble values early on. The guitarist began playing in wedding bands and in Tel Aviv clubs as a teenager enraptured by the recordings of Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Jim Hall and Kenny Burrell. The young musician also came to love the classical Spanish repertoire via Segovia, hearing a Moorish sound that resonated with his family's North African roots. Later, after moving to New York in 1985, he would fall for Brazilian music, particularly through the work of guitarist-composer Baden Powell. When Ben-Hur came onto the New York jazz scene, he was fortunate to be taken under the wing of veteran jazz pianist Barry Harris, a Monk disciple and Grammy Award-winner who led the influential Jazz Cultural Theater during the mid-'80s in Manhattan. The up-and-coming guitarist played in Harris's band, absorbing musical wisdom and life lessons.

Teaching has become increasingly important to Ben-Hur over the years, as he has developed an international reach as an educator. As founder and director of the jazz program at the Lucy Moses School at the Kaufman Center in Manhattan since 1994, Ben-Hur has educated a multitude of jazz enthusiasts in ensemble playing, improvisation and jazz guitar. Along with his jazz camp with Santi Debriano in the South of France, Ben-Hur led camps for years in Patterson, N.Y. More recently, through his company Adventures in Jazz - which he operates with his wife, singer Amy London - Ben-Hur conducts jazz camps in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, in Istanbul, Turkey, and in Schroon Lake, N.Y., teaching workshops in straight-ahead jazz, Latin jazz and Brazilian jazz with Debriano and other teachers. With Brazilian bassist Nilson Matta, Ben-Hur also co-leads Samba Meets Jazz camps in Paraty, Brazil, and in Bar Harbor, Maine.

With his partner in the Samba Meets Jazz camps, bassist Nilson Matta, Ben-Hur released the album Mojave (Motéma, 2011), which also featured drummer Victor Lewis and percussionist Café. The album was the second in Motéma's Jazz Therapy series. The series was co-founded by Ben-Hur and the label to raise money and awareness for the Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund of New Jersey's Englewood Hospital and Medical Center Foundation, which provides care for uninsured jazz musicians. The first album in the series wasSmile, Ben-Hur's 2008 duo set with veteran guitarist Gene Bertoncini.

Ben-Hur and Matta are each masters of a musical tradition, the guitarist with bebop and the bassist with samba. Mojave sees them meld the two worlds, in league with New York jazz drummer Victor Lewis and Brazilian percussionist Café. They range from pieces by such Brazilian icons as Jobim, Baden Powell and choro pioneer Pixinguinha to Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" and deftly rhythmic originals by all four players. One of Ben-Hur's contributions is the moody beauty "Eretz" (Hebrew for "land"), another of his signature tunes interpreted afresh. The Rochester City Newspaper offered a glowing review of the album: "Mojave is magical from start to finish... The combination of Matta's samba and Ben-Hur's swing is a marriage made in heaven.

Acclaim for Smile, Ben-Hur's dual-guitar album with Gene Bertoncini, was equally wide-spread. The New York Times lauded the "sophisticated and lyrical" musicianship, and DownBeat simply called the album "stunning," as the players stretch from the Charlie Chaplin title track and the Arlen-Mercer standard "Out of This World" to an enterprising take on Roberta Flack's hit "Killing Me Softly" and two of Ben-Hur's personal standards - his "Anna's Dance," written for one daughter, and "Sofia's Butterfly," penned for the other. Jazz sage Nat Hentoff praised the "lyrically meditative dialogue" between the two guitarists in the Wall Street Journal, while the Washington Post was enamored by "the dazzling dexterity and tasteful elegance of these duets."

Two other key albums in Ben-Hur's discography are Fortuna (Motéma, 2009) and Keepin' It Open (Motéma, 2007), both quintet sets with piano vet Ronnie Matthews and ultra-swinging drummer Lewis Nash, plus percussionist Steve Kroon. Keepin' It Open, which also includes bassist Santi Debriano and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt in the group, has a wide purview, from Monk's rollicking "Think of One" to a dark-hued old Sephardic melody, "Eshkolit." Tapping into his family's Sephardic Jewish roots and his love of the Spanish classical guitar repertoire, Ben-Hur recasts Granados' "Andaluza" as an ensemble piece. And the guitarist's originals include the finger-snapping "My Man, Harris," a tribute to his mentor Barry Harris. JazzTimes called the album "a delight from start to finish," while critic Scott Yanow singled out the guitarist on All Music, saying that Ben-Hur "can swing as hard as anyone."

Fortuna, which has Rufus Reid on double-bass, sees Ben-Hur recast Albéniz's "Granada" with an ear for the early Israeli popular music influenced by the Moorish sound. Along with two Jobim numbers, the disc includes the Irving Berlin ballad "I Got Lost in his Arms" and Ben-Hur's funky original "Guess Who." Jazz scholar Dan Morgenstern listed Fortuna as one of his top 10 discs of 2009. JazzTimes described the album this way: "A keen story teller, Ben-Hur's dexterous, melodic and emotive playing is supported by a tight-knit cast of stellar musicians... his skill and warm tone underscoring the band's chemistry." All About Jazz said, "Fortuna is a sparkling ode to the brightness of life."

Ben-Hur's album Signature (Reservoir, 2005) put the guitarist in the company of pianist John Hicks, bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Leroy Williams, again plus percussionist Steve Kroon. The tracks include the first appearance of Ben-Hur's gem "Eretz," plus two pieces by Villa-Lobos and tunes by Jobim and Cole Porter. DownBeat said: "Signature is a collection of consummately played music that matches the six-stringer's consistently creative melody reading, soloing and comping with the supportive work of superb sidemen. Ben-Hur's original compositions are similarly impressive, from opening burner 'Mama Bee,' which dazzles with a brilliantly constructed guitar solo, to 'Eretz,' a gorgeous ballad intended as a tribute to the guitarist's native Israel that feels like an instant standard."

For Anna's Dance (Reservoir, 2001), Ben-Hur convened a combo of elders: Barry Harris on piano, Charles Davis on saxophone, Walter Booker on double-bass and Leroy Williams on drums. The highlights include the debut of Ben-Hur's title composition, as well as the Billy Strayhorn ballad "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing." In the Village Voice, Gary Giddins said: "As eloquent as a cool breeze, this understated exercise in bebop equilibrium goes down so easy that you might underestimate the magic. Ben-Hur and Charles Davis, who trades in his Sun Ra baritone for suave tenor, speak Harris's lingo like natives." Ben-Hur's kick-started his discography with two bebop showcases.Sofia's Butterfly (TCB, 1998) saw the guitarist - with drummer Leroy Williams and bassist Lisle Atkinson in tow - offering much promise; there's the ultra-fluid virtuosity of his take on Monk's "Four in One," not to mention the first appearances of his original title tune and "Fortuna." Ben-Hur made his initial splash on record with Backyard (TCB, 1996), which presented him with the Barry Harris Trio.

In addition to leading his own bands, Ben-Hur has shared the stage and the studio not only with the heroes and great peers mentioned above but with the likes of Cecil Payne, Etta Jones, Marcus Belgrave, Charles McPherson, Jimmy Heath, Clark Terry, Slide Hampton, Earl May, Teri Thornton and Bill Doggett. Ben-Hur regularly performs in the top jazz venues and in major festivals across the country and around the world. As an educator, he has established jazz programs in New York City high schools, along with presenting workshops for students of all ages in the U.S. and Europe. His instructional releases include the DVD Chordability (Motéma, 2011), which offers 20 lessons on chord voicings and jazz harmony for intermediate and advanced guitarists. He also translated "the Barry Harris method" to guitar with the publication Talk Jazz: Guitar (Mel Bay, 2003), which has appeared in English and Japanese editions.

Ben-Hur’s latest album is Our Thing (Motéma Music, 2012), a co-led trio project with Panamanian-born bassist Santi Debriano that also features Brazilian drummer Duduka Da Fonseca. Marked by soulful grooves, telepathic interplay and a rich, organic ensemble sound, Our Thing ranges from deeply swinging interpretations of Thelonious Monk’s “Green Chimneys” and Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” to a pair of poetic tunes by Antonio Carlos Jobim and several beautiful originals that channel the players’ Middle Eastern, Latin and Brazilian heritages through a post-bop prism. One of Ben-Hur’s compositions is a fresh rendition of a longtime favorite in his songbook: “Anna’s Dance,” written for one of his two daughters. DownBeat called Our Thing “mesmerizing,” while New York City Jazz Record captured it colorfully: “Ben-Hur, Debriano and Da Fonseca sway with the grace of palm trees, exuding a laidback introspection.” The Buffalo News encapsulated the album by describing it as “delectable jazz internationalism of near-Olympic variety. Ben-Hur and Debriano are players of first-rate fluency and taste.”

To Visit Roni Ben-Hur's website CLICK HERE

Speaking Life's Truth's

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 6 Oct 2013 16:47:00 -0400

LAINI MATAKA

Wanda Robinson better known as Laini Mataka was born and raised in Baltimore, Md., one of 10 children, and was raised by her Grandmother. She's been writing poetry since the age of thirteen. Her first paid writing gig was composing letters, at a quarter apiece, for girls whose boyfriends were being sent to Vietnam. She wrote about, she says, "things I knew nothing about": "it was all about love- 'oh, he broke my heart!'"

As the war progressed and she entered college, her work became more political. After hearing R&B singer Arthur Prysock's poetry-based 1969 album, "This Is My Beloved," she decided to set some of her poems to music.
She read poems into a tape recorder with a stereo playing in the background, then she played the finished product for her classmates at the Community College of Baltimore. A local DJ, Anthony Davis played some of her work on his show. Soon after, she got a call from Perception Records which invited the 20 year old if she would like to come to NYC to cut a record.

When Laini (named for a settlement in Kenya's central Province) was picking music for her album, the label opened it's library up to her. "They said to use any music I wanted - they owned the rights to everything," she remembers. She selected a great deal of material from Black Ivory, a soul trio from Harlem- and then walked into what she describes as a sort of disorganized, never-ending party. She remembers label folks keeping artists working however they could. "Whatever you wanted, they would get it for you," Mataka says. Laini wanted nothing was what she told them!

After recording her album "Black Ivory" in 1971, performing doggedly to promote the record - at a beauty pagent, on an episode of Soul Train she never saw - Laini fled, feeling overworked and underpaid. "I hid," she says. "I said i'd never give my work to white people again to exploit me, and I didn't."

She went home to Baltimore, where she put in time at the CSX railroad, in libraries and in a warehouse. She didn't want to deal with labels, agents or producers anymore, but, encouraged by friends, met with a guy who'd worked with Maya Angelou. They took a cab ride, he disrespected her, she got out and didn't take any more meetings.

In the meantime, Laini says, "Me And A Friend," was cobbled together from tracks she recorded for Black Ivory. Although she's never listened to the whole recording, she did once read the lyric sheet. "They didn't know what I was saying," she says. "They misspelled a lot of words."

Still the disc has done a lot to maintain her profile among crate-diggers. DJ Shadow, the British electronica duo Pressure Drop and New York house producer Floppy Sounds have all sampled Laini's work. And those are just the "Credited uses." No doubt since Perception records went bankrupt and the catalog was purchased, she probably could regain some of the ownership of her work.

In the mid - 70s, Mataka met Paul Coates, owner of Baltimore's Black Classic Press. Once he began the process of starting a publishing house, he told her that is she waited for him that his company would publish everything she wrote. Coates made good on that promise. In 1988 "Never As Strangers, In 1994 "Restoring The Queen." And, in 2000 Bein A Strong Black Woman Could Get You Killed," were all published by Black Classic Press.

Laini Mataka is the real deal. Even 30 years ago her voice was uniquely original and still is even today!
She would even like to sing. "I want to mix it up," she says, "start a song, then stop in the middle, like a jazz musician (her favorite music) run a poem, then pick up on the other side."

But for now, she's continuing to work with young writers, constantly composing poems and trying to finish up a novel about a childhood boyfriend who was killed. That last project, she admits, is giving her some trouble. "It needs a happy ending," she says, "and I don't know anyone who's having one right now."

To purchase the work of Laini Mataka CLICK HERE

To catch Laini Mataka on Facebook CLICK HERE

Listen to Spotlight On jazz and Poetry's "Spotlight Conversations with Laini Mataka" hosted by Clayton "Bigtrigger" Corley, Sr.

McCoy Tyner

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:44:00 -0400

ILLUMINATION

McCoy Alfred Tyner is best remembered from the John Coltrane Quartet. In the past decades since he has become one of the major pianists and composers, expanding the vocabulary of color and harmony. His lusty piano is richly percussive and hammering, while full of cascading and romantic sounds. His unique and forceful style has inspired and influenced a whole new generation of musicians.

Tyner was born in Philadelphia on December 11, 1938, the oldest of three children. He was encouraged to study piano by his mother. He finally began studying the piano at age 13 and within two years, music had become the focal point in his life.

In the beginning McCoy practiced on a neighbour's piano. When his family bought one, he began hosting jam sessions. Among his friends and neighbours were a number of young musicians who would go on to make their marks in jazz, such as trumpeter Lee Morgan, saxophonist Archie Shepp, pianist Bobby Timmons, and bassist Regie Workman. "Bud and Richie Powell moved into my neighbourhood. Bud was a major influence on me during my early teens. He was very dynamic." In addition, Thelonious Monk and Art Tatum were young McCoy's major influences. McCoy studied at the West Philadelphia Music School and later at Granoff School of Music.

At age 17, while playing at a local club called the Red Rooster, he first met JOHN COLTRANE. Coltrane was in Philadelphia between gigs with Miles Davis. The saxophonist, whose style was still in its formative stages and whose reputation was on the rise, had no working group of his own, but secured a few engagements in and around Philadelphia, with McCoy often in his rhythm section. The rapport between the two was so apparent, that Coltrane made it clear that he hoped to eventually have a regular band with McCoy Tyner in it.

His first main exposure came with BENNY GOLSON being the first pianist in Golson's and Art Farmer's legendary Jazztet (1959). By 1960, when John Coltrane finally left Miles Davis to form his own group, McCoy left Art Farmer. Tyner continued with Coltrane through 1965, participating in all the major recording sessions.

The pianist participated in numerous historical recording sessions with Coltrane, including for instance Africa Brass, A Love Supreme, and My Favorite Things. While with Coltrane, Tyner also recorded many of his own albums for Impulse!, including such classics as "Inception", "Night of Ballads and Blues", and "Live at Newport", and later for Blue Note, which enabled him to feature his densely rich piano sound to great effect.

Upon Leaving Coltrane (1965), there was a lull in Tyner's popularity. The future looked bright and the trio he formed seemed to have a big future. In fact he spent the next five years playing superbly but getting more and more disillusioned due to lack of acceptance. But he rebounded in the 1970's. Due to groups featuring Sonny Fortune and Azar Lawrence and recordings for Milestone like "Sahara", which received two Grammy nominations and was named 'Album of the year' in the Down Beat Critics Poll, Tyner gained recognition. He toured and recorded with SONNY ROLLINS, Ron Carter and Al Foster as the Milestone Jazzstars in 1978, and in the mid-1980s led a quintet that included Gary Bartz and violinist John Blake.

Since 1980, he has also arranged his lavishly textured harmonies for a big band that performs and records when possible. In the late 1980s, he mainly focussed on his regular piano trio featuring Avery Sharpe on bass and Aarron Scott on drums. As of today, this trio is still in great demand. He returned to Impulse in 1995, with a superb album featuring MICHAEL BRECKER. In 1996 he recorded a special album with the music of BURT BACHARACH. In 1998 he changed labels again and recorded a interesting latin album and an album featuring STANLEY CLARKE for TelArc. While he avoids modern conventions and the trappings of the moment, Tyner's sound remains contemporary to this day.

Tyner's full use of the piano's keyboard, with a striking exploitation of dynamics, sets him aside from more introverted players like Bill Evans and Keith Jarret. Their "musique de chambre" links them more with the European-oriented piano tradition, whereas Tyner follows the track back to the roots of the Afro-American quintessence of jazz music.

Tyner's music has been a major influence over the adoption in jazz of quartal and quintal harmonies, modes and pentatonic scales. He achieved a revived appreciation as a major player in the international jazz scene, a status he continues to maintain

Christopher L. Fields

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Mon, 2 Sep 2013 22:40:00 -0400

"AUTHENTIC SOUL"

Christopher L. Fields is a Spoken Word Artist out of Washington D.C. His wordplay, passionate delivery and his love for Poetic Expression earned him the moniker of “The Poetry Man”

A natural born Poet, with no formal training, Christopher wrote his first poem when he was 7 years old – An Anniversary gift to his Parents; Charles & Dorothy Fields.

Although he was a shy child, he continued to write, but he didn't share his poems with anyone around him. That all changed the day that his Mother discovered some of Christopher’s Poems hidden away in a box, and told him; “You need to write”.

It would be a few years down the line before Christopher fully embraced the role of Poet, but the rise of “Hip Hop” gave him yet another platform to display his lyrical skills on. Ghost Writing for a friend, until that same friend convinced him to step out of the shadows and stand center stage.

Now armed with the sophisticated elegance of Poetry, and the Raw guttural expression of Hip Hop, Christopher developed his own style of writing and performance. Christopher doesn't recite poetry; he is Poetry - in motion, in the stillness of your heart, in the recesses of your mind and down into the wells of your soul.

Christopher’s strong belief in the power of collective works leads him to coin the phrase:

"WE" are Greater Than "i".

Welcome to The Poetry Man Experience.

Memberships: Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc.

E-mail: PoetryManDC@aol.com

George Duke

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 10:29:00 -0400

Tribute To George Duke

The keyboard-player, composer and producer George Duke enjoyed a multi-faceted career that lasted close to five decades and tapped into the collective consciousness from a variety of directions. His résumé read like a who's who of jazz, funk and soul and included collaborations with Cannonball Adderley, Frank Zappa and Miles Davis, as well as Al Jarreau, Anita Baker, Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson – particularly on the title track for the superstar's Off the Wall album in 1979.

Duke produced hit records for Jeffrey Osborne – the ballad "On the Wings of Love" in 1982, the floorfiller "Stay with Me Tonight" in 1983 – and Deniece Williams's ebullient US No 1 "Let's Hear It for the Boy", from the Footloose soundtrack in 1984. He also scored films and was musical director for myriad events, including 11 Soul Train Music Awards and Nelson Mandela: An International Tribute for a Free South Africa at Wembley Stadium in 1990.

Both as leader of his own jazz-fusion band and in partnership with the virtuoso bassist Stanley Clarke, he was a crossover colossus, making the most of his multi-instrumental skills as well as his affecting falsetto on the synth-led disco smash "Reach for It" (1978), the smooth ballad "Sweet Baby" (1981) and the irrepressible "Shine On" (1982), which all charted in the US and across Continental Europe. In the UK, his most popular album was A Brazilian Love Affair, reflecting his passion for the country and its music. It was recorded in Rio de Janeiro in 1979 with the vocalists Milton Nascimento and Flora Purim and the percussionist Airto Moreira.

The versatile and prolific Duke was also a mainstay of the Montreux Jazz Festival, where he performed over a dozen times and debuted his ambitious Muir Woods Suite for orchestra and small jazz band – subsequently released in 1995. "Serious black orchestral writers don't often have the opportunity to have their works performed, so I realise I was blessed to have this chance. Besides, I've always liked breaking down barriers," he remarked. "I used to call my music Multi-Stylistic. I grew up listening to all kinds of music, and I didn't see why I should be kept in a box musically. I felt that there is intrinsic worth in all forms of music, even the simpler forms. I've always wanted to bring cultures and music together – you know, make a nice stew."

George Duke was born in San Rafael, California, in 1946, he grew up in Marin City, located a few miles north of San Francisco. He demanded a piano after his mother took him to see Duke Ellington in concert when he was four, and he began taking lessons a couple of years later. He was already absorbing influences like the gospel he heard in his local Baptist church. "That's where I first began to play funky," he said. "I saw how music could trigger emotions in a cause-and-effect relationship."

By the early Sixties, he was playing jazz with fellow pupils at Tamalpais High School, and developing a style influenced by the West Coast luminaries Les McCann and Cal Tjader, as well as Davis. He would eventually collaborate with the trumpeter as composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist on a brace of tracks on the Eighties albums Tutu and Amandla.

While studying trombone and composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he gigged with his own trio, and sometimes with Jarreau – then working as a rehabilitation counselor in the city, but soon to emerge as one of the preeminent jazz vocalists of the era. They reunited in the early Eighties when Duke played on Jarreau's Breakin' Away album and in 1988 when he produced the vocalist's Grammy-nominated Heart's Horizon album.

After depping for McCann on a quiet Monday night at The Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in 1966, Duke was approached by SABA Records to cut an album he felt didn't reflect his potential. "For some reason, I thought all I had to do was play the head of a tune real nice and then proceed to rattle off myriads of notes at high velocity. This did not make for a pleasing result, but it was all I knew," he said of his first studio recording.

Duke completed a Masters degree in composition at San Francisco State University and had a short spell teaching jazz and American culture at Merritt Junior College in nearby Oakland, before hooking up with the talented French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty after sending his US label World Pacific a note stating, "there is no other pianist for this guy but me." In September 1969, they recorded The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio album live at Thee Experience club in Los Angeles, where Duke found himself playing a Fender Rhodes, since the requested acoustic piano was nowhere to be seen.

"The club was packed, so I knew I had to be on. Jean-Luc and I had developed a buzz on the West Coast because of our high intensity progressive jazz style. In attendance were Frank Zappa, Quincy Jones and Cannonball Adderley," he recalled of the groundbreaking jazz-fusion recording that preceded the emergence of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report on the East Coast.

Zappa hired Duke for two spells, interrupted by a couple of years during which he toured with Adderley. The keyboard-player contributed to several albums central to the Zappa oeuvre, including Chunga's Revenge (1970), the soundtrack of the 200 Motels movie (1971), and the bestselling sequence of Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe, Roxy & Elsewhere (all 1974), One Size Fits All and Bongo Fury (both 1975) – also featuring Captain Beefheart. The concert I saw Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, with Duke, give in Marseilles in 1974 was astonishing – and memorable for both its virtuosity and wit.

Duke thrived with Zappa, building up confidence as a vocalist, even if he never considered himself a "proper singer", and taking up the synthesizer after the guitarist bought an ARP 2600 and presented it to him as a fait accompli. "He put it next to my Rhodes. It was as simple as that," recalled Duke. "At the time, there were no presets or ways of saving patches. Not only that, but you were limited to one note at a time. So overdubbing, a good memory and management system became very important."

Indeed, Duke became such a distinctive and proficient synthesizer player and programmer that his Seventies and Eighties recordings have since been sampled by electronic acts like Daft Punk and Mylo and hip-hop stars Kanye West and Ice Cube. He also helped to popularise the keytar – a light, portable keyboard, which he strapped on to venture centre-stage during his shows.

On the 40-plus, occasionally self-indulgent but mostly engaging and excellent albums he recorded under his own name, or in partnership with other jazz-fusion stalwarts, Duke collaborated with the drummers Billy Cobham and Alphonse Mouzon and the guitarist John Scofield. He produced albums for his cousin Dianne Reeves, the vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and the disco act A Taste of Honey – and also worked with Barry Manilow, Smokey Robinson, the Pointer Sisters, Natalie Cole, Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick and Howard Hewett of Shalamar fame.

Duke seemed unstoppable, but the death of his wife, Corine, last year, hit him hard. He dedicated his recently released album, Dreamweaver, to her.

George Duke crossed over from chronic lymphocytic leukemia in Los Angeles on August 5, 2013

"I really think it is possible to make good music and be commercial at the same time," he wrote on his website. "I believe it is the artist's responsibility to take the music to the people. Art for art's sake is nice; but if art doesn't communicate, then its worth is negated, it has not fulfilled its destiny."

Terence Blanchard

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 4 Aug 2013 23:27:00 -0400

MAGNETIZED

Terence Blanchard (trumpet) is one of the most important musician/composer/band leaders of his generation. His emotionally moving and technically refined playing is considered by many jazz aficionados to recall earlier jazz trumpet styles.

Born March 13, 1962, in New Orleans, the only child to parents Wilhelmina and Joseph Oliver Blanchard, a part-time opera singer and insurance company manager, the young Blanchard was encouraged by his father, Joseph Oliver, to learn to play the piano. In the third grade he discovered jazz trumpet when a big band, featuring Alvin Alcorn on trumpet, played at a school assembly. In his teens Blanchard attended the New Orleans Center of Creative Arts, where he studied and played with saxophonist Donald Harrison. While performing with Lionel Hampton's big band, he studied for two years at Rutgers University under the tutelage of Paul Jeffrey and Bill Fielder.

In 1982 Blanchard replaced Wynton Marsalis under his recommendation in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, working in that band up to 1986 as lead soloist and musical director. He then co-led a prominent quintet with saxophonist Donald Harrison, recording seven albums for the Concord, Columbia, and Evidence record labels in five years, including a stirring in-concert tribute to the Eric Dolphy/Booker Little ensemble.

In the '90s, Blanchard became a leader in his own right, recording for the Columbia label, performing on the soundtracks to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues, and composing the music for Lee's film Jungle Fever. In fact, Blanchard has written the score for every Spike Lee film since 1991, including Malcolm X, Clockers, Summer of Sam, 25th Hour, Inside Man, and the Hurricane Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke for HBO. With over 40 scores to his credit, Blanchard and Mark Isham are the most sought-after jazz musicians to ever compose for film. In the fall of 2000, Blanchard was named artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Keeping up with his love of live performance and touring, Blanchard also maintains a regular studio presence, recording his own original music for the Columbia, Sony Classical, and Blue Note labels. Albums include The Billie Holiday Songbook (1994), Romantic Defiance (1995), The Heart Speaks (1996), the acclaimed Wandering Moon (2000), Let's Get Lost (2001), Bounce (2003), and especially Flow (2005), which was produced by pianist Herbie Hancock and received two Grammy nominations. Blanchard has been nominated for 11 Grammys and has won four in total, including awards for New York Scene with Blakey (1984) and the soundtrack A Tale of God's Will in 2007. In 2005, Blanchard was part of McCoy Tyner's ensemble that won the Grammy in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category for Illuminations.

A quintessential sideman as well as leader, he has worked with prominent jazz players including Cedar Walton, Abbey Lincoln, Joanne Brackeen, Jay McShann, Ralph Peterson, Ed Thigpen, J.J. Johnson, Toots Thielemans, the Olympia Brass Band, Stevie Wonder, Bill Lee, Ray Brown, Poncho Sanchez, Dr. Billy Taylor, Dr. John, Lionel Loueke, Jeff Watts, and many others. Scarecrow Press published his autobiography, Contemporary Cat. By April of 2007, the Monk Institute announced its Commitment to New Orleans initiative, which included the relocation of the program to the campus of Loyola University in New Orleans, spearheaded by Blanchard. During 2007, the Monterey Jazz Festival named Blanchard Artist-in-Residence, and the festival formed a 50th Anniversary All-Stars ensemble featuring trumpeter James Moody, Benny Green, Derrick Hodge, Kendrick Scott, and Nnenna Freelon. In 2008, Blanchard helped scored the hit film Cadillac Records. Signing with Concord Jazz in 2009, he released Choices -- recorded at the Ogden Museum of Art in Blanchard's hometown of New Orleans -- at the end of that summer. In 2011, he paid tribute to the innovative Afro-Cuban recordings of Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo by teaming up with Latin jazz percussionist Poncho Sanchez for the studio album Chano y Dizzy! In 2012, Blanchard returned to his film work by scoring the soundtrack to director George Lucas' WWII action/drama Red Tails.

“I’ve always believed that in life, what you keep in your mind is what you draw to yourself.” That’s how trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard explains the title of his 20^th album, Magnetic, which finds a stunning variety of sounds and styles pulled together by the irresistible force of Blanchard’s vision.

That credo stems directly from Blanchard’s personal faith; raised in the Christian church, he has turned in recent years to Buddhism after meditating with Herbie Hancock while on the road with the legendary pianist. The idea of a spiritual magnetism “is a basic concept in any type of religion,” he says. “Both Christianity and Buddhism have forms of meditation - one’s called prayer and one’s called chanting. But it’s all about drawing on those things to help you attain enlightenment in your life at the same time that you’re trying to give back to the community.”

Magnetic gives expression to that belief through the combined voices of Blanchard’s always-scintillating quintet. Its latest incarnation brings together longtime members Brice Winston (saxophone) and Kendrick Scott (drums) with pianist Fabian Almazan, who made his debut with the group on its 2009 album Choices, and its newest member, 21-year-old bass prodigy Joshua Crumbly. In addition, they’re joined by a trio of remarkable special guests: master bassist Ron Carter, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, and guitarist/vocalist Lionel Loueke.

The vast array of approaches undertaken by that ensemble is striking, from the blistering bop of “Don’t Run” to the fragile ballad “Jacob’s Ladder;” the psychedelic electronic haze of “Hallucinations” to the urgent edginess of “Another Step.” As Blanchard says, “It’s a wide range of musical ideas that come together through the efforts of the guys in the band.”

Magnetic marks Blanchard’s return to Blue Note Records, which last released A Tale of God’s Will, his triumphant 2007 requiem for his home city, New Orleans, in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. That harrowingly emotional song cycle is just one of many large-scale projects Blanchard has undertaken in recent years. Since first writing music for Spike Lee’s 1990 jazz-set movie Mo’ Better Blues, Blanchard has become a renowned film composer with over 50 scores to his credit, most recently the WWII drama Red Tails for producer George Lucas.

This summer, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Jazz St. Louis will combine forces to premiere Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, an “Opera in Jazz” based on the story of the gay boxing champion Emile Griffith. This follows his recent score for Emily Mann’s Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.

After the broad scope of such lofty undertakings, returning to a small group setting can be a challenge. “You get accustomed to having so many different colors at your disposal,” he says. “So I try to figure out a way to have as much diversity in everything that we play, the same expansive color palette as when you have an orchestra and voices.”

One way that Blanchard expands his palette on Magnetic is through the use of electronics, creating an overdriven, electric guitar-like sound for his horn during “Pet Step Sitter’s Theme Song” or brewing the mind-altering atmospherics of “Hallucinations.”

The latter tune, though titled by Blanchard’s 14-year-old daughter, also touches on the lifelong spiritual search evoked by the album-opening title track and “Central Focus,” which was originally recorded twenty years ago on Blanchard’s album Simply Stated. “When chanting for meditation,” he says, “you can have those moments of reflection that will bring new ideas to you. Some people may not call them hallucinations, but I think they’re all related in some fashion.”

Not every tune comes from such profound motives. The hard-bopping “Don’t Run” was written solely with the intention of allowing the band to joust with Ravi Coltrane’s soprano and Ron Carter’s mighty bass runs. The title was inspired by a taunt from Carter to Blanchard, asking only half-jokingly when the trumpeter would call on the legendary bassist’s services. “Stop running from me, man,” Blanchard recalls him saying, and when Carter speaks, you listen.

Coltrane’s contributions, which also include a taut, powerhouse turn on tenor for “Pet Step Sitter’s Theme Song,” came about simply because Blanchard was blown away by the saxophonist’s latest album, Spirit Fiction. “Ravi has developed a style and a sound that’s very unique,” Blanchard explains. “It’s an incredible feat given who his father was and what instrument his father played. But his being on my record has nothing to do with any of that; his being on my record is simply due to the fact that I love the way he plays.”

The same goes for Benin-born Lionel Loueke, who first came to prominence through Blanchard’s quintet before becoming widely renowned as one of the most innovative guitarists and vocalists in modern jazz. “He’s a very unique talent,” Blanchard says. “Lionel always brings a certain spirit and energy to any project that he’s a part of.”

Blanchard also readily sings the praises of his core group, which has been evolving over two years together to reach the deeply attuned point at which Magnetic finds them. “I’ve always appreciated the artistry of Brice and Kendrick,” he says of the band’s two veterans. “They’ve very seriously committed to developing their own unique styles of playing.”

Of newcomer Crumbly, he says, “Josh is a young guy who’s very talented and brings a lot to the group.” And of Almazan, he continues, “Fabian has been growing by leaps and bounds. His harmonic knowledge has taken the band in interesting directions and he colors things in ways that I think are very fresh and forward-thinking.”

So enamored is the bandleader of Almazan’s talents that he affords the pianist a solo spotlight, the captivating “Comet.” Almazan, Blanchard says, “plays with such grace and beauty. We did five or six takes and all of them were so beautiful that it was a hard to choose just one.”

Each member of the group provides their own contributions to the album: Crumbly, the lovely and delicate “Jacob’s Ladder;” Scott, the forceful, rhythmically intense “No Borders Just Horizons;” Winston the lithe and intricate “Time To Spare;” and Almazan an “emotional roller coaster” dedicated to his mother, “Pet Step Sitters Theme Song,” which is later reprised as “Another Step.”

“We had so much fun playing that tune that we just couldn’t leave it,” Blanchard explains. I thought it showed the diverse nature of the group, when you see the directions that it goes into, totally different from the first take.”

In his role as mentor to his younger bandmates, Blanchard takes the mantle from his own onetime mentor, Art Blakey. Stressing the importance for young musicians to compose as well as improvise, Blanchard recalls the legendary drummer’s advice: “Art Blakey told us that composition was the path to finding your own voice. If you improvise, you don’t sit down and reflect coldly on what it is you’re playing because you’re moving so quickly onto the next thing. Whereas when you compose, you have to sit down and really contemplate what each note means and how you get from one to the next. That in itself will create a style.”

Terence Blanchard’s own style continues to evolve and expand in exciting and compelling fashion. Magnetic is sure to capture listeners with an attractive power nearly impossible to resist.

To Visit Terence Blanchard's website CLICK HERE

"POETIC MESSENGERS"

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 01:30:00 -0400

"POETIC MESSENGERS"

The Unknown Poet and his musical soul-mate Queen have built a solid reputation as two of the premier spoken word artists and lyrical hook masters on the artistic scene today. Through countless live performances, their CD's, radio interviews and video presentations, they shine!

This duo's smooth jazzy style and heartfelt delivery are legendary on the poetry and jazz scene and beyond. They have been writing and reciting poetry for over 25 years, coming forth with a style and delivery that is totally their own. These are two spiritual jazzy magnets, touched with poetic genius, delivering thought provoking words that stir the listeners heart, mind and soul, as they share their insightful message of musical truth,..with a historical cultural flavor.

Anyone who is blessed with an opportunity to listen to or experience the live or recorded presentations of these wordsmiths will be moved by their Jazzy spoken style like you never would have imagined.

Both TUP and Queen were born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They were children of the 50's. They have been together for 36 years. The Unknown Poet in particular was exposed to a diverse array of live music at a very young age. He also had music lessons and was a member of the drum line in high school. At the impressionable age of 9 years old he was introduced to the sounds of the jazz legends such as Coltrane, Miles, Monk, Sarah, Lady Day and Art Blakey just to name a few. He spent most weekends with his uncle Tex and his cousin Tex jr. listening to jazz,..playing checkers and trying to play the stand up bass that stood in the corner of the apartment.

The summers on the North Side of Atlantic City came alive with all kinds of music playing in the numerous black owned clubs, two of which LiL' Rossi Lee aka the Unknown Poet spent a lot of time in, absorbing a diverse range of music. One was the famous Club Harlem which his grand-pop had an interest in, and the Wonder Garden which his uncle Bobby Bell owned.

From the age of 13 to 25 he spent every summer night on the strip around Kentucky and Arctic Avenues in Atlantic City. He first shined shoes..then worked at Sapps Barbecue, until he eventually landed a job at the place he loved, Club Harlem washing dishes, waiting tables, taking pictures, to eventually being in the audience, backstage and sometimes even at the daytime rehearsals running errands for the artists and absorbing the musical vibration.

He says that he is blessed to have witnessed first hand some of those legendary artists of that era and that they've all left a great impression on him and have helped shape him as a,.. poet/vocalist/spoken word/jazz artist. He is forever grateful for this exposure,..for it surely has shaped him musically, poetically and personally. Queen has been rolling with the Poet for 36 years _We Blessed...~

Marianne Solivan

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 7 Jul 2013 00:00:00 -0400

POIGNANT EXPRESSIONS

Quickly becoming one of the most buzzed about jazz singers on the New York scene, Marianne Solivan does not remember an “ah-ha” moment that brought her to the music she has devoted herself to: “I don’t recall having a big moment that made me like jazz. I just dug it.”

It is that same simplicity of statement with its intrinsic honesty that characterizes Solivan’s style. The infallible swing of Ella, the daring of Betty Carter, the matter-of factness of Carmen McCrae…They can all be found in the voice of Marianne Solivan, whom trumpeter Jeremy Pelt has called “the modern-day paradigm to which all singers should aspire.”

It is no coincidence that the 2009 Jazzmobile Vocal Competition finalist has graced recital halls, jam sessions and club stages with such noted musicians as Roy Hargrove, Steve Lacy, Jeremy Pelt, Ray Gallon (Ron Carter, Lionel Hampton, T.S. Monk), Ugonna Ukegwo (Tom Harrell, Jacky Terrason) and Jane Monheit’s sidemen Neal Minor and Michael Kanan.

Born in Queens, New York, Solivan’s family lived in Venezuela and New Jersey before settling in Massachusetts, where she attended high school. Already an alto sax student, it was in secondary school that she began singing seriously, studying classical voice and appearing in musical theater productions. Upon graduating, she entered The Boston Conservatory with a concentration in musical theater. After her first year in college, Solivan took time off from school and drifted away from singing, not returning for three years. The urge to resume studying voice and go back to school coincided with her discovery of the voice that would become her greatest influence: Ella Fitzgerald.

She recalls, “I purchased the four oddest recordings for a jazz newcomer: one of those Ella Fitzgerald songbook compilations, a Dominique Eade recording, Nina Simone Sings The Blues and At the Village Vanguard: Betty Carter. Fitzgerald, especially, made a great impression on her: “There’s such tremendous hopefulness in all her music. No matter how sad the ballad, no matter how bad the break-up song, there’s always a silver lining. “

Solivan was singing pop when she entered Berklee College of Music, but quickly decided she wanted to learn this music called jazz. Earning a dual degree in Music Performance and Education, she taught music for a year before entering New England Conservatory and earning a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies.

Armed with two prestigious degrees and formidable talent, Solivan moved back to the city of her birth in 2007, placing in the Jazzmobile Vocal Competition, appearing as the only featured vocalist on clarinetist Darryl Harper’s The C3 project recording, Stories in Real Time, and touring France as the lead vocalist in an innovative staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Solivan is as likely to pop up at jazz institution Smalls Jazz Club with a full band as she is an intimate restaurant with only a piano accompanist. Regardless, jazz lovers and musicians alike are captivated by her sound and her style. Not all are able to articulate what attracts them as well as Pelt. Ultimately, they just dig it.

To visit Marrianne Solivan's website CLICK HERE

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 12:22:00 -0400

Pure Improvisation

Betty Carter was born Lillie Mae Jones in Flint, Michigan on May 16, 1929.

At a young age, she began the study of piano at the Detroit Conservatory of Music, and by the time she was a teenager she was already sitting in with Charlie Parker and other bop musicians when they performed in Detroit. After winning a local amateur contest, she turned professional at age 16, hooking up with the Lionel Hampton band by 1948, billed as Lorraine Carter. Hampton was the man who hung the nickname 'Betty Be-Bop' on her (a nickname she hated, as she found bebop limiting and wanted to do more than just scat), but it stuck, and ultimately she changed her stage name to Betty Carter. At the age of 21, she traveled to New York with the Hampton band and set up home there.

Betty spent the early 1950s as a singer with different groups. She did several shows at the Apollo, playing with such notables as Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie, toured with Miles Davis in 1958 and 1959, and spent much of the rest of the time on the outskirts of the jazz scene. Her refusal to adopt a more "mainstream" jazz style led to difficulty in finding bookings and making recordings. She made her first recordings in 1955 with a then-unknown piano player named Ray Bryant. The album, Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant, was little received, and her second set of recordings, with the Gigi Gryce band in 1956, languished unpublished until 1980.

By 1958, she was ready to record again, and another little known album, I Can't Help It, was the result, followed closely by a recording on the Peacock label (a Texas gospel label), Out There. She was developing a reputation as a fiercely independent woman (an attitude she developed based in part on her interactions with Gladys Hampton, Lionel's no-nonsense wife) and a devoted jazz singer, and her popularity among the inner jazz circles was high, but critical and popular acclaim eluded her. She was becoming well-known for her signature style that combined off-beat interpretations of classic tunes and wild scat-singing that never seemed to find the right beat. Even a move to the ABC label for her 1960 album The Modern Sound of Betty Carter did little to help that. She needed a break, and it came in the form of Ray Charles.

Ray Charles, on a recommendation from Miles Davis, agreed to take Betty on tour with him in the late 1950s. Enchanted by her voice and looking for a partner to record a series of duets, he enlisted Ms. Carter in a project that became Ray Charles and Betty Carter. The album, recorded in 1961, became an instant critical and popular smash; the single Baby It's Cold Outside gave Betty her first introduction into the popular music scene (indeed, at the 1997 White House ceremony where President Clinton presented Ms. Carter with a National Medal of Arts, the President said, "Hearing her sing 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' makes you want to curl up in front of the fire, even in summertime."). The sessions took on almost legendary status; after fifteen years in the business, fame had finally found Betty Carter.

And Betty Carter chose her family. She was raising two sons at the time, Myles and Kagle Redding, and chose to concentrate on that rather than capitalize on her recent success. Other than the 1963 Atco album Round Midnight (which showcased a different side of Betty that many critics strongly disliked), and a very short 1964 United Artists album called Inside Betty Carter, she made no recordings between 1961 and 1968. She still performed, doing club dates mostly around the New York area, but the name of Betty Carter eventually faded back into obscurity again. By 1969, though, Betty was ready to get back into music. The problem was - no one seemed to want her.

She started her road back with a live recording on the Roulette album. Finally - Betty Carter (an apt title) is considered one of her finest works, but it didn't garner much interest at the time. A second live recording, again titled 'Round Midnight, met with the same fate. Unable to drum up enough interest and tired of trying to satisfy the demands of recording companies, she came up with a solution - she founded her own company. Bet-Car was founded in 1971, and would be the soul source of her recordings until she signed with Verve in 1988.

The Bet-Car years produced some of Betty's finest albums - The Betty Carter Album, Betty Carter (later rereleased as At the Village Vanguard), Now It's My Turn, and I Didn't Know What Time it Was - culminating in the December 1979 recordings that became The Audience with Betty Carter, called by some the finest vocal jazz recording ever made. Performances at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1977 and 1978 helped solidify Betty's place in the jazz world, not only as a major vocal talent but also as a discoverer of new talent (including through the years such names as John Hicks, Mulgrew Miller, Cyrus Chestnut, Mark Shim, Dave Holland, Stephen Scott and Kenny Washington).
Her Bet-Car recordings continued into the 1980s with Whatever Happened to Love? and a landmark session with fellow jazz legend Carmen McRae recorded live at a series of 1987 San Francisco dates. By 1988, finally someone took notice of her talents: Verve, on the lookout for under-appreciated jazz singers such as Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn, signed Ms. Carter to a contract and immediately set about rereleasing the majority of her old material.

In 1988, she burst back on to the popular jazz scene with Look What I Got, the album that earned her only Grammy award. The next decade produced several more outstanding recordings that featured a more mature sound - not reined in by any means, but perhaps softer, Betty Balladeer instead of Betty Be-Bop. She garnered Grammy nominations for 1990's Droppin' Things and 1992's It's Not About the Melody. She continued to feature young, up-and-coming musicians on most of her albums, a practice broken only on the 1994 album Feed the Fire, considered by some to be her finest work since Audience. Betty remained active in developing new musicians through the Jazz Ahead program, founded in 1993, that brought unknown jazz musicians to New York to work with her. She performed at the White House in 1994, and was a major headliner at Verve's 50th anniverary celebration in Carnegie Hall. She continued to stay active with her teaching right up until her death from pancreatic cancer on September 26, 1998.

With Betty Carter gone, the jazz world has been left a gaping hole that no one artist could ever hope to fill. While other female (and male) jazz singers will come along, it's doubtful that anyone will be able to match Betty's combination of singing talent, compositional ideas, and willingness to teach. It's up to those of us who remain to ensure that her legacy grows and that the generations that ensue will have the pleasure- no, the honor - of sitting home, late at night, and drifting off into Betty Carter's world.

Jazz is about the immediacy of the creative process. No other music allows so much personal freedom and no singer takes advantage of it like Betty Carter.

To listen to Betty Carter on SOJP CLICK HERE!

MULGREW MILLER "UNPLUGGED"

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Thu, 30 May 2013 11:00:00 -0400

Conversation with MULGREW MILLER

This week on Spotlight On Jazz and Poetry Mulgrew Miller takes the time, from his busy schedule, to talk about his craft with your host Bigtrigger.Mulgrew Miller is an American jazz pianist born in 1955 in Greenwood, Mississippi. In a childhood filled with early musical experiences and constant meddling in jazz piano, Miller is said to have set his mind definitely to becoming a jazz pianist after hearing a record by Oscar Peterson (a first for Mulgrew). “It was a life changing event. I knew right then that I would be a jazz pianist”. Mulgrew did indeed become a jazz pianist, and has adopted more from Peterson than his profession. Much of Mulgrew's playing has the same technical prowess so often connected with Peterson. Currently, Mulgrew maintains a working trio with Derrick Hodge on bass, and Karriem Riggins on drums. With this trio he has released two albums to date (both on the label Max Jazz Records): Live At Yoshi's Vol. 1 (2004), Live At Yoshi's Vol. 2 (2005).

Mr. Miller, has been hired as the new director of the jazz studies program at William Paterson University, in Wayne, N.J.

On May 20, 2006, Miller was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Performing Arts at Lafayette College's 171st Commencement

Pianist Extraordinaire MULGREW MILLER

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:30:00 -0400

Mulgrew Miller was born on August 13, 1955 in Greenwood, Mississippi He began his career as member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.
Miller was picking out melodies on the piano by ear at 6, taking lessons at 8 and going on gigs with his older brother by 10. As a teen, he soaked up every kind of music available in his small Southern hometown - blues, country & western, gospel, R & B, classical - but not until he heard his first jazz record by Oscar Peterson did he find a focus for his passion. “I was blown away,” he recalls. “It was a life changing event. I knew right then that I would be a jazz pianist.”

So in a world where some of the brightest talents burn out early, and some of the most gifted musicians get lost in the jazz life, Miller chose the “easy does it” approach at age 15, focusing on careful attention to craft, impeccable choices in the musicians to surround himself with, and a balanced life that included a stable home and vegetarian lifestyle. He found mentors like James Williams and Donald Brown at Memphis State University who taught him to listen to the greats, saxophonist Bill Easley who got him his first professional gig, and Ray Charles sideman Rudolph Johnson who introduced him to Eastern spirituality. These influences, combined with the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and the lessons of the civil rights movement integral to his Greenwood, Mississippi, childhood, shaped him as both a person and an artist.

In a childhood filled with early musical experiences, he was mostly playing gospel music in his church and R&B and blues at dances. Mulgrew was constantly meddling in jazz piano, and established a trio in high school that would play cocktail parties. Miller admits that they didn't really know what they were doing and were merely "approaching jazz". Miller is said to have set his mind definitely to becoming a jazz pianist after seeing Oscar Peterson (a first for Mulgrew) on television. Much of Mulgrew's playing has the same technical prowess so often connected with Peterson. Currently, Mulgrew maintains a working trio with Ivan Taylor on bass, and Rodney Green on drums. He has released four albums to date with Derrick Hodge (bass) and Karriem Riggins (drums) (both on the label Max Jazz Records): Live At Yoshi's Vol. 1 (2004), Live At Yoshi's Vol. 2 (2005), Live At The Kennedy Center Vol. 1 (2006), and Live At The Kennedy Center Vol. 2 (2007).
On May 20, 2006, Miller was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Performing Arts at Lafayette College's 171st Commencement Exercises.

Miller lived in Easton, Pennsylvania with his wife Tanya and daughter Lelani. In 2006 he was appointed the Director of Jazz Studies at William Paterson University. He was the Artist in Residence at Lafayette College for 2008-2009.

And so he has worked steadily as a musician, including three years with Woody Shaw’s Quintet, three with the Mercer Ellington Orchestra and over six years with the Tony Williams Quintet. He’s featured on over 500 recordings total and has composed nonstop. In 1985 Miller made his first recording as a leader for producer Orrin Keepnews’ former label, Landmark, and later recorded on the RCA Novus label. He tours throughout the world and in 1997, was invited to tour Japan with an assembly of some of the most prestigious names in jazz piano – a group of ten pianists called “100 Gold Fingers” including Tommy Flanagan, Ray Bryant and Kenny Barron.

Miller was also a member of the Contemporary Piano Ensemble, a unique group consisting of four pianists performing simultaneously on four grand pianos with a rhythm section. Other innovative projects include his duos with Danish jazz bassist, Neils Henning Orsted Pederson, his commission to compose a special work for the Dayton Dance Company and his student workshops.

At age 15, it seemed Miller knew that he needed to pace himself for the long, illustrious career ahead of him.

Mulgrew Miller crossed over on May 29, 2013

LITTLE JIMMY SCOTT

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

EVENING IN PARADISE

The life of Jimmy Scott is not one of meteoric stardom but a journey that has taken nearly seventy years to find its much deserved success.

James Victor Scott, one of ten children, was born in Cleveland, Ohio on July 17, 1925. He's known for his high haunting soprano voice & poignant balladeering. His up & down recording career, started in the early 1950's, saw a resurgence in the 1990's when he was signed to Sire Records and received a Grammy nomination after a long period of commercial inactivity. Soon after coming out of retirement, he was seen on stages around the world, performing magical & heart breaking interpretations of old torch songs, Broadway standards and even a smattering of choice modern rock tunes done with generally sparse jazz arrangements.

Almost strangled by the umbilical cord at birth, then orphaned as a boy in depression era Cleveland, the odds against Jimmy Scott ever suceeding were further stacked by an abnormal genetic pituitary hormonal defect known as "Kallman's Syndrome" which accounts for his somewhat effeminate looks & unnaturally high singing voice.

Finding solace onstage, he sang in combos of the post war R&B era, notably as a featured singer with band leader Lionel Hampton, with whom he made his recorded debut in 1950(although his name did not appear on the label). He was finally signed to a steady record deal when he was almost 30, when Herman Lubinsky of Newark's Savoy Records offered Cleveland's finest balladeer a shot circa 1954. Lubinsky, whose label was a great repository of jazz & blues recordings, was also a notorious shyster. In David Ritz's 2002 bio of Jimmy Scott "Faith In Time", Seymour Stein of Sire Records recalls past colleagues at the time calling Savoy Record's Newark HQ the "Slave Barracks". Savoy recorded some well received Little Jimmy Scott sides, but due to Lubinsky's malfeasance, Scott went mostly uncompensated. As time wore on, he grew discontent, started retreating into booze and left the label's fold by the beginning of the 1960's.

Over the years the Lubinsky/Savoy contract would stifle Scott in numerous ways, particularly when he tried to break free and record for Ray Charles' Tangerine label in the early 1960's and another time with Atlantic in the late 1960's. Lubinsky would battle to have the records withdrawn, keeping Scott's music from ever hitting the streets en masse.

1969's attempt at a comeback LP "The Source" was produced by Joel Dorn for Atlantic, featuring backing from a hot group of players including David Fathead Newman on tenor sax, Eric Gale on guitar and Ron Carter on bass...The record was withdrawn due to lawsuit after the first pressing, for a longtme making it a rare and often bootleged masterpiece.

Jimmy's numerous shots at stardom were so hampered by the fiscal mismanagement & bad business dealings, it lead him to frustration, failed relationships, drinking and drugging, and a career ending downward spiral that took him away from the limelight.

His talent was never in doubt, but his successes were measured at best.

A favorite of performers ranging from Billie Holiday & Dinah Washington, to Frankie Valli, Stevie Wonder, and John Lennon, all whom knew of and expressed respect of his work. Said Quincy Jones once,'Jimmy would tear my heart out every night with his soul-penetrating style"...

Even Madonna has said "Jimmy Scott is the only singer who makes me cry,"

Strangely enough, it appears death that actually the catalyst that brought Scott's career back to life...

By the late 70's and early 80's some of his only gigs were occasional charity appearances at senior citizen homes. Scott's day jobs at Bob's Big Boy and in a Cleveland Sheraton hotel gave him a mindset that was set far from keeping abreast of the changing tastes of a fickle record buying public at the tail end of the 20th century.

In 1985, at age 60, he returned to the eastern seaboard, and for the first time in over a decade started working small clubs in New York and Harlem, perhaps getting occasional nostalgic write ups in the NY Times or Village Voice. Scott's subsequent shift back into the public eye ironically began to truly gather momentum at The Riverside Funeral Home on St.Patrick's Day 1991. The sad/happy occasion was legendary rock n roll songwriter and old friend Doc Pomus' funeral.

Jimmy had met Pomus back in the 40's, and they had stayed in touch. In fact, in 1987 Doc even wrote a letter to trade publication Billboard extolling Scott's virtues, decrying the hard times he was going through, and warning the record industry not to sleep on a chance to catch the long overdue second coming of Little Jimmy Scott.

Now a few years later, Scott sat Shiva and was asked by Doc's family to perform "Someone To Watch Over Me" at the funeral, along with backing from fellow old timers Dr. John on piano and Fathead Newman on sax. Scott arrived early and sat unasumedly with hands folded in the back with his 4th wife Earlene. After the colorful eulogies, Jimmy's haunting voice over the tinkling keys stunned the room, with many so far back they could barely see his tiny head over the crowd. The room was filled with dozens of music biz luminaries, like Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, and the aforementioned Seymour Stein of Sire who felt it was almost his spiritual duty to Doc to simply offer Scott a dignified deal.

Jimmy later told a reporter in 2000 of the bittersweet good fortune coming from his friend's death, " The next day, this cat from Warners comes over with a contract. It was like Doc's hand reaching out from the grave."

He went on to many new career highights ranging from appearing in David Lynch's Twin Peaks & having sold out shows across the US & Europe to performing onstage at Bill Clinton's inaugural ball gala in DC.

Still Scott copes with the fact that his type of fame is fleeting, and has duly noted this phenomena when he sang onstage in the 1990's with the Grateful Dead to a crowd of thousands in his hometown of Cleveland, where the local daily paper referred to him as an "unknown female singer".

Since the quirky career kickstart given to Scott from Pomus' funeral, he has continued touring, recorded some 8 or so albums on half dozn labels, and added a 5th wife to his bio as well. Now with his aged infirmities creeping in, Scott is restricted to moving around onstage via wheelchair...

Music continues to be his life into his eighties, once telling ajournalist “I love performing. You live with reality every day. You can’t miss it. We can try to avoid a lot of trials in life, but it’s better to overcome than avoid. That’s what music has been for me. It’s been my opportunity to overcome.”
"All I can do is give what I really feel."
"It'll work out in the end. You gotta believe" Jimmy Scott

To Visit JIMMY SCOTT'S website CLICK HERE

RAY BROWN

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sat, 11 May 2013 00:22:00 -0400

QUIET AUTHORITY

Best known as a contributing member of the bebop jazz movement and a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio, jazz bassist Ray Brown performed with jazz giants from Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker to his wife Ella Fitzgerald. Despite Fitzgerald’s short-lived marriage to Brown (1947-1953), she remained a lifelong friend and musical associate. A disciple of the 1940s Oscar Pettiford school of jazz bass, Brown developed an individual style renown for its tastefully executed rhythmic lines within the context of ensemble accompaniment. His talent reflects such breadth and diversity that he was the most cited musician in the first edition of the Penguin Guide to Recorded Jazz (1992). Unlike many of the founders of bebop bass, Brown still performed and earned a successful living as a studio musician, record producer, and nightclub owner.

Raymond Matthews Brown was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 13, 1926. He took piano lessons at age eight and gained knowledge of the keyboard through memorizing the recordings of Fats Waller. A member of the high school orchestra, he soon found himself overwhelmed by the number of pianists among his classmates. "There must have been 14 piano players in it. And 12 of them were chicks who could read anything on sight," explained Brown in Jazz Masters of the Forties. In the book Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing, Brown revealed the main reason for ending his study of piano: "I just couldn’t find my way on it. It just didn’t give me what I wanted." Soon afterward, Brown, unable to afford a trombone, switched to bass, an instrument provided by the school’s music department.

Brown’s new musical role model emerged in Duke Ellington’s innovative bassist, Jimmy Blanton. As he told Jack Tracey in Down Beat, "I just began digging into Blanton because I saw he had it covered—there was nobody else. There he was, right in the middle of all those fabulous records the Ellington band was making at the time, and I didn’t see any need to listen to anybody else." As a teenager Brown played local engagements. Despite offers by bandleaders, he followed his mother’s advice and finished high school before performing on the road with regional territory bands. After graduating in 1944, he performed an eight-month stint in Jimmy Hinsley’s band. Around this time, Brown fell under the influence of bassists Leroy "Slam" Stewart and Oscar Pettiford, a prime mover of a modern jazz bass approach. He next joined the territory band of Snookum Russell. Eight months later, while on the road with Russell, Brown followed the suggestion of fellow band members and moved to New York City.

In 1945 Brown arrived in New York City, and during his first night visited Fifty-Second Street—"Swing Street," a mob-controlled thoroughfare lined with various jazz clubs. That evening he encountered pianist Hank Jones, a musical associate, who introduced him to Dizzy Gillespie. That same evening, Gillespie, prompted by Jones’ recommendation, hired Brown without an audition. Attending the band’s rehearsal the next day, Brown—a 19-year-old musician still largely unfamiliar with many of bebop’s innovators—discovered that his fellow band members were Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. "If I had known those guys any better I would have probably never gone to the rehearsal," admitted Brown in Jazz Journal International. "The only guy I knew something about was Dizzy because some of his records had filtered down through the south where I’d been playing with a territory band." The group’s leader, however, immediately recognized the talent of his young bassist. As Gillespie commented, in his memoir To Be or Not to Bop, "Ray Brown, on bass, played the strongest, most fluid and imaginative bass lines in modern jazz at the time, with the exception of Oscar Pettiford." Shortly afterward, Gillespie added Detroit-born vibraphonist Milt Jackson. In Jazz Masters of the Forties, Brown recounted his early years with Jackson: "We were inseparable. They called us twins."

In 1945 Brown appeared with Gillepsie at Billy Berg’s night club in Hollywood, California, an engagement which, with the exception of a small coterie of bebop followers, failed to generate a favorable response from west coast listeners. In Gillespie’s memoir To Be or Not to Bop, Brown summarized the band’s Hollywood stint: "The music wasn’t received well at all. They didn’t know what we were playing; they didn’t understand it." During the winter of 1946, Gillespie returned to New York and opened at Clark Monroe’s Spotlite on 52nd Street with a band consisting of Brown, Milt Jackson, Stan Levey, Al Haig, and alto saxophonist Sonny Stitt. In To Be or Not to Bop, Brown modestly described his role in the sextet, "I was the least competent guy in the group. And they made something out of me." In May of 1946, the sextet recorded for the Musicraft label, cutting the sides such as "One Bass Hit"—featuring Brown’s bass talents—and "Oop Bop Sh’ Bam,’ and "That’s Earl Brother." On Feb 5, 1946, Brown took part in one of Charlie Parker’s sessions for the Dial label, recording such numbers as "Diggin’ Diz."

In 1946 Gillespie formed his second big band, using the same six-member line-up. On February 22, 1946, Brown appeared with Gillespie’s big band for a RCA/Victor session organized by pianist and jazz critic Leonard Feather. As Feather wrote in his work Inside Jazz, "Victor wanted an all-star group featuring some of the Esquire winners, so we used J.C. Heard on drums and Don Byas on tenor, along with Dizzy’s own men—Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, and Al Haig—and the new guitarist from Cleveland, Bill de Arango." The date produced the numbers "52nd Street Theme," "Night in Tunisia," "OI’Man Rebop," and "Anthropology." Between May and July of 1946, Brown appeared on such Gillespie recordings as "Our Delight," "Things to Come," and "Rays Idea" (co-written with Gil Fuller). In November of the same year, he cut the classic Gillespie side "Emanon."

In 1947 Gillespie assembled a smaller group inside his big band which included Brown, Milt Jackson, pianist John Lewis and drummer Kenny Clarke. As Jackson told Whitney Baillett, in American Musicians II, "We’d play and let the band have a rest. I guess it was Dizzy’s idea." Attending an August 1947 Gillespie big band session Brown’s bass is heard on such numbers as "Ow!," "Oop-Pop-A-Da," and John Lewis’ "Two Bass Hit" which Brown’s bass is heard driving the band and, at the composition’s close, soloing with force and a controlled sense of melody. On December 10, 1947, Brown married vocalist Ella Fitzgerald in Ohio and moved into a residence on Ditmars Boulevard in the East Elmhurst section of Queens, New York. Soon afterward, the couple adopted a son, Ray Jr.

After leaving Gillespie’s band in 1947, Brown and performed with Fitzgerald on Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic tours and various record dates. "When I left Dizzy," commented Brown in Ella Fitzgerald, "the band was getting ready to go to Europe, and I couldn’t. I’d just gotten married to Ella Fitzgerald. At that time I was in a bit of a curl between her and wanting to be with her as well. She wanted me to travel with her trio; she had Hank Jones playing piano. So I finally decided I was going to stay in New York." During a concert series in September 1949, Brown performed when Canadian-born pianist Oscar Peterson made his debut with the tour (according to Brown, he had already performed with Peterson at informal Canadian jam sessions). In 1950 Brown and Peterson performed as a duo, and for the next several years, were also billed on various tours.

In 1950 Brown recorded with Charlie Parker and, between 1950 and 1952, appeared with the Milt Jackson Quartet. The quartet’s pianist John Lewis recounted in The Great Jazz Pianists, "We were all friends and would play together when Dizzy’s band wasn’t working." At another Parker session in August 1951, Brown found himself in the company of such sidemen as trumpeter Red Rodney, John Lewis, and drummer Kenny Clarke. Together they backed Parker on sides which included "Swedish Schnapps," "Si Si," "Back Home Blues," and "Lover Man." A few months later, Brown appeared with the Milt Jackson Quartet, and on March 25, 1952 Brown attended a Charlie Parker big band recording session in Hollywood, California.

In 1952 Brown and guitarist Irving Ashby became the founding members of the Oscar Peterson Trio. Ashby’s replacement, Barney Kessel, performed with the trio a year before Peterson recruited guitarist Herb Ellis who, along with Brown on bass, formed one of the most famed jazz trios of the 1950s. "Herb and I rehearsed all the time," stated Brown in Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing. "For a trio that didn’t have any drums, we had it all. Herb and I roomed together and we played everyday. Not just the gig. We played golf in the morning and guitar and bass in the afternoon, and then we would shower, take a nap, go to dinner, and go to the gig. We had it all." Under Peterson’s leadership, Brown and Ellis underwent a challenging musical regimen. In Jazz Journal International, Brown revealed his admiration for Peterson’s reputation as a difficult task master: "If you are not intimidated by absolute professionalism, then you have no problem. Sure he’ll throw you a curve from time to time by calling unscheduled numbers or unexpectedly doubling the tempos, but if you’re not good enough to handle that, you shouldn’t be with Oscar anyway."

By 1953 Brown and Fitzgerald ended their marriage. As Stuart Nicholson noted his book Ella Fitzgerald, "Ray remained adamant that he would pursue his career with Oscar Peterson, and the couple had begun to see less and less of each other. Finally, they decided to bring their marriage to and end and filed for a ‘quickie’ divorce." The divorce was finalized on August 28, 1953 in Juarez, Mexico. Fitzgerald maintained custody of Ray Jr., yet she and Brown remained friends. In November 1953 they, along with Oscar Peterson, appeared at a concert in Japan.

In 1958 Peterson replaced Ellis with drummer Gene Gammage, who stayed with the trio a few months until Peterson recruited drummer Edmund Thigpen. Fortunately, Brown was able to stay with the trio and earn a comfortable living. However, by the early 1960s, the group also proved demanding in its performance schedule. As Brown explained in Jazz Journal International, "Some of the tours were really punishing—we’d come to Europe and do 62 one-nighters in 65 days." After his 15-year membership in the Oscar Peterson Trio, Brown left the group in 1965, and settled in Hollywood, where he worked in the areas of publishing, management, and record production. In 1974 he co-founded the L.A. Four with saxophonist Bud Shank, Brazilian guitarist Luarindo Almeida, and drummer Shelly Manne (later replaced by Jeff Hamilton). One of Brown’s exemplary studio dates emerged in the 1974 album Dizzy Gillespie Big 4.

By 1976 Brown appeared four days a week on the Merv Griffin Show. A year later, after two decades of appearing as a sideman on the Contemporary label, Brown recorded the solo effort Something for Lester, placing him in the company of pianist Cedar Walton and drummer Elvin Jones. In Down Beat Zan Stewart gave the album the magazine’s highest rating (five stars), and commented, "Walton and Jones are apropos partnersin sound for the superlative bassist… Ray’s imparts the line to ‘Georgia’—what glorious tone he possesses! It continually overwhelms the listener, as does his superb intonation, for Brown is always at the center of each note."

In a 1980 Jazz Journal International interview, Brown told Mike Hennessey, "I’m very fortunate. I’m still able to travel and play various countries and still be liked by the public. I’m able to play what I like to play and as long as people want to listen, that’s fine with me." During the 1980s, Brown recorded solo albums for the Concord label as well as releases by the L.A. Four, and numerous guest sessions with pianist Gene Harris. Since his first appearance on Telarc Records in 1989, his albums for the company include the 1994 trio LP (with pianist Benny Green and drummer Jeff Hamilton) Bass Face, Live at Kuumbwa, the 1995 work Seven Steps to Heaven (with Green and drummer Greg Hutchinson), and the 1997 release Super Bass. Brown still performs both as a leader and accompanist at festivals and concert dates. "During the past decades Brown’s sound and skill have remained undimmed, "wrote Thomas Owens, in his 1995 book Bebop: The Music and Its Players. "He is an agile, inventive, and often humorous soloist. His arco [bow] technique is excellent, though he seldom reveals it. But he shines most brilliantly as an accompanist. Examples of his beautiful lines are legion." Interviewed in The Guitar Player Book, Herb Ellis also lauded the talents of his former music partner: "[Ray Brown] is in a class all by himself. There is no other bassist in the world for me, and a lot of players feel the same way. On most instruments, when you get to the top echelon it breaks down to personal taste, but I tell you, there are a lot of guys on his tail, but Ray has it all locked up."

Ray did a great deal to revive the careers of Ernestine Anderson and Gene Harris, and recorded extensively for Pablo and Concord. The Ray Brown Trio featured pianists Gene Harris, Benny Green, and Geoff Keezer, along with drummers Jeff Hamilton and Greg Hutchison, and recorded for Concord and Telarc. He continued touring up until crossed over in his sleep while napping before a show in Indianapolis on July 2, 2002. His last batch of sessions, working as a trio with pianist Monty Alexander and guitarist Russell Malone, were released that fall.

Jimmie & Lutonya Highsmith

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:17:00 -0400

INSEPARABLE

This husband and wife team have a devotion for the arts that definitely shines through. They not only share a deep love for one another, but their passion is evident musically and poetically. This marriage of hearts and artistry is truly a gift.

Jimmie Tjari Highsmith, Jr., was born September 18,1967 in the “Flower City” Rochester NY, the birthplace of Jazz luminaries Cab Calloway, PeeWee Ellis, Chuck Mangione and many others. James, or as his friends call him “Jimmie” is a seasoned Jazz musician who began his musical incipiency at the mere age of 7. Jimmie began studying piano, which created the foundations for his song writing in his later years. A music teacher introduced him to the harmonious sound of the saxophone, and the rest shall we say is history. Recognizing Jimmies potential, he was guided to study music at the Hochstein School of Music where he honed his ability to musically shine and stand out from his peers. Jimmie brought that same focus and thirst for music to the High School for Performing Arts where he walked the halls with and befriended other standouts like Motion Picture Actor/TV Star Scott “Taye” Diggs, R&B Singer Charlene “Tweet” Keys and Opera Diva Regina Zona. At School of the Arts, Jimmie was exposed to a musically competitive environment of band competitions, jazz combo performances, composition classes and other competitive solo scenarios. In Jimmies senior year, he auditioned for and was accepted into the prestigious Eastman School of Music, where he played Baritone sax in the Eastman School of Music Jazz Ensemble.

After graduating from High School, Jimmie enlisted in the US Air Force. While stationed in New Jersey, Jimmie found himself in the ideal location to access the New York and Philadelphia jazz scenes. During this time, he formed a jazz band consisting of musicians from both the US Air Force and Army. The band played at many military events and performed in various countries as part of the entertainment for the International USO Tour and Tops in Blue. In 1992 Jimmie returned to Rochester where he launched his professional music career. Jimmie has formed many bands, which have been recognized as top regional jazz bands playing in big music festivals and clubs. He has shared the stage with multiple Grammy Award winners, including Alicia Keys and Wynton Marsalis. His sax work represents some of the best in the Smooth Jazz and Contemporary Jazz Genre. Jimmie has also performed with many notables such as: Joseph Wooten, Chris Beard, Paul Boutte, Joe Beard, Carl Thomas, Grey Mayfield, Wycliffe Gordon, Eric Reed, Johnny O’Neal and Yolanda Adams. He and his band have also opened for many big named artist, such as: Natalie Cole, Little Richard, Najee, "Papa John" DeFrancesco, Robert Cray Blues Band, Joyce Cooling, Montell Jordan, Shameika Copeland, Neville Brothers, Me'chelle Ndegeocello, Jodie Watley, Chris Bodie, Temptations and The Isley Brothers.

To visit Jimmie Highsmith's website CLICK HERE!

Lutonya Rachel Highsmith, a Rochester, New York, was born on August 20, 1969. Lu, as she is affectionately known, has published essays, news articles and poems over the past twenty years. No matter which form she has chosen to exhibit her talents, each has been reflective of her passion for spirituality, sensuality, and social consciousness.

She has performed at festivals, coffee houses, nursing homes, schools, churches, art galleries, clubs and community events throughout Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, Atlanta and Toronto.

Highsmith has been featured in the Rochester-based newspaper, Minority Reporter; the Buffalo-based newspaper, Challenger and as a “Woman to Watch” in The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

In September 2008, Lu published her much-anticipated debut book of poetry “Vicissitudes” through her company, Lucreations Publishing. Her second book of poetry “Ascension into Love” was released in August, 2010. She is also an active member of the artist-advocacy group CSWA (Culture Starts With Art!) and currently co-hosts a bi-weekly poetry night called “Flowetic Rhythms” at Gallery One Fine Arts in Rochester, NY.

In October, 2012, she joined forces with her Grammy-nominated musician/composer husband, Jimmie Highsmith Jr. on her first CD entitled, “Ascension”, produced by Variance Records.

Lu has recently embarked on becoming the designated Slam Master in Rochester, NY by forming Rochester’s first Adult Slam Team called "Roc Bottom Poets", traveling to Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany; as well as hosting Poetry Slams in Rochester.

To Purchase Lu Highsmith's books please CLICK HERE!

To Purchase Lu Highsmith's CD please CLICK HERE!

Wildflower

spotlightonjazzandpoetry@gmail.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:55:00 -0400

Jonvee

click name above to listen to the show

Singer, Poetess, Actress and Photographer Demetra Jonvere Artis, better known in the poetry world as Jonvee, was born May 17, 1958 in Washington DC to Margaret E Artis and Richard Blandon a well known Doo Wop singer and recording artist. Jonvee, raised by her Mom and Grandparents was always a gifted child especially with drawing. She grew up singing in her gospel choir and would spend hours sitting in her window sill writing short stories. She was only thirteen when she entered an art contest and people showed up at her door wanting her to attend their school of arts, which at the time her family just could not afford. She attended Johnson Jr. High School in S.E. Washington, DC where she excelled in singing and running track. She even acted in a couple of plays for drama class. Where she excelled in extracurriculars she failed in classwork. Some of her teachers considered her to be to slow.

For as long as she could remember she had heard this and it cut deep inside her mentally. No matter how hard she tried she just could not keep up so she gave up. She dropped out of school, got married and had her first child all at the age of seventeen. Life was hard with her husband money was tight and the family grew. She tried to pursue other careers such as modeling for magazines such as Sears and JC Penny’s but there were many road blocks and it wasn’t easy, so she decided to stay put and be a stay at home mom only taking jobs when things got tight. She taught her children to read and write and realized that if she could teach her children to read, write and recite poetry all before they started school how slow could she be. So when her youngest child was in high school she told him that she would graduate before he did. That she did with very high grade point averages in history and science. On an academic roll she attended Strartford Career Institute for Interior Decorating and later went on to Sheffield School of interior Design where she received her Certificate of Graduation from both schools.

In 2007 Jonvee went back to school classes attending P.G. College in Maryland. She is an amateur photographer and is now thinking of taking those photography classes. Jonvee turned fifty in 2008 and does not have any plans of slowing down. She says Life is just beginning and it’s never too late to try. She is still singing and recording her poetry and has done poetry readings for UNESSCO Center for Peace Arts Festival and other poetry readings for women’s church groups etc.

She has many offers on the table right now but decided to get her recording out first. She’s Looking forward to performing her works in the future. Not bad for a girl that they say was to slow. Now Jonvee is taking private photos for couples and working with other artist promoting their work. Recording her poetry has been a long time coming with the upcoming release “Moma’s Wildflower” and another due out in the summer of 2013.

When they say better late then never this sure does apply to Jonvee

To visit Jonvee on CD Baby CLICK HERE

To Visit Jonvee on Facebook CLICK HERE