LINER NOTES

"Soulful Beginnings" SOJP's 4th Anniversary Program

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:18:35 PST

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

Early Years

Wynton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, to Ellis and Dolores Marsalis, the second of six sons. At an early age he exhibited a superior aptitude for music and a desire to participate in American culture. At age eight Wynton performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by legendary banjoist Danny Barker, and at 14 he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school Wynton performed with the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, various jazz bands and with the popular local funk band, the Creators.

At age 17 Wynton became the youngest musician ever to be admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center. Despite his youth, he was awarded the school’s prestigious Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Wynton moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979. When he began to pick up gigs around town, the grapevine began to buzz. In 1980 Wynton seized the opportunity to join the Jazz Messengers to study under master drummer and bandleader Art Blakey. It was from Blakey that Wynton acquired his concept for bandleading and for bringing intensity to each and every performance. In the years to follow Wynton performed with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and countless other jazz legends.

Wynton assembled his own band in 1981 and hit the road, performing over 120 concerts every year for 15 consecutive years. With the power of his superior musicianship, the infectious sound of his swinging bands and an exhaustive series of performances and music workshops, Marsalis rekindled widespread interest in jazz throughout the world. Wynton embraced the jazz lineage to garner recognition for the older generation of overlooked jazz musicians and prompted the re-issue of jazz catalog by record companies worldwide. He also inspired a renaissance that attracted a new generation of fine young talent to jazz. A look at the more distinguished jazz musicians of today reveals numerous students of Marsalis’ workshops: James Carter, Christian McBride, Roy Hargrove, Harry Connick Jr., Nicholas Payton, Eric Reed and Eric Lewis, to name a few.

Classical Career

Wynton’s love of the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and others drove him to pursue a career in classical music as well. He recorded the Haydn, Hummel and Leopold Mozart trumpet concertos at age 20. His debut recording received glorious reviews and won the Grammy Award® for “Best Classical Soloist with an Orchestra.” Marsalis went on to record 10 additional classical records, all to critical acclaim. Wynton performed with leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, The Cleveland Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and London’s Royal Philharmonic, working with an eminent group of conductors including: Leppard, Dutoit, Maazel, Slatkin, Salonen and Tilson-Thomas. Famed classical trumpeter Maurice André praised Wynton as “potentially the greatest trumpeter of all time.”

Record Production

To date Wynton has produced over 70 records which have sold over seven million copies worldwide including three Gold Records. His recordings consistently incorporate a heavy emphasis on the blues, an inclusive approach to all forms of jazz from New Orleans to modern jazz, persistent use of swing as the primary rhythm, an embrace of the American popular song, individual and collective improvisation, and a panoramic vision of compositional styles from dittys to dynamic call and response patterns (both within the rhythm section and between the rhythm section and horn players). Always swinging, Marsalis blows his trumpet with a clear tone and a unique, virtuosic style derived from an encyclopedic range of trumpet techniques.

The Composer

Wynton Marsalis is a prolific and inventive composer. The dance community embraced Wynton’s inventiveness by awarding him with commissions to create new music for Garth Fagan (Citi Movement-Griot New York), Peter Martins at the New York City Ballet (Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements and Them Twos), Twyla Tharp with the American Ballet Theatre (Jump Start), Judith Jamison at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (Sweet Release and Here…Now), and Savion Glover (Petite Suite and Spaces). Marsalis collaborated with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in 1995 to compose the string quartet At The Octoroon Balls, and again in 1998 to create a response to Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale with his composition A Fiddler’s Tale. With his collection of standards arrangements, Wynton reconnected audiences with the beauty of the American popular song (Standard Time Volumes I-VI). He re-introduced the joy in New Orleans jazz with his recording The Majesty Of The Blues. He extended the jazz musician’s interplay with the blues in Levee Low Moan, Thick In The South and other blues recordings. With Citi Movement, In This House On This Morning and Blood On The Fields, Wynton invented a fresh conception for extended form compositions. His inventive interplay with melody, harmony and rhythm, along with his lyrical voicing and tonal coloring assert new possibilities for the jazz ensemble. In his dramatic oratorio Blood On The Fields, Wynton draws upon the blues, work songs, chants, call and response, spirituals, New Orleans jazz, Ellingtonesque orchestral arrangements and Afro-Caribbean rhythms; and he uses Greek chorus-style recitations to move the work along. The New York Times Magazine said the work “marked the symbolic moment when the full heritage of the line, Ellington through Mingus, was extended into the present.” The San Francisco Examiner stated, “Marsalis’ orchestral arrangements are magnificent. Duke Ellington’s shadings and themes come and go but Marsalis’ free use of dissonance, counter rhythms and polyphonics is way ahead of Ellington’s mid-century era.” Wynton extended his achievements in Blood On The Fields with All Rise, an epic composition for big band, gospel choir, and symphony orchestra - a classic work of high art - which was performed by the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Kurt Masur along with the Morgan State University Choir and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (December 1999). Marsalis collaborated with Ghanaian master drummer Yacub Addy to create Congo Square, a groundbreaking composition combining elegant harmonies from America’s jazz tradition with fundamental rituals in African percussion and vocals (2006). For the anniversary of the Abyssinian Baptist Church’s 200th year of service, Marsalis blended Baptist church choir cadences with blues accents and big band swing rhythms to compose Abyssinian 200: A Celebration, which was performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Abyssinian’s 100 voice choir before packed houses in New York City (May 2008). In the fall of 2009 the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra premiered Marsalis’ composition Blues Symphony. By infusing blues and ragtime rhythms with symphonic orchestrations Wynton creates a fresh type of enjoyment of classical repertoire. Employing complex layers of collective improvisation, Marsalis further expanded his repertoire for symphony orchestra with Swing Symphony, premiered by the renowned Berlin Philharmonic in June 2010, creating new possibilities for audiences to experience a symphony orchestra swing. The New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Barbican have all signed on to perform Swing Symphony. Marsalis’ rich and expansive body of music for the ages places him among the world’s most significant composers.

Television and Radio

In the fall of 1995 Wynton launched two major broadcast events. In October PBS premiered Marsalis On Music, an educational television series on jazz and classical music. The series was written and hosted by Marsalis and was enjoyed by millions of parents and children. Writers distinguished Marsalis On Music with comparisons to Leonard Bernstein’s celebrated Young People’s Concerts of the 50s and 60s. That same month National Public Radio aired the first of Marsalis’ 26-week series entitled Making the Music. These entertaining and insightful radio shows were the first full exposition of jazz music in American broadcast history. Wynton’s radio and television series were awarded the most prestigious distinction in broadcast journalism, the George Foster Peabody Award. Marsalis has also written five books: Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, To a Young Musician: Letters from the Road, Jazz ABZ (an A to Z collection of poems celebrating jazz greats), and his most recent release Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.

Awards and Accolades

Wynton Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards® in grand style. In 1983 he became the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards® for both jazz and classical records; and he repeated the distinction by winning jazz and classical Grammy Awards® again in 1984. Today Wynton is the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards® in five consecutive years (1983-1987). Honorary degrees have been conferred upon Wynton by over 25 of America’s leading academic institutions including Columbia, Harvard, Howard, Princeton and Yale (see Exhibit A). Elsewhere Wynton was honored with the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the “I Have a Dream Foundation.” The New York Urban League awarded Wynton with the Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership and the American Arts Council presented him with the Arts Education Award. Time magazine selected Wynton as one of America’s most promising leaders under age 40 in 1995, and in 1996 Time celebrated Marsalis again as one of America’s 25 most influential people. In November 2005 Wynton Marsalis received The National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the United States Government. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan proclaimed Wynton Marsalis an international ambassador of goodwill for the Unites States by appointing him a UN Messenger of Peace (2001).

In 1997 Wynton Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio Blood On The Fields. During the five preceding decades the Pulitzer Prize jury refused to recognize jazz musicians and their improvisational music, reserving this distinction for classical composers. In the years following Marsalis’ award, the Pulitzer Prize for Music has been awarded posthumously to Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. In a personal note to Wynton, Zarin Mehta wrote, “I was not surprised at your winning the Pulitzer Prize for Blood On The Fields. It is a broad, beautifully painted canvas that impresses and inspires. It speaks to us all ... I’m sure that, somewhere in the firmament, Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and legions of others are smiling down on you.”

Wynton’s creativity has been celebrated throughout the world. He won the Netherlands’ Edison Award and the Grand Prix Du Disque of France. The Mayor of Vitoria, Spain, awarded Wynton with the city’s Gold Medal – its most coveted distinction. Britain’s senior conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music, granted Mr. Marsalis Honorary Membership, the Academy’s highest decoration for a non-British citizen (1996). The city of Marciac, France, erected a bronze statue in his honor. The French Ministry of Culture appointed Wynton the rank of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature and in the fall of 2009 Wynton received France’s highest distinction, the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, an honor that was first awarded by Napoleon Bonaparte. French Ambassador, His Excellency Pierre Vimont, captured the evening bestwith his introduction:

“We are gathered here tonight to express the French government’s recognition of one of the most influential figures in American music, an outstanding artist, in one word: a visionary…
I want to stress how important your work has been for both the American and the French. I want to put the emphasis on the main values and concerns that we all share: the importance of education and transmission of culture from one generation to the other, and a true commitment to the profoundly democratic idea that lies in jazz music.
I strongly believe that, for you, jazz is more than just a musical form. It is tradition, it is part of American history and culture and life. To you, jazz is the sound of democracy. And from this democratic nature of jazz derives openness, generosity, and universality.”
Jazz at Lincoln Center

In 1987 Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, due to its significant success, Jazz at Lincoln Center was installed as new constituent of Lincoln Center, equal in stature with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet - a historic moment for jazz as an art form and for Lincoln Center as a cultural institution. In October 2004, with the assistance of a dedicated Board and staff, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world’s first institution for jazz. The complex contains three state-of-the-art performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Jazz at Lincoln Center has become a preferred venue for New York jazz fans and a destination for travelers from throughout the world. Wynton presently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Under Wynton’s leadership, Jazz at Lincoln Center has developed an international agenda presenting rich and diverse programming that includes concerts, debates, film forums, dances, television and radio broadcasts, and educational activities.

Jazz at Lincoln Center is a mecca for learning as well as a hub for performance. Their comprehensive educational programming includes a Band Director’s Academy, a hugely popular concert series for kids called Jazz for Young People, Jazz in the Schools, a Middle School Jazz Academy, WeBop! (for kids ages 8 months to 5 years), an annual High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival that reaches over 2000 bands in 50 states and Canada, and online learning tools.

Giving Back

Wynton Marsalis has devoted his life to uplifting populations worldwide with the egalitarian spirit of jazz. And while his body of work is enough to fill two lifetimes, Wynton continues to work tirelessly to contribute even more to our world’s cultural landscape. It has been said that he is an artist for whom greatness is not just possible, but inevitable. The most extraordinary dimension of Wynton Marsalis, however, is not his accomplishments but his character. It is the lesser-known part of this man who finds endless ways to give of himself. It is the person who waited in an empty parking lot for one full hour after a concert in Baltimore, waiting for a single student to return from home with his horn for a trumpet lesson. It is the citizen who personally funds scholarships for students and covers medical expenses for those in need. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, Wynton organized the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Concert and raised over $3 million for musicians and cultural organizations impacted by the hurricane. At the same time, he assumed a leadership role on the Bring Back New Orleans Cultural Commission where he was instrumental in shaping a master plan that would revitalize the city’s cultural base. Wynton Marsalis has selflessly donated his time and talent to non-profit organizations throughout the country to raise money to meet the many needs within our society. From My Sister’s Place (a shelter for battered women) to Graham Windham (a shelter for homeless children), the Children’s Defense Fund, Amnesty International, the Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, Food For All Seasons (a food bank for the elderly and disadvantaged), Very Special Arts (an organization that provides experiences in dance, drama, literature, and music for individuals with physical and mental disabilities) to the Newark Boys Chorus School (a full-time academic music school for disadvantaged youths) and many, many more - Wynton responded enthusiastically to the call for service. It is Wynton Marsalis’ commitment to the improvement of life for all people that portrays the best of his character and humanity.

Wynton Marsalis Honorary Degrees

1988 Brown University (Doctor of Music)
Southern University at New Orleans (Doctor of Music)
1990 University at Buffalo - State University of New York
(Doctor of Music)
1992 Boston University (Doctor of Music)
1994 University of Miami (Doctor of Music)
1995 Hunter College (Doctor of Humane Letters)
Manhattan School of Music (Doctor of Music)
Princeton University (Doctor of Arts)
Yale University (Doctor of Music)
1996 Brandies University (Doctor of Humane Letters)
Columbia University (Doctor of Music)
Governors State University (Doctor of Humane Letters)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Doctor of Fine Arts)
University of Scranton (Doctor of Fine Arts)
1997 Amherst College (Doctor of Music)
Howard University (Doctor of Music)
Long Island University (Doctor of Music)
Rutgers University (Doctor of Fine Arts)
1998 Bard College (Doctor of Fine Arts)
Haverford College (Doctor of Humane Letters)
1999 University of Massachusetts Amherst (Doctor of Fine Arts)
2000 Middlebury College (Doctor of Arts)
University of Pennsylvania (Doctor of Music)
2001 Clark Atlanta University (Doctorate of Humane Letters)
Connecticut College (Doctor of Fine Arts)
2004 Bloomfield College (Doctor of Fine Arts)
2007 New York University (Doctor of Fine Arts)
2009 Harvard University (Doctor of Music)
Northwestern University (Doctor of Arts)

Courtesy of wyntonmarsalis.com

Eddie Oliver, a native of Orlando, Florida, Spoken Word Artist left home in 1999 to pursue his dreams of writing. While searching for more national exposure for his art form, he stumbled across the Atlanta poetry scene where he has strived and succeeded in earning the respect of being called one of the top spoken word artists in the country. A former rapper turned poet, Eddie has graced many stages with his resonating sultry voice that can be felt in the soul and melts the hearts and ears of its listeners. He has captivated fans from all walks of life while performing at grand events throughout the country. His smooth yet melodic, urban poetry has blessed audiences from The National Black Arts Festival, to The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and everything in between. He has been featured on the television special POESY, and The Soul Lounge Groovenation Tour. Eddie has shared countless stages with a variety of soulful stars including India.Arie, Musiq Soulchild, and Malcolm Jamal Warner just to name a few. His song I Just Want to Live was featured on the CD compilation FUSION: A BLEND of POETRY and MUSIC distributed by Malaco Records. His intoxicating lyrical gift is also featured on all 11 songs of the Lee Williams and The Spirtual QC’s, God’s Groove! The Remix CD. His very own spoken word CD entitled POETIC SOUL: MIRROR IMAGES OF EDDIE OLIVER is laced with Hip-Hop, Jazz, and soulful rhythms. It is exalted by many as a masterpiece, a certified classic. His follow up CD entitled STREET CORNER SOUL is just as masterful. He is without question one of the most influential, and up and coming spoken word artists of our time.

Eddie is also a rising star on the theatrical scene. Among his countless honors was his directorial debut of the hit musical stage play, Little Black Girl’s Blues which received rave reviews. Mr. Oliver also received a best supporting actor nomination for his role as Neland in the stage play, The Apartment by Shut Up And Act Productions. He has also played the lead role in the hit Gospel stage play Daddy If You Only Knew, A Dance of Fatherhood, and Diante’s Hell where his smooth yet melodic urban poetry was featured. His poetry has also been on display in Rolling Out Magazine, The Creative Loafing, and The Orlando Times. Feature articles have been written about this new age, renaissance artist in Profound Word Magazine, The Poetry Papers, and Music 2 Showcase Magazine. This is only the beginning, now that his first poetry book entitled REFLECTIONS has been released, Eddie aspires to someday be catapulted amongst the poetry elite, along side his idol, the great Mr. Langston Hughes.

A gifted and advanced English student, Eddie fell in love with words at a very young age. All through his school years writing came easy to him. 9 times out of 10 if he was given a writing assignment he would get an A on it, and the teacher would always certainly read his paper in front of the class as an example of excellence. But the writing didn’t stop inside the classroom, behind clothes doors his creativity was blossoming. A shy young man, Eddie would sit in his room for hours just writing songs, raps, screenplays, and just random thoughts not really knowing what to do with any of it. Writing came so easy to him that he thought everyone could do it and to him writing was no big deal. Until one day after doing some soul searching because he was really unsure about what he wanted to do with his life. He thought about one question, ‘What is my gift?’ Believing that everyone has a gift, it finally hit him. ‘I’m a writer. That’s why the teachers always read my papers in front of the class, because I’m a writer.’ From that moment on Eddie became serious about his gift of writing which suddenly transitioned into an art of word play. A gifted lyricist, he fell in love with rap which almost landed him a deal with MCA Records, but fell through because of bad management. Sour about the rap industry, Eddie rebirth himself as a poet/spoken word artist where he felt there was no limitations on how he could express himself creatively. Thus Eddie Oliver the poet/spoken word artist was born from the rugged hood of Carver Shores in Orlando, Florida.

A lover of words, a lover of music, a lover of creativity, and a lover of life, Eddie believes that anything is possible once you realize what’s your gift? ‘Find it, explore it, nurture it, and master it. Then sit back and watch it grow,’ is Eddie’s advice to anyone searching for there purpose. For more info please feel free to visit www.eddieoliver.com or look for Eddie Oliver on facebook.

SOJP 2011 REVISITED

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:37:28 PST

This is Spotlight On Jazz and Poetry's review of some of the fantastic programs and wonderful artists in the worlds of Jazz and Poetry. So many of our loyal listeners wrote in to us to let us know what show they enjoyed the most and what artists were their favorites.

Each program received rave reviews, therefore we decided to highlight ALL of the shows and artists which were featured during the year. We sincerely hope that you enjoy this special program!

We would also like to thank each and every one of you for your continued support. We here at SOJP will continue to strive for excellence in the programs that we'll be presenting for your enjoyment during the upcoming year of 2012 and beyond!!

Spotlight On Jazz and Poetry "Jazz as Poetic Inspiration"

"A JAZZY CHRISTMAS 2011"

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 07:43:31 PST

Spotlight On Jazz & Poetry's

"A Jazzy Christmas 2011"

will showcase some of your all time favorite musicians as well as some new and exciting faces such as, Wynton Maralis, Kenny Burrell, Vince Guaraldi, Monika Herzig, Eartha Kitt, Rob Juice, Dinah Washington, Lou Rawls, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Rod Tate and many others playing and singing some of your favorite Christmas music.

On behalf of the SOJP family,
I would like to wish each and every one of you

A Very Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza and a
Safe, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!

Light In The Sky

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:18:12 PST

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.

Omar Sosa was born (April 10, 1965) and raised in Camagüey, Cuba, the largest inland city of the island nation, with a current population of about 300,000. The city lies at the center of a large prairie, junction point of railroads and highways, commercial center for trade in cattle and sugar produced in the province, and home of many beautiful churches, cathedrals and mansions. His father, Sindulfo Sosa, was a teacher of history and philosophy, as well as an administrator of the local school system. His mother, Maricusa Palacios, now retired and living in Havana, was a telex operator for the local electric company.

At the age of eight, Omar began studying percussion, including marimba, at the music conservatory in Camagüey. After passing a rigorous musical exam, Omar moved his studies to the prestigious Escuela Nacional de Musica in Havana. Here, as a teenager, not finding his first choice instrument – the marimba – readily available, he began to focus on the piano, finishing his formal education in 1983 at the Instituto Superior de Arte, also in Havana.
Growing up in Camaguey, Omar listened to music at home – Nat King Cole, Orquesta Aragon, Pacho Alonso, Benny More, and much classical music. He was impressed early on by one of his father’s records – a set of Cuban descargas - but had no idea that this was Latin jazz. He was touched profoundly by the music’s freedom and expressiveness. It was the group Los Amigos, with Frank Emilio Flynn, Tata Guines, Cachao, and Barreto, et al. Another album constantly on the family’s record player was called Pianoforte, a recording by Chucho Valdes. Omar was also impressed by a recording of Afro-Cuban songs by the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional – so much so that he briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a dancer.

Later, at the conservatory in Havana, influenced by his classmates, Omar became familiar with the music called jazz. He listened to a radio program hosted by the father of drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez. Students would stay up late to hear the show, and compare notes at the school the next day. At the time, this radio show was one of the main sources of information about jazz.

As some of his peer’s musician parents began to travel, Omar received records and information about many of the great American artists like Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarret, Coltrane, Charlie Parker. At the same time, Omar was influenced by progressive Cuban artists like Chucho Valdez, Irakere, and Emiliano Salvador. It was also as he finished his studies in 1983 that he was introduced to the music of Thelonious Monk, whose legacy of expressive freedom has left a strong mark on Omar’s creative approach. By the late ‘80’s, having studied everything from Afro-Cuban folkloric traditions to European classical music, he began working with two Cuban pop singers - first Vicente Feliu, then Xiomara Laugart – serving as musical director for various of their touring and recording ensembles.

Moving to Quito, Ecuador for several years beginning in 1993, Sosa discovered the folkloric music of Esmeraldas, a pocket of African-rooted culture on the northwest coast of that country known especially for its use of the marimba. In addition to launching his own jazz fusion ensemble, Entrenoz, Sosa produced Andarele, a recording by the Afro-Ecuadorian group Koral y Esmeralda.

After a brief stint in Palma Mallorca, Spain, Omar moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in late 1995 where he quickly invigorated the local Latin jazz scene with his explosive playing and adventurous writing. The next year Sosa made his U.S. recording debut on Ota Records with the solo piano Omar Omar, followed in 1997 with the first in a trilogy of groundbreaking large-ensemble, World-Jazz recordings: Free Roots, Spirit Of The Roots (1998) and Bembon (2000).

In 1998 Omar began his collaboration with noted Bay Area percussionist and educator John Santos. The duo released a live recording, Nfumbe, in conjunction with their appearance at the San Francisco Jazz Festival that year. The following year, revealing more of the contemplative side of his musical sensibilities, Omar released his second solo piano recording, Inside, a Top 20-selling CD in France for distributor Night & Day. Capping an extraordinarily productive period, Omar also traveled to Ecuador in 1999 to record his critically acclaimed CD, Bembon.

To visit the website of OMAR SOSA click here

Polyrhythmic Passion AllStars

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:09:48 PDT

On October 15, 2011 Spotlight On Jazz and Poetry presented it's "LIVE" event "POLYRHYTHMIC PASSIONS." This week's program will give you a peak at the artists who appeared at this classic SOJP event!!

Monika Herzig, born June 12, 1964 is a lot of things. A jazz pianist, whose second album for Owl Studios, a DVD and CD combo called Come with Me, was released this April. A pedagogue, teaching music industry courses for undergrads at IU-Bloomington and a jazz history class for continuing studies students at IUPUI. A church organist, employed by Ellettsville First United Methodist for 16 years.

Born and Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Janine Nash…aka…Lady J is a lyricist, poet and singer with over 10 years of performance and studio experience. She has been a background vocalist for Barrington Henderson (lead singer for the Temptations); and The Rose Brothers. She has performed as an opening act for Kirk Whalum; Howard Hewitt; Bloodstone and Slave. As a writer she has penned songs with former Earth, Wind and Fire guitarist, Sheldon Reynolds and member Ralph Johnson. One of her written pieces appears on the recently released “Devoted Spirits CD, “The Answer”.

“Each and every poem I write, I consider a gift from God. A turn of a phrase. Emotions that surface. An experience distilled into verse. Each offering is a present from the Creator. All Praises. Thank you for choosing me as the vessel.” (Lady Dove’s Artist’s Statement)

"Lady Dove" aka Pheralyn Dove, is a poet, performer, wordsmith, infotainist and culturalist whose work has been showcased nationwide and internationally as a spoken-word artist, actor, author, essayist, playwright, creative writer and technical writer. She has appeared on stages in her native Philadelphia, New York City, Paris, France and Rome, Italy. Dove has been a press agent, an entertainment editor for the Philadelphia Tribune and feature writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Yuma "Dr. Yew" Bellomee a.k.a. Yewmanyeti was born in Bronx, NY and raised there and Mt. Vernon, NY. As the son of a musician and a dancer, at an early age, he acquired a love and inclination for music, which rooted in African drumming, then later branched into learning keyboard & saxophone, writing poetry, and creating Hip Hop music. Yuma enjoys being a student of life, especially in the realms of health, nature, culture, and music.

Toni Washingtin is just an average kinda person! Born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Toni is the fifth of five children.
At an early age she would watch and listen to her three sister's who were major inflences in her life. They alway's kept up with the changing trends and because the whole family loved music she was exposed to everything from Jazz, R & B to classical. By the age of seven she began to write short story's and poetry keeping a book of everything that she wrote. Learning poetry and songs was something that she loved doing. She began taking piano lessons by age eight and sang in school plays. By the time that she was eleven she was taking dance lessons and started her first singing group which consisted of herself and three other girls.

Translinear Dawn

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:32:29 PDT

Alice Coltrane, who later changed her name to Turiyasangitananda, was born on August 27, 1937 in Detroit, Mich. As a child in Detroit, young Alice McLeod studied classical music and participated in the gospel band at church. But her brother, bassist Ernie Farrow, introduced her to jazz early on, and as a teen she became quite taken with bop and its offshoots. In Detroit she played piano on sessions with masters like guitarist Kenny Burrell and saxophonist Lucky Thompson. By the early 1960s she was sharing the bandstand with vibes player Terry Gibbs. It was on tour with Gibbs that she met saxophonist John Coltrane. Their 1966 wedding was the start of a musical union as well. When she replaced pianist McCoy Tyner in the classic Coltrane Quartet there was hubbub in the jazz world. But John Coltrane’s music was unfolding further with every passing month — he had begun probing musical motifs from the East. Alice’s approach to the piano assisted in extending the music even further.

When her husband crossed over in 1967, Alice continued working with members of his last group, including Garrison, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and drummer Rashied Ali. She began playing the harp, utilizing sitar and tablas in the ensemble, and turning fully to Eastern cultures for inspiration; spiritual and colorful, her music morphed into the soundtrack for prayer. Her talents and trajectory spoke to others.

Alice Coltrane was an uncompromising pianist, composer and bandleader, who spent the majority of her life seeking spiritually in both music and her private life. Music ran in Alice Coltrane's family; her older brother was bassist Ernie Farrow, who in the '50s and '60s played in the bands of Barry Harris, Stan Getz, Terry Gibbs, and especially Yusef Lateef. Alice McLeod began studying classical music at the age of seven. She attended Detroit's Cass Technical High School with pianist Hugh Lawson and drummer Earl Williams. As a young woman she played in church and was a fine bebop pianist in the bands of such local musicians as Lateef and Kenny Burrell. McLeod traveled to Paris in 1959 to study with Bud Powell. She met John Coltrane while touring and recording with Gibbs around 1962-1963; she married the saxophonist in 1965, and joined his band -- replacing McCoy Tyner -- one year later. Alice stayed with John's band until his death in 1967; on his albums Live at the Village Vanguard Again! and Concert in Japan, her playing is characterized by rhythmically ambiguous arpeggios and a pulsing thickness of texture.

Subsequently, she formed her own bands with players such as Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson, Frank Lowe, Carlos Ward, Rashied Ali, Archie Shepp, and Jimmy Garrison. In addition to the piano, Alice also played harp and Wurlitzer organ. She led a series of groups and recorded fairly often for Impulse, including the celebrated albums Monastic Trio, Journey in Satchidananda, Universal Consciousness, and World Galaxy. She then moved to Warner Brothers, where she released albums such as Transcendence, Eternity, and her double live opus Transfiguration in 1978.

Long concerned with spiritual matters, Coltrane founded a center for Eastern spiritual study called the Vedanta Center in 1975. Also, she began a long hiatus from public or recorded performance, though her 1981 appearance on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz radio series was released by Jazz Alliance. In 1987, she led a quartet that included her sons Ravi and Oran in a John Coltrane tribute concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Coltrane returned to public performance in 1998 at a Town Hall Concert with Ravi and again at Joe's Pub in Manhattan in 2002.

She began recording again in 2000 and eventually issued the stellar Translinear Light on the Verve label in 2004. Produced by Ravi, it featured Coltrane on piano, organ, and synthesizer, in a host of playing situations with luminary collaborators that included not only her sons, but also Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and James Genus. After the release of Translinear Light, she began playing live more frequently, including a date in Paris shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and a brief tour in fall 2006 with Ravi. Alice Coltrane crossed over on January 12, 2007, of respiratory failure at Los Angeles' West Hills Hospital and Medical Center.

Anushka Nagji, better known in the poetry world as Anushka In-Repair, was born on July 10 1986 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Anushka is an avid dreamer and egregiously idealistic. She loves the ocean and the prairie as she splits her time between Victoria, British Columbia and Calgary, Alberta in Canada while in the final year of Law School.

Anushka loves and fights with equal passion which is reflective in her poetry. And, she’s currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled, “The Dear L Letters”
When asked what is the relationship between jazz and poetry and what is the importance of each to our culture? Anushka responds; If my poetry was music, it would be John and Alice Coltrane fucking, sweating, loving, it would be jazz.

She adds, "How much is being created? Are the resulting creations diverse and representative? Is the act of the creation encouraged or discouraged? Censored or uncensored?" Jazz and poetry are and will always be interconnected forms of art. Both traditionally require the artist not just to say the words, sing them or play them, but asks the artist to understand why they need to be said, sung and played. There is a freedom that is available and encouraged in jazz and poetry that I have not found anywhere else, the bebop, the scatting, the freestyle allows for a wide range of creation within these umbrella terms.

Art. The creation and dissemination or consumption of, all uncensored and unregulated in regards to content, are essential to a properly functioning, free society. In particular, jazz and poetry have been historically and remain so, important to this idea. Both art forms allow and often embody the truth, raw and ugly, beautiful and inspiring, in the world and in the people around us. The resulting creations are powerful critiques and praises to our lifestyles, our government, and our norms. Therefore, jazz and poetry in particular operate as a measure of society, civilization.

Belles of the Blues

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:04:57 PDT

Blues Music Back to the Roots

Blues music emerged in the aftermath of U.S. slavery. With a lineage consisting largely of spirituals and work songs, the blues was the first musical genre to reflect black people's experience of "freedom" in the U.S.

While emancipation did not bring them socioeconomic freedom, formerly enslaved blacks enjoyed a new latitude in travel and sexuality. For the first time they could move from place to place as they chose, and for the first time they could make their own decisions about sexual relationships. Consequently, themes of travel and sexuality permeate the blues. Sexuality, in particular, came to symbolize freedom, and a preoccupation with personal relationships bespoke aspirations for a larger freedom.

In addition to functioning as an affirmation of newfound physical liberty, travel served a practical purpose: many blacks--primarily men, who were less constrained by family ties than women--took to the road in search of work. These journeys, made by foot and by freight train, gave rise to the figure of the male blues singer--a lone black man with a guitar, traveling the countryside singing about his life. This rural genre became known as country blues.

Although black men were first to sing the blues, the first blues recording was made by a black woman. Within one month of its release, Mamie Smith's 1920 version of Perry Bradford's Crazy Blues sold 75,000 copies at one dollar apiece. The buyers were almost exclusively black people, for whom a dollar was a small fortune in 1920, and so this represented phenomenal sales.

Recording companies like Columbia and Paramount recognized and quickly moved to exploit this untapped black music market, creating segregated "race records" divisions. It was several years before these companies saw that male blues too could generate profits.

Gertrude ("Ma") Rainey, known as the mother of the blues, stands at the juncture of rural country blues and a more urban form that reached its peak with the popularity of her protege, Bessie Smith. As the first broadly known traveling blues woman, Rainey represented for many women in her audiences a tangible incarnation of freedom. A pioneer on the black entertainment circuit, she shaped women's blues for many generations. As blues singer Koko Taylor said, women like "Ma" Rainey were the foundation of the blues.

Bessie Smith, who earned the title Empress of the Blues in part through the sale of some 750,000 copies of her first record, took women's blues to a new level. Among other things, songs like her Poor Man's Blues ("Mister rich man, rich man, open up your heart and mind/ Give the poor man a chance, help stop these hard, hard times") represented pioneering social protests in black American popular music. Smith became the first black woman "superstar," traveling with her own tent show and attracting huge audiences.

Smith's recorded performances reflect hints of the multi-layered meanings, beyond the literal content of the lyrics, with which blues women often endowed the songs they sang. In fact, looking at early women's blues from a modern perspective, we can detect emerging feminist themes.

Perhaps no one employed this strategy with more profound results than the incomparable Billie Holiday, who paved the way for an entire generation of black women vocal stylists, including Carmen McRae, Ella Fitzgerald and R.-and-B. singers like Aretha Franklin. Although Holiday, who counted Bessie Smith among her most important musical influences, was not a blues singer per se, her music was deeply rooted in the blues tradition. As a jazz musician working primarily with the idiom of white popular song, Holiday used the blues tradition to inject suggestions of perspectives more complicated than those the lyrics themselves contained.

That Holiday made Strange Fruit, her powerful and disturbing antilynching protest, the centerpiece of her repertoire suggests that her artistic choices were conscious and principled, and--like so much African-American art--perhaps far more nuanced than popular critical reviews have yet revealed.

--By Angela Davis, author of Blues Legacies and Black Feminism

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988506,00.html#ixzz1Yo83SJrA

Mystikal Blues

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 08:34:02 PDT

Wallace Roney is from Philadelphia, PA, born May 25, 1960. He began his musical studies at the age of five, learning rhythmic dictation and sight-reading. He began playing the trumpet at age six. He was identified as a prodigy and was awarded a scholarship to the Settlement School of Music at the age of seven. It is there that Wallace received private trumpet lesson with Sigmund Herring at the age of ten. As a child prodigy, by the age of 12 Wallace became the youngest member of the Philadelphia brass ensemble which was comprised of members of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

During his affiliation with the brass ensemble Wallace met jazz great Clark Terry who became a major influence, teacher, mentor and friend. Clark Terry taught him more about the trumpet than previous classical trumpet teachers had. He taught him technique, articulation and breath control. Clark Terry was the first of Wallace's three greatest mentors.

Wallace's moved to Washington, DC where he attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. While at Ellington he studied the trumpet with Langston Fitzgerald, trumpeter with the Baltimore Symphony. Fitz, as he was fondly called by Wallace, taught him to strive for excellence in spite of obstacles.

Wallace sat in with Art Blakey's band at the age of 15 and was offered the job to replace trumpeter Bill Hardman. A car accident that happened the day after he was offered the gig caused Wallace's father not to let him take the job. Wallace did, however, continue to sit in with a lot of great musicians including Cedar Walton, Sam Jones and Billy Higgins all of which led to Wallace playing several gigs with Cedar Walton.

At the age of 16 he met another trumpet player who would become the second greatest influence in his musical life, Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy taught Wallace even more advanced techniques that enhanced his ability to play intricate improvisational phrases. During this time he also went to NY and sat in with the great Philly Joe Jones which caused a stir. It wasn't long before he met the great trumpet player Woody Shaw who also became a close friend and mentor. During this time, Wallace graduated from Ellington and began studying with Dr. Donald Reinhart, a world renowned brass specialist in the Brass community, while at the same time attending Howard University and studying with Fred Irby. Wallace remained at Howard University for a year only to be called away to become a member of Art Blakey's Big Band. He also played with Joe Henderson, Dollar Brand and then studied for a year at Berkele School of Music before leaving there to rejoin Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.
Since playing with the "Messengers" the list of people that Wallace has played with is a veritable who's who of jazz. Too numerous to name, he likes to say that he has played with everyone from Jay McShann to Herbie Hancock.

In 1983 he met the greatest influence in his life, the person that was his idol and his greatest teacher, Mile Davis. Wallace's relationship with Mile was similar to Louis Armstrong's relationship with Joe (King) Oliver. Being with Miles gave him insight and tutelage on being a melodist, being on top of the most creative music, and uncompromisingly taking it further.

At one point Wallace rejoined Art Blakey's Band and at the same time was invited to play with Tony Williams' quintet. He elected to play with Tony's ground breaking band. In 1984 Wallace also met and hung out with Ornette Coleman and premièred his symphony "The Sacred Mind of Johnny Dolphin". He also played gigs with Ornette in his "Classic Quartet", taking Don Cherry's place when he died.

All of the time spent studying under and hanging with Miles Davis led Miles to ask Wallace to play with him on the Historic Miles at Montreux Concert. This was historic because it was the first time Miles had played straight ahead jazz in 30 years. The concert was recorded and it received a Grammy. When Miles died in 1991, Wallace joined what he considers to be the greatest group in history, VSOP, which included Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, and Wayne Shorter. It is with VSOP that Wallace won his second Grammy. In 1996 he joined Chick Corea's "Special Quintet". Wallace also played on Michael McDonald's record for which he won a Grammy for his solo in "Like a Child".

Wallace formed his own group in 1993. Other than periodic special projects and playing intermittently with other all-star groups, he has been leading his band and is dedicated to continuing to add to the jazz music legacy.

Listen to a very down to Earth conversation that I had with Wallace Roney by clicking this LINK

Alvin Lloyd Alexander Horn is an author and has had one bestselling book titled BRUSH STROKES. Alvin is also known as a poet, and spoken word artist and musician. He has been involved in many art forms from theater, commercial jingle writer, and radio DJ from the days when a DJ’s played album B-side cuts, and radio stations had the evening love-line where he often recited poetry over the air waves.

He states:
I credit my mother for sending me to the library when she placed me on restriction, often for daydreaming in school. Pages of autobiographies and biographies, of other people lives became daydreams and made my imagination run wild. Upon hearing and reading the work of Nikki Giovanni I knew he wanted to be a writer of love poems and stories. “Some of my erotic writing imagination came from my dad leaving men’s magazine in a not so secret place. My friends peeked at the picture, but I read the stories, most of the time …” He laughs.

Born in 1957 and growing up in the "Liberal on the surface" Seattle lifestyle, the Northwest flavors flows through my writing as I live on a houseboat with perfect views for writing inspiration. When I’m not writings, or doing voice over work, I work in the field of education.

I’m inspired to write and recite the art honest emotions that I have felt or someone may have shared with me at some time in my life. I try to speak for those who would write or say how they feel. I want to remind people of lost thoughts, hidden feelings and create new contemplations and desires whether it about love, money, social issues, family issues, passions and sex. I want people to feel worthy, beautiful, sexy, and informed. I want to write and speak in away, well as Miles Davis said, “It not how many notes you play, it’s when you play them”. I as an artist want to find the right word, instead of a bunch of words just to impress.

My style of spoken word is speaking, emotionally rhythmically, much like a blues man guitars weeping of lost love, a saxophone wailing like two loves in throws of passion, or even the street corner preacher begging you to hear his plea.

After hearing Nikki Giovanni on vinyl in the early seventies, and then hearing Gill Scott Heron’s 1981 Lp, ‘Reflections, one track particular pieces, ‘Morning Thoughts, I knew Jazz music and my poetry belonged next to each other from that point on.

Alvin has a spoken word CD that you order directly from him at his website CLICK HERE or check him out on FACEBOOK

Saxationally Yours

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 18:32:37 PDT

As seen on the Jerry Lewis Telethon, Pamela Luss is a contemporary jazz vocalist blessed with a beautiful voice, remarkable timing, and sumptuous intonation. She sings classic standards, swinging jazz, and worthwhile tunes from some of the unexplored corners of the Great American Songbook in a fresh and original way. She covers a wide range of stylistic ground, from traditional ballads to pop hits to Latin songs and the blues, in interpretations that can be either catchy and finger snapping or slow and tender - and everything in between. Christopher Loudon of Jazz Times described Pamela’s singing as having “a hint of huskiness, a variable cloudiness, a passing shadow that escalates her sound from merely pretty to intoxicating” and added that “Luss' aim is bulls-eye accurate.”

Since 2006, Pamela has released four albums on Savant/ High Note Records, the newest of which is "Sweet And Saxy," a collaboration with the legendary tenor saxophonist and producer Houston Person. Pamela and Houston have enjoyed a special musical relationship: he appeared as a guest soloist on her two previous CDs, Your Eyes and Magnet, and they've also worked together in concert. Sweet And Saxy is a glorious display of the dynamic synergy created by the emerging singer and the veteran horn man. Pamela, Houston, and pianist John di Martino created the arrangements together, and even the title Sweet And Saxy is a collaboration by Pamela and Houston.

Pamela and Houston celebrated the CD's release with a special performance at New York's Jazz Standard that resulted in two completely sold-out shows, as well as special appearances at J&R Music World (where the new album topped the store's sales charts) and Barnes and Noble. Further performances in support of the album are scheduled for the Metropolitan Room in Chelsea in Manhattan and Chris' Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia (both in January; see Pamelaluss.com for details). Sweet And Saxy has been well received nationally and internationally, including Japan. “Everything about Pamela is first-rate, be it her solid chops, well-endowed voice, or skillful ballad delivery,” as the Japanese magazine Jazz Yell raves, “The magical interaction between the warm sound of Person's tenor sax and Luss's expressive singing suggests the birth of a new, splendid partnership.”

From a very early age, Pamela knew that she wanted to be a singer. “My mom tells me that when I was really young, I would imitate the sound of the hair blow dryer, and I could sing back the tones of a busy signal on the telephone.” Pamela's exceptional pitch was apparent early on and remains strong today as one of the identifying features of a uniquely smooth voice with unusual fullness and purity of tone.

Growing up in Connecticut, Chicago, & Manhattan, Pamela studied music and took voice lessons. She learned to love jazz and The Great American Songbook thanks to her father, a talented avocational pianist who spent hours illustrating to her what makes the great songs and the great singers great. She majored in music at New York University.
Pamela first emerged as a professional singer with long-running gigs at several prominent New York venues, including Mannahatta and the Bruno Jamais Restaurant Club. She also began performing at private functions, most notably at a film premiere party thrown by the actor and filmmaker Matthew Modine.

Early in her career, Pamela was asked to perform at several special annual events at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. It was there that she was heard by the well-known saxophonist and bandleader Vincent Herring. Herring offered to produce her first album, There's Something About You I Don't Know. With accompaniments that vary between a big band, a string orchestra, and a small group, Pamela sings with an all-star line-up, including Mulgrew Miller, Tom Harrell, Jeremy Pelt, Steve Turre, Russell Malone, Greg Hutchinson, and Richie Goods. There's Something About You I Don't Know was released by Savant/HighNote Records to enthusiastic reviews in February of 2006. As Stephen Latessa of All About Jazz opined, “There is a palpable richness and sense of luxury in Pamela Luss’s debut album.”

Pamela Luss has enjoyed successful engagements in nearly every major night club in New York, drawing capacity crowds to The Jazz Standard, Feinstein’s at The Regency, Birdland (in Times Square), Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola (at Jazz at Lincoln Center), The Iridium, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Enzo’s, and many other venues. Pamela is perhaps the only singer to have appeared at both the first annual Jazz Improv Convention and the long-running Mabel Mercer Foundation cabaret convention at Rose Hall, which illustrates her acceptance in the worlds of both jazz and cabaret.

In 2007, High Note Records released Your Eyes, Pamela’s second album, and her first collaboration with pianist and musical director John diMartino, special guest Houston Person, and producer Todd Barkan. Scott Yanow wrote in The All Music Guide, “…Ms. Luss shows that she is a superior jazz singer, whether being sensual on ‘Baby Don't You Quit Now,’ finding surprising life in a faster-than-usual ‘Over the Rainbow,’ or swinging on ‘Our Day Will Come.’”

Your Eyes immediately made it to number three out of one hundred on Amazon.com's vocal jazz Bestselling new & future releases, and shot to number eight on the iTunes jazz chart in France. Christopher Loudon of Jazz Times wrote that hers was “quite possibly the finest-to-date interpretation of Alan and Marilyn Bergman's 'How Do You Keep The Music Playing?' (on Your Eyes) and added “She knows how to break [your heart] with excruciating tenderness.”

On Labor Day, 2007, Pamela Luss was asked to perform as part of a true American Cultural Institution, the annual telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, hosted by the legendary Jerry Lewis. The video clip of this number, her exciting, high-speed re- imagining of the iconic standard “Over The Rainbow,” has since been viewed thousands of times on YouTube. Jerry Lewis himself, no minor judge of talent, has described Pamela as “a wonderful singer.”

Pamela made her third album, Magnet in 2008. Magnet reached #5 on Barnes and Noble Bestselling Standards Albums and #6 on their Bestselling Vocal Jazz Albums. It also received heavy airplay, reaching #39 on the JazzWeek Jazz Radio Chart and placed in the top Jazz 50 iTunes Store sales. Magnet was also given stellar reviews, such as that of syndicated columnist Ric Bang, who wrote (in The Davis Enterprise), “Her voice is mellow and excellent, her phrasing exquisite. She can rivet your attention with simple oldies like ‘Day by Day,’ ‘Moon River,’ or ‘Quiet Nights,’ and then grab you by the throat with ‘For All We Know’ and ‘Bewitched.’ You know she's singing them for your ears alone. Longtime music fans, who miss hearing those great vocalists of years past, need not despair; this lady more than fills the need for such music.”

“Ms. Luss shows that she is a superior jazz singer, whether being sensual on ‘Baby Don't You Quit Now,’ finding surprising life in a faster-than-usual ‘Over the Rainbow,’ or swinging on ‘Our Day Will Come’” writes Scott Yanow in The All Music Guide. Check out Pamela live and hear why Mr. Yanow declared that Pamela creates “An indescribable magic.”

To Visit Pamela Luss's website CLICK HERE

Listen to a wonderful conversation between myself, Pamela Luss and Houston Person. CLICK HERE

Dubbed “the natural heir to the Boss Tenor crown worn so long and so well by Gene Ammons” (Bob Porter), global performer Houston Person knows the music business inside out, from booking his own tours to producing his own albums. As eclectic as he is talented, Person has recorded everything from disco and gospel to pop and r&b, in addition to his trademark, soulful hard bop. After years as producer and house tenor for HighNote Records and touring with the late Etta Jones, Person is now known as a master of popular songs played in a relaxed, highly accessible style.

Person grew up in Florence, South Carolina, and remembers his parents listening to lots of music at home, including jazz. First playing piano before switching to the tenor sax at age 17, he went on to study music at South Carolina State College (where he is included in the school’s Hall of Fame), and later pursued advanced studies at Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. As a member of the United States Air Force band stationed in Germany, he played with Eddie Harris, Cedar Walton, and Don Ellis, later working as a sideman for organist Johnny "Hammond" Smith in the mid 1960s.

Person built his reputation as a leader with a series of soulful recordings for Prestige in the 60s. However, for a large part of his career he was best-known for his legendary partnership with the great vocalist, Etta Jones, which lasted over 30 years until her death in 2001. Recently he has performed with vocalist Barbara Morrison, the great Ernie Andrews and in the past has worked with Ernestine Anderson, Della Griffin and Dakota Staton.

Houston’s appearances as sideman are legion, and include recordings with Etta Jones, Lena Horne, Lou Rawls, Dakota Staton, Horace Silver, Charles Earland, Charles Brown, and many others. As a record producer, he has worked with many artists, including Etta Jones, Freddy Cole, Charles Brown, Buck Hill, Dakota Staton, and Ernie Andrews. In 1990, his recording with Ron Carter, “Something in Common” (Muse), won the Independent Jazz Record of the Year Award, and he received an Indie Award for his recording, “Why Not?” (Muse). Other awards have included the prestigious Eubie Blake Jazz Award (1982) and the Fred Hampton Scholarship Fund Image Award (1993), and he has been honored with a "Houston Person/Etta Jones Day" in Hartford County, MD (1982) and in Washington, DC (1983). Houston Person has recorded over 75 albums as a leader on Prestige, Westbound, Mercury, Savoy, and Muse, which became HighNote Records.

His HighNote recordings as both tenor artist and producer, “My Buddy: Etta Jones Sings the Songs of Buddy Johnson” and “Etta Jones Sings Lady Day,” were Grammy finalists in the Best Jazz Vocal category in 1999 and 2000, respectively. HighNote has issued a three-disc collection of some of his finest recordings along with four new tracks all recorded at the famed Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Entitled “The Art and Soul of Houston Person” (HCD 7200), this is the first multi-disc retrospective of an artist’s recorded work to be issued by the label.

Wrote Gary Giddens in the Village Voice, “I have always admired Houston Person for his huge tone, bluff humor, and pointed obbligato…Person lucidly rides the beat with figures you think you've heard but haven't. These are not recycled licks or clichés; they simply seem familiar, like family… gray hair aside, Person is unchanged, an unmoved mover of certain jazz essentials.” Ask him what’s important in his music, and Houston Person notes that, “It's important that it's relaxing…Relaxes you and makes you feel good… I'm going to always play the things that I think contributes to good jazz, such as the blues and swinging.”

To Visit Houston Person's website CLICK HERE

Grab Bag of Abstract Truth

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 18:30:05 PDT

Abstract Truth lives on the edge of classification, weaving jazz with soul, R&B, African and Latin rhythms, rock, gospel, blues, and funk. The musical foundation is the subtle, masterful interplay of drummer (Sultan Akbar), percussionist (Rajul) with bassist and founding member (G. Lawrence Francis). On top of that groove saxophonist (Jesse Andrus) and keyboardist (Scott Coulter) create a rich, vibrant and complex melodic and harmonic world echoing everything from straight ahead jazz to rock. Borrowing from this rich tapestry of musical traditions, Abstract Truth manages to create a sound that is at once fresh and familiar, honoring the masters who came before them, while creating a sound all their own. Their music does not represent Grover Washington, Weather Report, Sly & the Family Stone, Miles or War – instead Abstract Truth takes the musical tradition they have inherited from these masters, and moves humbly forward, adding their own unique voice to this timeless lineage.

G. Lawrence Francis - Bassist/Bandleader/Vocals

G. Lawrence Francis, a native of Philadelphia, PA first picked up the bass after watching original Pieces of a Dream bassist, Cedric Napoleon, perform at Turner middle school when the band was known as A Touch of Class. G. Lawrence (founding member of Abstract Truth) has been playing bass for the last (30) years, studying all styles, including classical training through Settlement Music School. G. Lawrence has shared the stage with a wide variety of artists including Maze - featuring Frankie Beverly, Angela Bofil, War, KEM, Al Green and Parliament, just to name a few. G. Lawrence has released several self-produced CD’s, which have enjoyed radio play around the country. The CD's showcase his writing, recording, mastering and producing skills in addition to his talent as a bassist. You can contact G. Lawrence via email at fazefour4@aol.com or www.myspace.com/abstracttruthmusic

Scott Coulter - Piano/keyboard/organ

Scott Coulter is a Philadelphia based pianist/organist and harmonica player. He has performed in a wide range of bands, everything from old-time bluegrass to avante-garde jazz. He has performed throughout the east coast, from Florida to New England in venues large and small, including Jordan Hall in Boston, World Café Live in Philadelphia, and radio appearances in Denver, CO and Belair, MD.

Scott holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Jazz Piano Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA, where he studied with Fred Hersch, Danilo Perez` and Paul Bley, among others. In addition to his touring schedule, Scott will be maintaining a regular teaching schedule through Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, PA starting in September, 2009.

You can contact Scott Coulter at his own website:
www.scottcoultermusic.com

Jesse Andrus - Tenor/Alto/Soprano Sax/Flute/Vocals

Jesse Andrus was born in Los Angeles California. As a youth, he studied music at Gompers Jr. High School, recognized as the premier program in the city, under the direction of Frank Harris, Donald Dustin, and Duke Pearson. His classmates included Gerald Albright (Sax), Ray Brown (trumpeter for Earth Wind, and Fire) and Kenny Pickens (trombonist for Brothers Johnson). After testing out of his first year at Los Angeles City College, Jesse studied orchestration and arranging with Dr. Don Simpson, and was chosen to play first tenor, flute and clarinet in Dr. Simpson's "Studio Jazz Band". After City College, Jesse joined the Armed Forces School of Music. He was one of only four graduates (out of a class of 24 students) of the infamous F2, the Enlisted Bandleader Course. From there Jesse went on to lead the 19th Army Band at Ft. Dix, New Jersey from 1983 to 1985. Jesse was in good company, as he later learned that the legendary Grover Washington Jr. had also been a member of the 19th Army Band. Jesse has written and recorded original music for Sony Music/ATV, 613 Music, and FJP Publishing, and has played with some of the biggest names in the music industry, including Lenny White, Uri Caine, Lonnie Smith, Don Paterson, James Lloyd, Kenny Garrett, Curtis Harmon, Steve Nelson, and countless others. Jesse also maintains a regular teaching schedule, and has been an instructor for the Jazz Apprenticeship Program (under the direction of pianist Sarina Bachlietner) located in the “Montana Studio” in Manhattan’s Westside for the past 5 years.

Sultan Akbar - Drummer/Lead Vocals

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Sultan Akbar has been playing drums for the past 43 years. Over the course of his career, Mr. Akbar has shared the stage with some of the biggest names in the music business, including Kool and the Gang, Rashan Roland Kirk and Roy Ayers. He has worked as a band leader, sideman and a promoter. Mr. Akbar has always held a deeply spiritual view of music and it’s role in the world. During a recent radio interview, he summarized his view with the following quote: “Music means Man Understanding Spiritual Information Correctly”. Sultan’s deep appreciation for all styles of music can be heard in his versatile drumming, as he moves effortlessly between funk, swing, R&B, gospel, rock and Latin styles as the drummer for Abstract Truth.

Rajul - Percussion/Vocals

Rajul, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, has been studying percussion for over 20 years. He has studied under Baba BOB, and Baba Joe Bryant, studying rhythmic traditions from all over the world. In addition, Rajul studied theory and piano in community college. He has played with Roy Ayers, Rasan Roland Kirk and Leon Thomas, among others. In addition to his performance career, Rajul maintains a strong passion for music education, running a program entitled “Self Esteem for African Rhythm” in the city of Philadelphia. Rajul’s deep understanding of African and Latin rhythms adds a depth and rhythmic complexity that is a vital part of the unique sound of Abstract Truth.

Colette D. Jones was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. At the tender age of 8, Colette began writing words that would ‘come” to her seemingly at random. Her parents noticed her talent for speaking her mind early. They “encouraged” her to learn and recite holiday speeches in church. Throughout her time in school, she continued to hone her gifts. She was a member of the Literary Yearbook Staff throughout her time in high school. She left to join the military in 1987 and placed her reciting skills on hold. She did not however, stop writing poetry. While in Germany, she was finally able to pick up the microphone again in 1991 for a recitation of “Ego Trippin” and has not stopped.

She has performed and hosted several open mic venues overseas and here in the US. Over the past twenty plus years, she has written over 1,000 poems. Presently she has seven volumes of poetry. Colette’s stage name is “ Da-Boogie”. She states that her name defines her as unique and having a poetic rhythm unlike any other poet. Volume 2, entitled “ Sugar and Spice, Naughty or Nice” is self published and has sold over 100 copies. She also has a cd of erotica entitled : Poetic Confections. Colette has taught workshops on poetry and healing yourself through words. She is currently working on publishing her volumes of poetry and projects with other fellow poets.

COME HOME; An Evening with Carmen Lundy

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 07:40:55 PDT

“In a world of pretenders, Carmen Lundy is a genuine Jazz Singer”
- The Evening Standard

Born November 1, 1954 in Miami, Florida, Carmen Lundy's path to being one of today's most talented, respected and sophisticated jazz singers began at age six, with her first piano lessons. Deeply inspired by her mother, Oveida, who was then lead singer in the gospel group The Apostolic Singers, Carmen joined her church's junior choir. A passion for music was instilled for life, and it was with total determination that young Carmen began her professional career performing at local high schools as part of the vocal duo “Steph and Tret.” It was soon after that she made her first recording, The Price Of Silence, while still in her teens.

Ms. Lundy attended The University Of Miami as an Opera major, but soon discovered that jazz was where her talent really shined. She later graduated with a degree in Studio Music and Jazz - one of the first singers to do so. After working steadily at jazz clubs in Miami and traveling to Europe and North Africa with the University of Miami Big Band in 1977, Lundy moved to New York City in the spring of '78. She immediately began working in jazz circles throughout the Tri-State area, and from Harlem to Greenwich Village, and quickly impressed the notoriously critical jazz cognoscenti and audiences alike. Esteemed critic Gary Giddins stated (in 1983), “Jazz singing stopped regenerating itself about 20 years ago, and it's not hard to see why, so it's with some trepidation that I call your attention to an authentic young jazz singer named Carmen Lundy - she's got it all.” Armed with a devoted following and critical kudos, the uncompromising Ms. Lundy continued to make waves, not just in North America, but in Asia and throughout the UK and Europe.
While Carmen Lundy has managed the near impossible by maintaining a three decade career with mostly self penned material, her 11th CD release, “Solamente” is a unique departure from her previous work. Everything about the new CD from Carmen Lundy comes directly from the heart. Renowned for her extraordinary vocal prowess and songwriting skill, Lundy moves far beyond our expectations, arranging, producing, recording, mixing and playing every instrument on Solamente.

Originally recorded to serve as reference demos of new compositions, the recordings so moved listeners that Lundy was persuaded to release them as they were, with every second, every note, a reflection of an artist at her creative peak.

With her previous release “Come Home”, Lundy confirmed once again that she is a true original in the world of Jazz singing and composition. “Come Home” is indeed a homecoming of sorts - infusing the blues and gospel roots of her childhood with those in the jazz genre in a stunning new set of original compositions.

Carmen Lundy began her professional career as a jazz vocalist and composer when there were very few young, gifted and aspiring jazz vocalists on the horizon. Three decades later, Ms. Lundy is celebrated throughout the world for her vocal artistry and is highly regarded for her jazz innovation. Her contribution of over 40 self-penned compositions now comprises the New Jazz Songbook.

Having recorded ten albums as a leader, Carmen has also performed and recorded with such musicians as brother and bassist Curtis Lundy, Ray Barretto, Kenny Barron, Bruce Hornsby, Mulgrew Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kip Hanrahan, Courtney Pine, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Marian McPartland, Regina Carter, Steve Turre, Geri Allen, Robert Glasper and the late Kenny Kirkland. Ms. Lundy’s previous release, the critically acclaimed “Jazz and The New Songbook-Live at The Madrid”, features some of the jazz world’s best known musicians paying tribute to Ms. Lundy. Her first live recording, it finally and definitively captures her unique and electrifying on-stage performance, further expanding her recognition at home and abroad. Fortunately, the concert is documented on both DVD and 2-disc set, produced by Afrasia Productions, a label started by Carmen Lundy and well-known producer Elisabeth Oei.

Carmen Lundy’s work as a vocalist and composer has been critically acclaimed by The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, as well as numerous foreign publications. As a composer, Ms. Lundy’s catalogue numbers over sixty published songs, one of the few jazz vocalists in history to accomplish such a distinction, and has led to the first publication of the Carmen Lundy Songbook (2007). Her songs have been recorded by such artists as Kenny Barron ("Quiet Times"), Ernie Watts ("At The End Of My Rope"), and Straight Ahead ("Never Gonna Let You Go").

Of course, they can also be found on her own recordings “Something To Believe In” and “This Is Carmen Lundy” (both for Justin Time), “Old Devil Moon” (JVC), “Self Portrait” (JVC), “Moment To Moment” (Arabesque/Afrasia Productions), “Night And Day” (CBS/SONY), “Good Morning Kiss” (CLR/Afrasia Productions), “Jazz and The New Songbook – Live at The Madrid” (2-disc set and DVD, Afrasia Productions), and her latest releases “Come Home” and “Solamente” (Afrasia Productions).

A native of Miami, Florida, Carmen Lundy's path to being one of today's most talented, respected and sophisticated jazz singers began at age six, with her first piano lessons. Deeply inspired by her mother, Oveida, who was then lead singer in the gospel group The Apostolic Singers, Carmen joined her church's junior choir. A passion for music was instilled for life, and it was with total determination that young Carmen began her professional career performing at local high schools as part of the vocal duo "Steph and Tret." It was soon after that she made her first recording, The Price Of Silence, while still in her teens.

Ms. Lundy attended The University Of Miami as an Opera major, but soon discovered that jazz was where her talent really shined. She later graduated with a degree in Studio Music and Jazz - one of the first singers to do so. After working steadily at jazz clubs in Miami and traveling to Europe and North Africa with the University of Miami Big Band in 1977, Lundy moved to New York City in the spring of '78. She immediately began working in jazz circles throughout the Tri-State area, and from Harlem to Greenwich Village, and quickly impressed the notoriously critical jazz cognoscenti and audiences alike. Esteemed critic Gary Giddins stated (in 1983), "Jazz singing stopped regenerating itself about 20 years ago, and it's not hard to see why, so it's with some trepidation that I call your attention to an authentic young jazz singer named Carmen Lundy - she's got it all." Armed with a devoted following and critical kudos, the uncompromising Ms. Lundy continued to make waves, not just in North America, but in Asia and throughout the UK and Europe.
Teaching, too, is an important activity for Ms Lundy; she's given Master Classes in Australia, Denmark, Russia, Japan, Switzerland, New York, Washington, D.C., Northern California, and Los Angeles. Since its inception in 1998, Lundy has and continues to participate in Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead Program at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as Resident Clinician and guest artist. She has also worked with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz as guest artist and clinician.

Ms. Lundy is also a gifted actress active in theatre. "Acting," as she recently told Dr. Billy Taylor, "helps me to get more comfortable and acquainted with the art of performance." She performed the lead role as Billie Holiday in the Off-Off Broadway play "They Were All Gardenias" by Lawrence Holder, as well as the lead role in the Broadway show, Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Ladies," and she made her television debut as the star of the CBS Pilot-Special "Shangri-La Plaza" in the role of Geneva, after which she relocated to Los Angeles, where she currently resides.

After signing to Justin Time in 2001, Ms. Lundy began work immediately on her label debut This Is Carmen Lundy, recorded in May of that same year and released in September. Entirely self-composed, the recording promptly garnered rave reviews from throughout the world, notably from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Far East.

In October 2002, Justin Time re-issued Lundy's much-sought-after 1985 debut album, Good Morning Kiss, with three previously unreleased alternate takes, and remixed and re-mastered using state-of-the-art technology.

The year 2003 began with a bang, when Miami-Dade's County Office Of The Mayor and Board of County Commissioners proclaimed January 25th "Carmen Lundy Day." Other notable events throughout 2003 included performances at Ronnie Scott's, London, for a two-week engagement; The Jazz Standard in New York City; The Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles; and at Oakland's famed nightspot Yoshi's. Her triumph at Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, at Club Soda, was followed by a riveting performance (with Buster Williams, Geri Allen and Billy Hart) of Mary Lou's Mass at North Carolina's Duke University in Raleigh/Durham.

Something To Believe In, released in 2003, brought Carmen to her largest audience yet, while maintaining an integrity and dedication to excellence that has been uncompromising from the beginning. It's a record with a universal theme. From the self-penned opener, "In Love Again," to the last strains of the classic "Moody's Mood For Love," the record is a passionate paean to love - and to life's search for it. It features Carmen's core band of pianist Anthony Wonsey, bassist Curtis Lundy, and drummer Victor Lewis, with special guests, percussionist Mayra Casales, saxophonist Mark Shim and violin phenomenon Regina Carter.

Carmen Lundy is also a painter in oils on canvas, and her works have been exhibited in New York at The Jazz Gallery in Soho, at The Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, and at a month-long exhibition at the Madrid Theatre, also in Los Angeles, where she currently resides.

To Visit Carmen Lundy's website CLICK HERE

SOJP's Celestial Dancer has written a review of a Carmen Lundy performance that she witnessed at Yoshi's in Oakland, California on June 17, 2011. Celestial also had a chance to speak with Carmen after her thrilling performance. To read the review and to listen to a Conversation with Carmen Lundy CLICK HERE

Tribute to Hotep Idris Galeta

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:47:31 PDT

Hotep Idris Galeta was born in Crawford, Cape Town on the 7th of June 1941. He grew up exposed to the rich musical culture in and around Cape Town. His first piano lessons came from his father at the age of seven who taught him some basic keyboard skills. As a young teenager in the early 50's he became interested in Jazz, after listening to a short wave radio Jazz program on the "Voice of America".

After meeting Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand, at a high school jazz concert in Athlone, the two became close friends and Brand became his mentor. Hotep, or as he was known in the 50's, Cecil Barnard, went on to establish himself as one of the young emerging pianists on the Cape Town Jazz scene, playing in such legendary clubs as the "Naaz", "Zambezi" and the "Vortex" and alongside legendary South African players such as Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Christopher Mra Ngcukana, Cups and Saucers, Johnny Gertze, George Kussel, Sammy Moritz, Henry Makone, Makaya Ntoshoko, Anthony Schilder and Monty Weber. All of these individuals had a great influence on his musical development.

Hotep left South Africa for London and then New York in 1961 and stayed in exile for thirty years. In the early 60's he obtained a scholarship to study privately with noted jazz piano educator John Mehegan. He now has a Master's degree with Distinction in Jazz and Contemporary African-American Music and Performance. His discography is quite extensive with over 18 albums and CDs recorded with a number of American and South African artists. They include his own acclaimed solo piano CD Live At The Tempest and numerous CDs with Hugh Masekela, Herb Alpert, John Handy, Jackie McLean, Joshua Redman, Archie Shepp, Elvin Jones, Bobby Hutcherson, Woody Shaw and David Crosby and the Byrds. As a result of his reputation as an internationally recognized Jazz and Contemporary Music educator and pianist, he was appointed lecturer in Jazz studies to the University of Hartford's Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A in 1985. This position continued until his return to South Africa in 1991.

Since then he has served as the Musical Director for the Volkswagen-sponsored "Music Active" performing arts educational program for high schools. He recently returned to Cape Town after four years of lecturing in the Music Department at the University of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape. He currently manages the Resource Centre at Artscape Performing Arts Theatre Complex in Cape Town, South Africa, and also co-ordinates the Jazz Performance and Community Outreach Jazz Education programs there.

Sheer Sound are proud to announce the release of Hotep's latest album, "Malay Tone Poem". This album was produced by, and features, Zim Ngqawana. The band he recorded with is the Safro Jazz Quintet, comprising Marcus Wyatt, Kevin Gibson and Victor Masondo. The vision behind the formation of the Safro Jazz Quintet, is to use the band as a developmental platform for young, up-and-coming talented South African jazz musicians in the same tradition established by the great African-American drummer Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

He passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in Johannesburg on 03 Nov 2010, following an asthma attack.

To visit Hotep Idris Galeta's website CLICK HERE

Keorapetse William Kgositsile, born September 19, 1938 in Johannesburg is a South African poet and political activist, and was an influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. He lived in exile in the United States from 1962 until 1975, the peak of his literary career. Kgositsile made extensive study of African-American literature and culture, becoming particularly interested in jazz. During the 1970s he was a central figure among African-American poets, encouraging interest in Africa as well as the practice of poetry as a performance art; Kgositsile was known for his readings in New York City jazz clubs. He was one of the first to bridge the gap between African poetry and Black poetry in the United States, and thus one of the first and most significant poets in the Pan-African movement.

Kgositsile grew up in a small shack in back of a house in a white neighborhood. His first experience of apartheid, other than having to go to school outside of his neighborhood for reasons he did not then understand, was a conflict with a local white family after he fought a white friend of his who hesitated when other friends refused to join a boxing club that denied Kgositsile membership. The experience was a formative one, and joined with other experiences of exclusion that increased throughout his teenage years. For Kgositsile, adulthood—being a "grown up nigger"—meant an entrance into apartheid.

Kgositsile attended Matibane High School in Johannesburg, as well as others in other parts of the country. During that time he was able (with some difficulty) to find books by Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, and influenced by them as well as by European writers (principally Charles Dickens and D. H. Lawrence, he began writing stories, though not yet with any intention of doing so professionally. After working a series of odd jobs after high school, he took to writing more seriously, and got a job for the politically charged newspaper New Age. He contributed both reporting and poetry to the newspaper.

These early poems, anticipating a lifetime of Kgositsile's work, combine lyricism with an unmuted call to arms, as in these lines from "Dawn":

Remember in baton boot and bullet ritual
The bloodhounds of Monster Vorster wrote Soweto
Over the belly of my land
with the indelible blood of infants
So the young are no longer young
Not that they demand a hasty death.

Any early interest in fiction was replaced by the sheer urgency of communication Kgositsile felt. As he said later, "In a situation of oppression, there are no choices beyond didactic writing: either you are a tool of oppression or an instrument of liberation."
In 1961, under considerable pressure both for himself and as part of a government effort to shut down New Age, Kgositile was urged by the African National Congress, of which he was a vocal member, to leave the country. He went initially to Dar es Salaam to write for Spearhead magazine (unrelated to the right-wing British magazine of the same name), but the following year emigrated to the United States. He studied at a series of universities beginning with Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he "spent a lot of time in the library trying to read as much black literature as I could lay my hands on."

After studying at the University of New Hampshire and The New School for Social Research, Kgositsile entered the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Columbia University. At the same time, he published his first collection of poems, Spirits Unchained. The collection was well received, and Kgositsile was given a Harlem Cultural Council Poetry Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Award. He graduated from Columbia in 1971, and remained in New York, teaching and giving his characteristically dynamic readings in downtown clubs and as part of the Uptown Black Arts Movement. Kgositsile's most influential collection, "My Name is Afrika," was published in this year. The response, including an introduction to the book by Gwendolyn Brooks, established Kgositsile as a leading African-American poet. The Last Poets, a group of revolutionary African-American poets, took their name from one of his poems.
Jazz was particularly important to Kgositsile's sense of black American culture and his own place in it. He saw John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, B. B. King, and many others in the jazz clubs of New York, and wrote to them and of them in his poems. Jazz was crucial to Kgositsile's most influential idea: his sense of a worldwide African diaspora united by an ear for a certain quintessentially black sound.

He wrote of the black aesthetic he pursued and celebrated:
There is nothing like art—in the oppressor's sense of art. There is only movement. Force, Creative power, the walk of Sophiatown totsi or my Harlem brother on Lenox Avenue. Field Hollers, The Blues. A Trane riff. Marvin Gaye or mbaqanga. Anguished happiness. Creative power, in whatever form it is released, moves like the dancer's muscles.

Freedom from a constricting white aesthetic sensibility and the discovery of the rhythmic experience common to black people of all the world were, for Kgositsile's, two sides of the same struggle.

A Tribute to Gil Scott-Heron

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:58:19 PDT

Gil Scott-Heron was born April 1, 1949 in Chicago, Illinois, but spent his early childhood in the home of his grandmother in Jackson, Tennessee. One of the most important progenitors of rap music, Gil Scott-Heron's aggressive, no-nonsense street poetry inspired a legion of intelligent rappers while his engaging songwriting skills placed him square in the R&B charts later in his career, backed by increasingly contemporary production courtesy of Malcolm Cecil and Nile Rodgers (of Chic). Scott-Heron spent most of his high-school years in the Bronx, where he learned firsthand many of the experiences that later made up his songwriting material. He had begun writing before reaching his teenage years, however, and completed his first volume of poetry at the age of 13. Though he attended college in Pennsylvania, he dropped out after one year to concentrate on his writing career and earned plaudits for his novel, The Vulture.

Encouraged at the end of the '60s to begin recording by legendary jazz producer Bob Thiele -- who had worked with every major jazz greats from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane -- Scott-Heron released his 1970 debut, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, inspired by a volume of poetry of the same name. With Thiele's Flying Dutchman Records until the mid-'70s, he signed to Arista soon after and found success on the R&B charts. Though his jazz-based work of the early '70s was tempered by a slicker disco-inspired production, Scott-Heron's message was as clear as ever on the Top 30 single "Johannesburg" and the number 15 hit "Angel Dust." Silent for almost a decade, after the release of his 1984 single "Re-Ron," the proto-rapper returned to recording in the mid-'90s with a message for the gangsta rappers who had come in his wake; Scott-Heron's 1994 album Spirits began with "Message to the Messengers," pointed squarely at the rappers whose influence -- positive or negative -- meant much to the children of the 1990s.

In a touching bit of irony that he himself was quick to joke about, Gil Scott-Heron was born on April Fool's Day 1949 in Chicago, the son of a Jamaican professional soccer player (who spent time playing for Glasgow Celtic) and a college-graduate mother who worked as a librarian. His parents divorced early in his life, and Scott-Heron was sent to live with his grandmother in Lincoln, TN. Learning musical and literary instruction from her, Scott-Heron also learned about prejudice firsthand, as he was one of three children picked to integrate an elementary school in nearby Jackson. The abuse proved too much to bear, however, and the eighth-grader was sent to New York to live with his mother, first in the Bronx and later in the Hispanic neighborhood of Chelsea.

Though Scott-Heron's experiences in Tennessee must have been difficult, they proved to be the seed of his writing career, as his first volume of poetry was written around that time. His education in the New York City school system also proved beneficial, introducing the youth to the work of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes as well as LeRoi Jones. After publishing a novel called The Vulture in 1968, Scott-Heron applied to Pennsylvania's Lincoln University. Though he spent less than one year there, it was enough time to meet Brian Jackson, a similarly minded musician who would later become a crucial collaborator and integral part of Scott-Heron's band. Given a bit of exposure -- mostly in magazines like Essence, which called The Vulture "a strong start for a writer with important things to say" -- Scott-Heron met up with Bob Thiele and was encouraged to begin a music career, reading selections from his book of poetry Small Talk at 125th & Lennox while Thiele recorded a collective of jazz and funk musicians, including bassist Ron Carter, drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, Hubert Laws on flute and alto saxophone, and percussionists Eddie Knowles and Charlie Saunders; Scott-Heron also recruited Jackson to play on the record as pianist. Most important on the album was "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," an aggressive polemic against the major media and white America's ignorance of increasingly deteriorating conditions in the inner cities. Scott-Heron's second LP, 1971's Pieces of a Man, expanded his range, featuring songs such as the title track and "Lady Day and John Coltrane," which offered a more straight-ahead approach to song structure (if not content).

The following year's Free Will was his last for Flying Dutchman, however; after a dispute with the label, Scott-Heron recorded Winter in America for Strata East, then moved to Arista Records in 1975. As the first artist signed to Clive Davis' new label, much was riding on Scott-Heron to deliver first-rate material with a chance at the charts. Thanks to Arista's more focused push on the charts, Scott-Heron's "Johannesburg" reached number 29 on the R&B charts in 1975. Important to Scott-Heron's success on his first two albums for Arista (First Minute of a New Day and From South Africa to South Carolina) was the influence of keyboardist and collaborator Jackson, co-billed on both LPs and the de facto leader of Scott-Heron's Midnight Band.

Jackson left by 1978, though, leaving the musical direction of Scott-Heron's career in the capable hands of producer Malcolm Cecil, a veteran producer who had midwifed the funkier direction of the Isley Brothers and Stevie Wonder earlier in the decade. The first single recorded with Cecil, "The Bottle," became Scott-Heron's biggest hit yet, peaking at number 15 on the R&B charts, though he still made no waves on the pop charts. Producer Nile Rodgers of Chic also helped on production during the 1980s, when Scott-Heron's political attack grew even more fervent with a new target, President Ronald Reagan. (Several singles, including the R&B hits "B Movie" and "Re-Ron," were specifically directed at the President's conservative policies.) By 1985, however, Scott-Heron was dropped by Arista, just after the release of The Best of Gil Scott-Heron. Though he continued to tour around the world, Scott-Heron chose to discontinue recording. He did return, however, in 1993 with a contract for TVT Records and the album Spirits. For well over a decade, Scott-Heron was mostly inactive, held back by a series of drug possession charges. He began performing semi-regularly in 2007, and one year later, announced that he was HIV-positive. He recorded an album, I'm New Here, released on XL in 2010. In February of 2011, Scott-Heron and Jamie xx (Jamie Smith of xx) issued a remixed version of the album, entitled We're New Here, also issued on XL. Gil Scott-Heron crossed over on the afternoon of May 27, 2011 in a New York hospital, just after returning from a set of live dates in Europe.

IVORY MOODS

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 22 May 2011 19:29:35 PDT

Monika Herzig, born June 12, 1964 is a lot of things. A jazz pianist, whose second album for Owl Studios, a DVD and CD combo called Come with Me, was released this April. A pedagogue, teaching music industry courses for undergrads at IU-Bloomington and a jazz history class for continuing studies students at IUPUI. A church organist, employed by Ellettsville First United Methodist for 16 years.

A community organizer, who has founded support and outreach groups for Bloomington jazz musicians (Jazz from Bloomington) and women in music (ISIS). A composer, whose analytical work often involves unusual chord changes and harmonic twists, perhaps because of her background (classically-trained outside of the American jazz tradition) or simply the way her brain is wired (a math major on the undergraduate level, she identifies herself as more analytical than big-picture oriented).

But wait, there's more: A theorist, who thinks the structure of a jazz combo offers insights on how to organize any small group of creative thinkers, in business as well as the arts. A soon-to-be published author, whose collection of essays on David Baker will become the first book on the jazz pedagogue and musician.

And, on a non-professional level: A mother, whose two children, ages 9 and 11, have managed to find their way to an album cover or two. And a German-American, who became an American citizen three years ago, 23 years after she and her husband, the jazz guitarist Peter Kienle, bought a one-way ticket from Germany to Northern Alabama.

And it goes on and on. Herzig has one of those CVs that make you wonder just what you've been doing all these years, and how people like her can resist the lure of, say, home entertainment systems and beer.

But she's not a singer, and you're just going to have to deal with it.

"Every time I set up somewhere, I can bet on it that someone will come up and say, 'Are you going to sing tonight?' Herzig explains on a Saturday night at Rick's Café Boatyard, the Westside restaurant where she's played with her trio every Saturday night for a decade. "I don't sing, and I think because of that I've grown more averse to it."

To be clear, Herzig isn't against vocals. She just doesn't need them for much of her work. Here's how she puts it in the liner notes to Come With Me, explaining the inspiration behind the song "The Pianists Say," which she says was crafted as an answer to all those who ask her to sing: "While I do enjoy vocals and the power of words very much, I do believe that instrumental music can communicate deeply, far beyond words, touching the depths of our emotions."

The goddess Isis

Maybe that question — aren't you going to sing for us tonight, Monika? — can annoy in another way: It assumes that any female in front of a band ought to be a singer. That's a stereotype that Herzig hopes to turn on its head through her work with ISIS of Indiana, the support organization for female musicians she co-founded with vocalist Heather Ramsey.

ISIS, whose June 2 Divas of Jazz concert at The Cabaret at the Columbia Club will exclusively showcase female musicians, was hatched during the December 2009 release show for Peace on Earth, Herzig's first album for Owl Studios. Ramsey approached Herzig that night. "We got to talking, and I realized, here's another entrepreneurial spirit," Herzig explains. "She'll come up with all these big ideas, and I go, 'Heather, I think that's possible, but that might be a little too far-reaching.' So we have a good balance."

And the biggest goal of the organization is to reach a balance, to address a gender bias that Herzig thinks can be attributed to a lack of prominent female role models in jazz. She points to studies which show that, while nearly equal numbers of males and females are involved in high school music programs, college jazz studies programs see a dramatic drop-off in female involvement. "There's something that happens when the question comes up, 'Should I do this as a profession?'" Herzig says.

Most girls answer "no," but Herzig is hoping they'll reconsider. This summer, ISIS, in collaboration with the Civic Theatre, will host a summer camp for girls called Girls Create Music, a sort of analogue to Girls Rock! Indy that will have components addressing songwriting, self-image and basic instrument instruction, and will close with a performance by the campers.

Not that Herzig is only in this to convert girls: She reaches out to groups of all ages and, er, sexes, from adults looking to catch up on the history of Indiana jazz to impressionable grade schoolers.

In 2005, Herzig founded the organization Jazz in the Schools to teach about jazz in Central Indiana schools. Her programs focus on key Indiana jazz musicians: songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, guitarist Wes Montgomery, her colleague David Baker — and a few female instrumentalists who might well serve as historical role models for girls playing jazz: ragtime pianist May Aufderheide, who may not have the name recognition of a Scott Joplin, but whose songs are still among the genre's most widely played; and the Hampton Sisters, all of whom were instrumentalists and singers.

And for the past seven years, Herzig has taught a jazz studies course, "An Introduction to Jazz History and the Indianapolis Jazz Scene," through the IUPUI continuing studies department. Borne out of a somewhat self-interested pitch by Chatterbox owner David Andrichik, who suggested to Herzig that a class whose sessions ended with performances at his club would be a great idea, Herzig's course combines classroom and experiential learning, beginning with a lecture at IUPUI's Senior Center and, indeed, closing with a performance featuring a local jazz musician at the Chatterbox.

Herzig met one of her collaborators, the former Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf, while he was enrolled in her IUPUI course. The two went on to perform in a spoken word setting, eventually releasing a record, Imagine: Indiana in Music and Words. A poem Krapf wrote about the class — and, in particular, about Herzig's impact on her students — touches on another broad theme in her life: that of the outsider attending to an indigenous culture with more respect than many who grew up in it. Here are the salient lines from Krapf's "What Have You Gone and Done?": "You came to Indiana / from Swabia via Alabama / and brought us home to an Indiana Avenue / no longer visible to the eye" (from Bloodroot, copyright IU Press).

Case in point: When Herzig learned that, despite reports to the contrary, no one was working on a biography or study of the life and work of David Baker, she decided to take on the project herself. Not that she had ever written a book before, or that she had funding at the ready. She put together a proposal for IU Press, which was interested but didn't have the resources for a significant advance. An NEA grant eventually came through, and David Baker: A Legacy in Music is due this November. The book is a collection of essays addressing different aspects of Baker's work and life, including his classical and jazz compositions, pedagogical methods, work with the Smithsonian and NEA and early career as a musician. Herzig wrote some of the essays, and is credited as the primary author, but she wanted to involve other authors from the beginning, including IU professor and Owl Studios labelmate Brent Wallarab.

From the Alps to Brown County

Jazz wasn't unknown in Herzig's hometown of Horb, Germany, a small burg high in the Swabian Alps once known for its textile factories. But it wasn't exactly popular either. There was one group in the area, Beeblebrox, headed up by Peter Keinle. And, as Herzig puts it, "they tried to play this hardcore fusion and nobody got it."

Still, she was determined to play with someone, and she had a pretty good keyboard — one of the first Yamaha DX-7s. Classically-trained but not as well-versed in jazz, she approached the group in 1986 while an undergraduate. Herzig: "The thing is they said, 'You can practice with us, but when we play, we need someone who can really play.'"

Kienle and his cohorts needn't have warned her. They may have allowed Herzig into practices to get access to her keyboard, but she proved her chops and never missed a concert. The band name survived Herzig and Kienle's move to the States in 1988, with versions of BeebleBrox taking shape in both Alabama, where Herzig attended grad school, and in Bloomington, where they moved in 1991 so that Herzig could pursue her doctorate.

Herzig studied alongside now-household names in the local jazz community during her time at IU, most of whom are now her labelmates at Owl Studios: saxophonist Rob Dixon, trombonist Rich Dole, trumpeter/educator Mark Buselli and his collaborator Brent Wallarab. She had significant performance opportunities early in her studies, including a 1991 trip to Monte Carlo with the IU big band sponsored by Johnnie Walker, which saw IU students playing alongside jazz greats such as Freddie Hubbard, Betty Carter and Dave Brubeck. "It worked really great," Herzig says of the experience, "but then IU realized, 'Oh, we have an alcohol company sponsoring.'"

She earned her doctorate in music education (with specialty in jazz studies) in 1997, at which time she considered job offers that would have taken her out of the state, including an organist gig at a large Catholic church on Long Island. But Bloomington felt like home. In fact, it looked like home from the beginning. She remembers driving from Alabama to Indiana in 1991 and noticing the similarities between the hilly landscape of south central Indiana and that of her birthplace. She grew up near a ski slope — and, at one time, Ski World wasn't too far from her Bloomington home.

"I really liked it," she says of her first impressions of the city. "The whole culture in Bloomington is so much different from everywhere else because you have people from all over the world...It's a mini-oasis."

Herzig and Kienle started a family around the time of her graduation: "We're going to be old grandmas and grandpas," she jokes. And by 2002, Herzig had found a steady job at IU as a lecturer, helping to create music industry classes for a newly-created arts administration program. Her students have gone on to jobs with Bloomington outfits, including indie label Secretly Canadian and promotions company Rock Paper Scissors, as well as corporations such as Atlantic Records.

No shame in her game

When Herzig approaches a new album project, she has one central question in mind: "How can I do something special and different?" On her first Owl Studios album, Peace on Earth, she answered that question by working up a selection of Christmas songs, including John & Yoko's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)."

For her latest project, she happened upon the idea of coupling a CD with a DVD. After all, a DVD equals "extra value," which is important in a jazz world in which some of the most successful artists rarely sell more than ten thousand copies of an album.

Owl went for it, despite the extra expense. As Herzig puts it, studio head J. Allan Hall "is just there to support, and if he thinks it's a good idea, he'll go for it." Or Herzig may just be really convincing: in the documentary about her featured on the DVD, Hall calls Herzig "a hustler, in the best sense of the word," a characterization that Herzig laughs off when I bring it up during our talk at Rick's Cafe Boatyard.

But she is tireless, and one wonders just where she finds her passion. Herzig: "It's all about the energy of creating a new project that came out of your mind, and molding it and making it a reality...That excitement is where my energy comes from, I think. It's obviously not the money."

She's at no loss for ideas for the future, although she's presently occupied with her work on the David Baker book and with ISIS of Indiana, which will present its signature event, the Femmes Blu festival, September 30 at The Cabaret at the Columbia Club. She has an idea for a solo piano CD that includes multimedia components, including an interactive score and video clips. And she'd like to tour more, despite the difficulty in finding gigs in the absence of an actual jazz circuit.

Looking back, Herzig doesn't think it so unusual that a German-born musician has ended up a steward for the Indiana jazz tradition. She points to her time as an instrumental arranger and director for the IU Soul Revue, an ensemble affiliated with the university's African American Arts Institute. "We were presenting the black tradition and nobody said anything," she says of her place in the ensemble, which she notes also included a Japanese guitarist at the time. "I wrote the arrangements, I did my job, it was in style and it worked."

And she's invested in the state — and the country, noting that she can get legitimately upset over, for instance, the slashing of funding for public radio, now that she's become an American citizen. "We've been here now 20 years, and getting integrated and teaching a class, you realize what a great tradition this state has," Herzig says. "I guess I'm an adopted Hoosier, passing the word on...Even musicians who live here sometimes feel like they have to justify something or feel inferior. And when you look back, it was the crossroads: everybody came through, we had all these clubs, all the great bands played here and a lot of great musicians were from here."

To visit Monika Herzig's website CLICK HERE

The First Lady of Song

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 22 May 2011 14:41:31 PDT

Dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums.

Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. (Or rather, some might say all the jazz greats had the pleasure of working with Ella.)

She performed at top venues all over the world, and packed them to the hilt. Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all races, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common - they all loved her.

Humble but happy beginnings

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Va. on April 25, 1917. Her father, William, and mother, Temperance (Tempie), parted ways shortly after her birth. Together, Tempie and Ella went to Yonkers, N.Y, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend Joseph Da Silva. Ella's half-sister, Frances, was born in 1923 and soon she began referring to Joe as her stepfather.

To support the family, Joe dug ditches and was a part-time chauffeur, while Tempie worked at a laundromat and did some catering. Occasionally, Ella took on small jobs to contribute money as well. Perhaps naïve to the circumstances, Ella worked as a runner for local gamblers, picking up their bets and dropping off money.

Their apartment was in a mixed neighborhood, where Ella made friends easily. She considered herself more of a tomboy, and often joined in the neighborhood games of baseball. Sports aside, she enjoyed dancing and singing with her friends, and some evenings they would take the train into Harlem and watch various acts at the Apollo Theater.

A rough patch

In 1932, Tempie died from serious that injuries she received in a car accident. Ella took the loss very hard. After staying with Joe for a short time, Tempie's sister Virginia took Ella home. Shortly afterward Joe suffered a heart attack and died, and her little sister Frances joined them.

Unable to adjust to the new circumstances, Ella became increasingly unhappy and entered into a difficult period of her life. Her grades dropped dramatically, and she frequently skipped school. After getting into trouble with the police, she was taken into custody and sent to a reform school. Living there was even more unbearable, as she suffered beatings at the hands of her caretakers.

Eventually Ella escaped from the reformatory. The 15-year-old found herself broke and alone during the Great Depression, and strove to endure.

Never one to complain, Ella later reflected on her most difficult years with an appreciation for how they helped her to mature. She used the memories from these times to help gather emotions for performances, and felt she was more grateful for her success because she knew what it was like to struggle in life.

"What's she going to do?"

In 1934 Ella's name was pulled in a weekly drawing at the Apollo and she won the opportunity to compete in Amateur Night. Ella went to the theater that night planning to dance, but when the frenzied Edwards Sisters closed the main show, Ella changed her mind. "They were the dancingest sisters around," Ella said, and she felt her act would not compare.

Once on stage, faced with boos and murmurs of "What's she going to do?" from the rowdy crowd, a scared and disheveled Ella made the last minute decision to sing. She asked the band to play Hoagy Carmichael's "Judy," a song she knew well because Connee Boswell's rendition of it was among Tempie's favorites. Ella quickly quieted the audience, and by the song's end they were demanding an encore. She obliged and sang the flip side of the Boswell Sister's record, "The Object of My Affections."

Off stage, and away from people she knew well, Ella was shy and reserved. She was self-conscious about her appearance, and for a while even doubted the extent of her abilities. On stage, however, Ella was surprised to find she had no fear. She felt at home in the spotlight.

"Once up there, I felt the acceptance and love from my audience," Ella said. "I knew I wanted to sing before people the rest of my life."

In the band that night was saxophonist and arranger Benny Carter. Impressed with her natural talent, he began introducing Ella to people who could help launch her career. In the process he and Ella became lifelong friends, often working together.

Fueled by enthusiastic supporters, Ella began entering - and winning - every talent show she could find. In January 1935 she won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. It was there that Ella first met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb. Although her voice impressed him, Chick had already hired male singer Charlie Linton for the band. He offered Ella the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University.

"If the kids like her," Chick said, "she stays."

Despite the tough crowd, Ella was a major success, and Chick hired her to travel with the band for $12.50 a week.

Jazzing things up

In mid 1936, Ella made her first recording. "Love and Kisses" was released under the Decca label, with moderate success. By this time she was performing with Chick's band at the prestigious Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, often referred to as "The World's Most Famous Ballroom."

Shortly afterward, Ella began singing a rendition of the song, "(If You Can't Sing It) You Have to Swing It." During this time, the era of big swing bands was shifting, and the focus was turning more toward bebop. Ella played with the new style, often using her voice to take on the role of another horn in the band. "You Have to Swing It" was one of the first times she began experimenting with scat singing, and her improvisation and vocalization thrilled fans. Throughout her career, Ella would master scat singing, turning it into a form of art.

In 1938, at the age of 21, Ella recorded a playful version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket." The album sold 1 million copies, hit number one, and stayed on the pop charts for 17 weeks. Suddenly, Ella Fitzgerald was famous.

Coming into her own

On June 16, 1939, Ella mourned the loss of her mentor Chick Webb. In his absence the band was renamed "Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Band," and she took on the overwhelming task of bandleader.

Perhaps in search of stability and protection, Ella married Benny Kornegay, a local dockworker who had been pursuing her. Upon learning that Kornegay had a criminal history, Ella realized that the relationship was a mistake and had the marriage annulled.

While on tour with Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1946, Ella fell in love with bassist Ray Brown. The two were married and eventually adopted a son, whom they named Ray, Jr.

At the time, Ray was working for producer and manager Norman Granz on the "Jazz at the Philharmonic" tour. Norman saw that Ella had what it took to be an international star, and he convinced Ella to sign with him. It was the beginning of a lifelong business relationship and friendship.

Under Norman's management, Ella joined the Philharmonic tour, worked with Louis Armstrong on several albums and began producing her infamous songbook series. From 1956-1964, she recorded covers of other musicians' albums, including those by Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, the Gershwins, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, and Rodgers and Hart. The series was wildly popular, both with Ella's fans and the artists she covered.

"I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them," Ira Gershwin once remarked.

Ella also began appearing on television variety shows. She quickly became a favorite and frequent guest on numerous programs, including "The Bing Crosby Show," "The Dinah Shore Show," "The Frank Sinatra Show," "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Tonight Show," "The Nat King Cole Show," "The Andy Willams Show" and "The Dean Martin Show."

Due to a busy touring schedule, Ella and Ray were often away from home, straining the bond with their son. Ultimately, Ray Jr. and Ella reconnected and mended their relationship.

"All I can say is that she gave to me as much as she could," Ray, Jr. later said, "and she loved me as much as she could."

Unfortunately, busy work schedules also hurt Ray and Ella's marriage. The two divorced in 1952, but remained good friends for the rest of their lives.

Overcoming discrimination

On the touring circuit it was well-known that Ella's manager felt very strongly about civil rights and required equal treatment for his musicians, regardless of their color. Norman refused to accept any type of discrimination at hotels, restaurants or concert halls, even when they traveled to the Deep South.

Once, while in Dallas touring for the Philharmonic, a police squad irritated by Norman's principles barged backstage to hassle the performers. They came into Ella's dressing room, where band members Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet were shooting dice, and arrested everyone.

"They took us down," Ella later recalled, "and then when we got there, they had the nerve to ask for an autograph."

Norman wasn't the only one willing to stand up for Ella. She received support from numerous celebrity fans, including a zealous Marilyn Monroe.

"I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt," Ella later said. "It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the '50s. She personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him - and it was true, due to Marilyn's superstar status - that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman - a little ahead of her times. And she didn't know it."

Worldwide recognition

Ella continued to work as hard as she had early on in her career, despite the ill effects on her health. She toured all over the world, sometimes performing two shows a day in cities hundreds of miles apart. In 1974, Ella spent a legendary two weeks performing in New York with Frank Sinatra and Count Basie. Still going strong five years later, she was inducted into the Down Beat magazine Hall of Fame, and received Kennedy Center Honors for her continuing contributions to the arts.

Outside of the arts, Ella had a deep concern for child welfare. Though this aspect of her life was rarely publicized, she frequently made generous donations to organizations for disadvantaged youths, and the continuation of these contributions was part of the driving force that prevented her from slowing down. Additionally, when Frances died, Ella felt she had the additional responsibilities of taking care of her sister's family.

In 1987, United States President Ronald Reagan awarded Ella the National Medal of Arts. It was one of her most prized moments. France followed suit several years later, presenting her with their Commander of Arts and Letters award, while Yale, Dartmouth and several other universities bestowed Ella with honorary doctorates.

End of an era

In September of 1986, Ella underwent quintuple coronary bypass surgery. Doctors also replaced a valve in her heart and diagnosed her with diabetes, which they blamed for her failing eyesight. The press carried rumors that she would never be able to sing again, but Ella proved them wrong. Despite protests by family and friends, including Norman, Ella returned to the stage and pushed on with an exhaustive schedule.

By the 1990s, Ella had recorded over 200 albums. In 1991, she gave her final concert at New York's renowned Carnegie Hall. It was the 26th time she performed there.

As the effects from her diabetes worsened, 76-year-old Ella experienced severe circulatory problems and was forced to have both of her legs amputated below the knees. She never fully recovered from the surgery, and afterward, was rarely able to perform. During this time, Ella enjoyed sitting outside in her backyard, and spending time with Ray, Jr. and her granddaughter Alice.

"I just want to smell the air, listen to the birds and hear Alice laugh," she said.

On June 15, 1996, Ella Fitzgerald died in her Beverly Hills home. Hours later, signs of remembrance began to appear all over the world. A wreath of white flowers stood next to her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a marquee outside the Hollywood Bowl theater read, "Ella, we will miss you."

After a private memorial service, traffic on the freeway was stopped to let her funeral procession pass through. She was laid to rest in the "Sanctuary of the Bells" section of the Sunset Mission Mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, Calif.

One Tenacious Trumpet

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 18:57:55 PDT

He was the most brilliant trumpet player of his generation, an original and memorable composer, a dynamic stage presence and one of the authentic legends of modern jazz.
Clifford Brown was born October 30, 1930 in Wilmington, Delaware. As a young high school student Brown began playing trumpet and within a very short time was active in college and other youth bands. By his late teens he had attracted the favorable attention of leading jazzmen, including fellow trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Fats Navarro.

At the end of the 40s he was studying music at Maryland University and in 1952, following recovery from a serious road accident, he made his first records with Chris Powell and Tadd Dameron. In the autumn of 1953 he was a member of the big band Lionel Hampton took to Europe. Liberally filled with precocious talent, this band attracted considerable attention during its tour. Contrary to contractual stipulations, many of the young musicians moonlighted on various recordings and Brown in particular was singled out for such sessions. Back in the USA, Brown was fired along with most of the rest of the band when Hampton learned of the records they had made. Brown then joined Art Blakey and in mid- 1954 teamed up with Max Roach to form the Clifford Brown- Max Roach Quintet. The quintet was quickly recognized as one of the outstanding groups in contemporary jazz and Brown as a major trumpeter and composer.

At a time when many modern jazz trumpeters sought technical expertise at the expense of tone, Brown, in common with his friend and paradigm, Navarro, had technique to spare but also developed a rich, full and frequently beautiful tone. At the same time, whether playing at scorching tempos or on languorous ballads, his range was exhaustive. He was enormously and brilliantly inventive but his search for original ideas was never executed at the expense of taste. In all his work, Brown displayed the rare combination of supreme intelligence and great emotional depths. His playing was only one aspect of his talent; he was also a fine composer, creating many works that have become modern jazz standards. Although his career was brief, Brown's influence persisted for a while in the work of Lee Morgan and throughout succeeding decades in that of Freddie Hubbard. Fortunately for jazz fans, Brown's own work persists in the form of his recordings, almost any of which can be safely recommended as outstanding examples of the very best of jazz. Indeed, all of his recordings with Roach are classics.

During his remarkable three year run, Brown made more than a dozen albums among the ones on the EmArcy label are Brown & Roach Inc (1954), Study in Brown (1955), Clifford Brown With Strings(1955), A Study in Brown(1955) Clifford Brown All Stars (1956), Memorial Album (1956), Clifford Brown & Max Roach at Basin St. East (1956), and Pure Genius (1956) these are prime models of the art of jazz trumpet. There are many compilations available, as are box sets as the Complete Blue Note-Pacific Jazz (Mosaic) and the EmArcy 10 disc set Brownie: The Complete Clifford Brown.
Many of his compositions became standards, including the uptempo “Daahoud,” reflective “Joy Spring”, and “Sandu.” His version of “Cherokee” though not his composition, is still considered the definitive one. Benny Golson did a memorable “I Remember Clifford,” a moving tribute to the young trumpeter, and is a perennial jazz favorite.

Clifford Brown had established himself as the most potent trumpeter in jazz to arrive on the scene since Dizzy Gillespie. Equally influenced (and encouraged) by Fats Navarro and Gillespie, Brown possessed both a remarkable technique for high-speed playing, with every note perfectly placed and formed, and also a beautiful lyrical ballad style. He developed an innate sense of solo form, a rich tone, and a virtuoso technique in all trumpet ranges. His style included brilliant high notes, high rhythmic detail, and a generous incorporation of grace notes and varied inflections, all of which he played with rare grace and ease. He was especially noted for the melodic qualities of his improvising, which often flowed in long phrases. His impact and influence on the jazz world is only matched by his artistry on the trumpet.

On June 26th, 1956, while driving between engagements during a nationwide tour, Brown another quintet member, pianist Richie Powell and the driver Nancy Powell were killed in a road accident. Clifford Brown was twenty six years old.

Sekou & Sonia

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 20:04:35 PDT

Blues, jazz, funk, and Afro-Caribbean percussion surround the soulful voice of Harlem-born poet Sekou Sundiata on his recordings, The Blue Oneness of Dreams and Longstoryshort. His words speak of black culture and tradition, often with a political edge. "People be droppin’ revolution like it was a pick-up line," he says in Longstoryshort. "You wouldn’t use that word if you knew what it meant."

S ekou Sundiata, (born Robert Feaster), was born on August 22, 1948, in Harlem, New York. Sekou taught English literature at the New School for Social Research, Sundiata became quite a performer in his own right as well, usually leading a band on frequent club dates reminiscent of June Jordan, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), and Quincy Troupe. Sundiata began writing for the musical theater, and premiered The Mystery of Love in 1994, with songwriting help from Doug Booth. The duo also teamed up on Sundiata's debut album, The Blue Oneness of Dreams, with Booth contributing both songs and his soulful vocals to the project. The album was released on Polygram in 1997; A Long Story Short followed in early 2000.

Sundiata recorded and performed his poetry with such renowned musicians as Craig Harris, David Murray, Nona Hendryx, and Vernon Reid. However, he did not consider himself a performance poet. "This thing about spoken word artists and performance poets, " he said in a 2003 interview, "I think of it mainly as marketing categories. I’m satisfied with just calling myself a poet."

His designation as a poet also satisfied New York City's New School University, where Sundiata was the first Writer-in-Residence. He taught literature and poetry classes, despite never having published a book of poems. Among his students was folk-rocker Ani DiFranco, whose Righteous Babe label released Longstoryshort. DiFranco has said that Sundiata "taught me everything I know about poetry. " The two performed together in twenty-three cities during her "Rhythm and News Tour" in 2001.
Despite touring and performing with musicians, Sundiata didn't consider himself a "crossover" artist. For him, being a poet necessarily implied a deep engagement with several genres. "It's damn near impossible to understand what contemporary black poets are doing without understanding what's going on with black music and its relationship to black speech and black literature, " he said.

In 2003, Sundiata toured the United States again, performing his one-man theatrical piece Blessing the Boats, a chronicle of his five-year battle with kidney failure, and his eventual recovery thanks to a transplant donated by his friend and manager Katea Stitt, daughter of jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt. The piece blends monologues, readings, stand-up comedy, spoken word, and storytelling with recorded music and video projections.

The poet's most recent theatrical piece, The America Project, contemplating America's place in the world, featured poems and a cycle of songs, accompanied by images and a ten-member ensemble of musicians and vocalists.
Television journalist Bill Moyers, who featured Sundiata in the PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life, has said of the poet: "His music comes from so many places it is impossible to name them all. But I will wager that if we could trace their common origin, we'd arrive at the headwaters of the soul. Listen carefully and he’ll take you there."

Sundiata died of heart failure early in the morning on July 18th, 2007.

Sonia Sanchez, Born Wilsonia Benita Driver on September 9, 1934, in Birmingham, AL; daughter of Wilson L. and Lena (Jones) Driver; married Albert Sanchez (divorced); married Etheridge Knight (divorced); children (second marriage): Anita, Morani, Mungu. Education: Attended public schools in New York City; Hunter College, BA, 1955; postgraduate work at New York University.

Career: Downtown School, New York, instructor, 1965-1967; San Francisco State College, instructor, 1966-68; University of Pittsburgh, assistant professor, 1969-70; Rutgers University, assistant professor, 1970-71; Manhattan Community College, assistant professor of black literature and creative writing teacher of writing, 1971-73; Amherst College, associate professor,1972-73; Muhammad Speaks, columnist, 1970s(?); Spelman College, poet-in-residence, 1988-89; Temple University, Laura H. Carnell Professor of English, 1977-99.

Memberships: Poetry Society of America, American Studies Association, Academy of American Poets, PEN, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Selected awards: PEN Writing Award and the American Academy of Art and Letters' $1,000 award to continue writing; honorary Ph.D. in fine arts, Wilberforce University, 1973; National Education Association Award, 1977-78; Honorary Citizen of Atlanta, 1982; Tribute to Black Womanhood Award by black students at Smith College; 1985 American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades; Pew Fellowship in the Arts, 1992-93.

Addresses: Home–Philadelphia, PA.

Sanchez also has contributed to journals and anthologies as a poet, essayist, and editor. She has edited anthologies, including Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Blackness Comin at You, An Anthology of the Sonia Sanchez Writers Workshop at Countee Cullen Library in Harlem; and We Be Word Sorcerers: Twenty-five Stories by Black Americans. Also, she has written and edited stories for young readers, such as the compilation A Sound Investment, and the tale, The Adventures of Fathead, Smallhead, and Squarehead. In addition, Sanchez has contributed to a book on Egyptian Queens and written for the publications Black Scholar and Journal of African Studies. She also has recorded her poetry.

In her 1973 book of poems, A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women, Sanchez explores being a woman in a society that "does not prepare young black women, or women period, to be women," as she told Claudia Tate in Black Women Writers at Work. She also writes about politics and ethnic pride and uses parts of her life to illustrate a general condition. Although she still advocates revolutionary change she also focuses on individuals battling to survive and find love and joy in their lives. Her work has been called both autobiographical and universal. Critics have observed that while her early books address social oppression, her 1970s plays are about her personal struggles. In Uh, Huh: But How Do it Free us? a black woman participating in the movement against white oppression refuses to be mistreated by her husband. As Sanchez said to Claudia Tate, "If you cannot remove yourself from the oppression of a man, how in the hell are you going to remove yourself from the oppression of a country?"

Sanchez's books of verse include Wounded in the House of a Friend and Does Your House Have Lions? The first book, published in 1995, is a blend of poetry and prose in which she pays tribute to Essence magazine and presents memorial pieces for Malcolm X and James Baldwin. According to Publishers Weekly, "Sanchez is at her best...when she places her speaker in the furious center of criminal action: a raped woman's detailed account of her attack, a woman trading her seven-year-old daughter for crack ('he held the stuff out/to me and I cdn't remember/her birthdate I cdn't remember/my daughter's face'). A brilliant narrative is offered in the voice of a Harlem woman struggling with (and eventually hammered to death by) her junkie granddaughter."

In Does Your House Have Lions? (1997) Sanchez concerns herself with AIDS and familial estrangements and reconciliations. In the book she writes of her brother who left the South angry at his absentee father. He hurls himself into the gay world in New York City, "and the days rummaging his eyes/and the nights flickering through a slit/of narrow bars. hips. thighs./and his thoughts labeling him misfit/as he prowled, pranced in the starlit/city," wrote Sanchez. But AIDS pursues him and the family is only brought together again because of his illness and hospitalization. As he dies, he hears the spiritual voices of his ancestors, who also are present. Kay Bourne stated in the Bay State Banner, "Stylistically, the 70-page heartfelt lyrical poem is a wonder. It is a triumph of skill with its consistent rhyming pattern (ababbcc) that propels the reader forward. It is brilliant in its choice of words, which, while never sending the reader scurrying to the dictionary, is touchingly apt in plumbing the depths of her brother's experience and that of her other family members."

The author has won numerous awards for her work and activities, including the PEN Writing Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' $1,000 award to continue writing. She was given an honorary Ph.D. in fine arts by Wilberforce University in 1973 and received a National Education Association Award in 1977-78. She was named Honorary Citizen of Atlanta in 1982, and received an NEA award in 1984. More recent awards include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 1992-93, an honorary Ph.D. from Baruch College in 1993, a PEN fellowship in the arts in 1993-1994, and a Legacy Award from Jomandi Productions in 1995.

Throughout her distinguished teaching career, Sanchez taught and lectured at institutions across the country. As a teacher her legacy is as one of the pioneers of African-American Studies. She was the first professor to offer a course on the literature of African-American women (at the University of Pittsburgh in 1969). She began teaching in 1965 at New York's Downtown Community School. After teaching at several universities, including San Francisco State College (now University), the University of Pittsburgh, City College of the City of New York, Amherst, Spelman College, and the University of Pennsylvania, she became a professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University where she remained until her retirement in 1999.

Though retired from teaching, Sanchez did not quit writing. She kept to her discipline that she started as a youngster. She attributes her desire to keep writing to her "love of language," as she told African American Review. "It is that love of language that has propelled me, that love of language that came from listening to my grandmother speak black English. I would repeat what she said and fall out of the bed and fall down on the floor and laugh, and she knew that I was enjoying her language, because she knew that I didn't speak black English. But I did speak hers, you know. It is that love of language that, when you have written a poem that you know works, then you stand up and you dance around, or you open your door and go out on the porch and let out a loud laugh, you know."

With the 2004 publication of the spoken-word album, Full Moon of Sonia, Sanchez is continuing her legacy as the poet who brought black English to the world. As put by Black Issues Book Review: "It is refreshing to see a legend, a respected artist, come forward and show all of us how to do it right. Full Moon of Sonia does more than give us good poetry set to music; it galavants through an amazing formal and stylistic range that reminds us all how Sonia Sanchez finally got to this place."

Poetry
Homecoming Poems, Broadside Press, 1969.

We a BaddDDD People, Broadside Press, 1970.

Liberation Poems, Broadside Press, 1971.

It's a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistuhs, (Juvenile) Broadside Press, 1971.

A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women, Broadside Press, 1973.

Love Poems, Third Press, 1973.

I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, Black Scholar Press, 1981.

Homegirls and Handgrenades: Poems, Third World, 1985.

Under a Soprano Sky: Poems, Africa World Press, 1987.

Shake Down Memory and Continuous Fire, Africa World Press, 1991.

Wounded in the House of a Friend, Beacon Press, 1995.

Does Your House Have Lions?, Beacon Press, 1997.

Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1999.

Plays
The Bronx is Next, Tulane Drama Review, 1968.

Sister Sonji, New Plays from Black Theatre, 1970.

Malcolm/Man Don't Live Here No Mo', Black Theatre, 1972.

Uh, Huh: But How Do it Free us? 1975.

I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't, OIC Theatre, 1982.

Black Cats Back and Uneasy Landings, 1995.

Recordings
Sonia Sanchez, Pacifica Tape Library, 1968.

Homecoming, Broadside, 1969.

We a BaddDDD People, Broadside, 1979.

A Sun Lady for All Seasons Reads Her Poetry, Folkways, 1971.

Sonia Sanchez and Robert Bly, Blackbox, 1971.

Sonia Sanchez: Selected Poems, Watershed Intermedia, 1975.

IDKT: Capturing Facts about the Heritage of Black Americans, Ujima, 1982.

Full Moon of Sonia, 2004.

Sources
Books
Black Women Writers at Work, ed. by Claudia Tate, Continuum, 1983, pp. 132-148.

Black Women Writers, 1950-1980: A Critical Evaluation, 1984.

Contemporary Authors, Gale, Vol. 49, New Revision Series, pp. 349-355; Vols. 33-36, First Revision, 1973, p. 691.

Contemporary Black American Poets and Dramatists, ed. by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, 1995, pp. 171-172.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Vol. 5, 1976, pp. 382-383.

Ijala: Sonia Sanchez and the African Poetic Tradition, Third World Press, 1996.

Notable Black American Women, Gale, 1992, pp. 976-977.

Sanchez, Sonia, Does Your House Have Lions? Beacon Press, 1997 p. 9.

Sanchez, Sonia, Wounded in the House of a Friend, Beacon Press, 1995.

Periodicals
African American Review, Winter 2000.

American Visions, August-September, 1996, p. 36.

Bay State Banner, October 23, 1997, pp. 22, 24.

Black Issues Book Review, March-April 2005.

Booklist, February 15, 1997.

Chicago Sun-Times, April 18, 1997.

Nation, April 17, 1972, p. 508.

New Yorker, April 8, 1972, pp. 97-99.

Poetry, 1973, pp. 45-46.

Publishers Weekly, July 15, 1974, p. 77; February 27, 1995, p. 97; February 24, 1997.

Time, May 1, 1972, p. 53.

Vibe, August 1997, p. 136.

World, May/June 1999.

—Alison Carb Sussman and Sara Pendergast

To visit Sonia Sanchez's website CLICK HERE

Dinah Washington

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 21:47:14 PDT

Dinah Washington was at once one of the most beloved and controversial singers of the mid-20th century -- beloved to her fans, devotees, and fellow singers; controversial to critics who still accuse her of selling out her art to commerce and bad taste. Her principal sin, apparently, was to cultivate a distinctive vocal style that was at home in all kinds of music, be it R&B, blues, jazz, middle of the road pop -- and she probably would have made a fine gospel or country singer had she the time. Hers was a gritty, salty, high-pitched voice, marked by absolute clarity of diction and clipped, bluesy phrasing. Washington's personal life was turbulent, with seven marriages behind her, and her interpretations showed it, for she displayed a tough, totally unsentimental, yet still gripping hold on the universal subject of lost love. She has had a huge influence on R&B and jazz singers who have followed in her wake, notably Nancy Wilson, Esther Phillips, and Diane Schuur, and her music is abundantly available nowadays via the huge seven-volume series The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury.

Born Ruth Lee Jones, she moved to Chicago at age three and was raised in a world of gospel, playing the piano and directing her church choir. At 15, after winning an amateur contest at the Regal Theatre, she began performing in nightclubs as a pianist and singer, opening at the Garrick Bar in 1942. Talent manager Joe Glaser heard her there and recommended her to Lionel Hampton, who asked her to join his band. Hampton says that it was he who gave Ruth Jones the name Dinah Washington, although other sources claim it was Glaser or the manager of the Garrick Bar. In any case, she stayed with Hampton from 1943 to 1946 and made her recording debut for Keynote at the end of 1943 in a blues session organized by Leonard Feather with a sextet drawn from the Hampton band. With Feather's "Evil Gal Blues" as her first hit, the records took off, and by the time she left Hampton to go solo, Washington was already an R&B headliner. Signing with the young Mercury label, Washington produced an enviable string of Top Ten hits on the R&B charts from 1948 to 1955, singing blues, standards, novelties, pop covers, even Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart." She also recorded many straight jazz sessions with big bands and small combos, most memorably with Clifford Brown on Dinah Jams but also with Cannonball Adderley, Clark Terry, Ben Webster, Wynton Kelly, and the young Joe Zawinul (who was her regular accompanist for a couple of years).

In 1959, Washington made a sudden breakthrough into the mainstream pop market with "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes," a revival of a Dorsey Brothers hit set to a Latin American bolero tune. For the rest of her career, she would concentrate on singing ballads backed by lush orchestrations for Mercury and Roulette, a formula similar to that of another R&B-based singer at that time, Ray Charles, and one that drew plenty of fire from critics even though her basic vocal approach had not changed one iota. Although her later records could be as banal as any easy listening dross of the period, there are gems to be found, like Billie Holiday's "Don't Explain," which has a beautiful, bluesy Ernie Wilkins chart conducted by Quincy Jones. Struggling with a weight problem, Washington died of an accidental overdose of diet pills mixed with alcohol at the tragically early age of 39, still in peak voice, still singing the blues in an L.A. club only two weeks before the end.

Simple Pleasure, Simple Love

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 21:22:02 PST

After woodshedding with Cannonball Adderley's recordings, alto saxophonist Vincent Herring worked up the nerve to approach Nat Adderley at a gig and proclaim familiarity with if not mastery of his late brother's music. A jam on stage proved it true and led to a gig.
Herring was born in Hopkinsville, N.Y., on Nov. 19, 1964, and grew up in California. He moved to New York City in 1983, where he played in the streets and subways before landing gigs with Lionel Hampton, David Murray, Cedar Walton, Abdullah Ibrahim, Horace Silver and Art Blakey. Herring joined Adderley's group in early '90 and producer Leroy Parkins, who heard him on the street, signed him to MusicMasters. At Adderley's urging, Orrin Keepnews also took an interest in Herring and produced sessions for Landmark.

"When studying the styles of Bird, Coltrane, and Cannonball, I realized that their music is so powerful it can engulf you," Herring explained to Down Beat writer Tom Nuccio. "To avoid this, I realized that you have to be able to take from their music without letting it take you."

It was only fitting that Vincent Herring gained his first important recognition playing with Nat Adderley, for his sound is strongly influenced by his idol, Cannonball Adderley. Born in Kentucky and raised in California, Herring moved to New York in 1983, and played with a variety of major musicians (including Lionel Hampton, David Murray, Horace Silver, and Art Blakey) before joining Adderley (1987-1993). Vincent Herring, who has recorded for Landmark and Music Masters, has led his own group since the early '90s

Amy Gabriel, better known in the poetry world as a.G., was born on May 6, 1972 in Akron, Ohio. Amy is an artist, poet, blog writer and social networking diva who recently rediscovered her passion for writing at the tender age of thirty-something. Living a life that she had deemed impossible; a life filled with the beauty of words, has syllabically enhanced a happy ending.

The love of words has been a constant in Amy’s life. At a young age she discovered that reading was the greatest escape/pleasure/release/comfort that she could have ever found. As a result, words became a constant companion; swirling in a polysyllabic dance that shaped the future of her world. A multitude of years spent in hospital rooms with a sickly sibling allowed her love for reading, and consequently writing, to come to full fruition.

Overcoming obstacles is a prevailing theme in Amy’s blog Words With Sass (http://sassifiable.com/), as well as her written and spoken poetry. She has had difficulties throughout her life but has used them as a tool for inspiration versus despair.
A recovering alcoholic, since the age of nineteen, Amy has gleaned a take on life that only comes from a spiritual journey of sorts. Years spent in formal education and employment as an Addictions Therapist/Mental Health Counselor, perpetuates a unique take on her writings. The peculiar twists of the human condition pepper her poetry with a transient zest for the real and raw. Another blog that she authors is I Love Recovery (http://iloverecovery.com/). A site for the clean and sober and everything in between, Amy was asked to write this by In The Rooms (http://intherooms.com/), a social networking website for individuals recovering from addictions.

A seven year expedition into a marriage with “Prince Charming-Less”, surprisingly did not leave her bitter but perpetuated compassion for suffering and heartbreak. All life experience is fodder for the poetry of Amy Gabriel. Passion and the exploration of the human heart, make for an interesting foray into the vast universe that comprises the culmination of her compositional fortitude.

Amy has a full, rich life surrounded by her “mini ninjas”; three beautiful daughters who are the air she breathes. More recently Ms. Gabriel has found true love, and in turn has inspired every single line of the love poetry she has recorded. Engaged to be married, for the very first time she has discovered the existential exquisiteness of what it means to "stick the landing"; the no-matter-what-ism of forever. Her Happily Ever After (commonly referred to as “Scott” who is also a phenomenal poet), has precipitated an upcoming move from the Midwest; aka “Frigid Ohio”. Looking forward to beach living on the East Coast, Amy will continue her love affair with life and as a result her inspiring words will continue to flow freely.

Emotional Journey

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:11:38 PST

Amid endless choices, the sound of a Dave Holland bass line compels attention. A master of tone and rhythm, the bassist, composer, and bandleader is now in his fifth decade as a performer and his music possesses a rich and kaleidoscopic history. One of Holland’s mentors, the affably sage-like saxophonist Sam Rivers, gave him a tip once. “Sam said, ‘Don’t leave anything out—play all of it,’ ” Holland once told a radio interviewer. “That's become almost a mantra for me over the years," he says, "as I've tried to find a way to build a vehicle which lets me utilize the full spectrum which includes the tradition, playing the blues and improvising freely. I love all that music, and there's been a desire to reconcile all those areas, to make them relevant, hopefully, in a contemporary context, as one music."

Holland is not the only accomplished bassist in music, an instrument rich in authoritative figures like Charles Mingus and Scott LaFaro. He is a seminal figure in post-1960s jazz, but has never allowed his work to be limited by tradition.
This path has led him from the frontiers of free improvisation to his modern ensembles that fully embody Rivers’ philosophy of “playing all of it.”

Born in 1946, the Wolverhampton, England, native was a steady figure on the London jazz scene when Miles Davis saw him at the fabled Soho jazz club Ronnie Scott’s in1968, playing in a combo that opened for the Bill Evans Trio. “Miles heard something in his sound and his ideas," recalled Jack DeJohnette, who was Evans’s drummer on the date. A month later, Holland was on the bandstand with Davis at Count Basie’s Harlem nightclub. He then joined the rhythm section on Filles de Kilimanjaro, and the revolutionary In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew sessions. It was a heady two years, but Holland was quickly developing his own ideas about music.

He recalls that one of his earliest and hardest lessons was how to make his own space in Davis' music, which at the time was electronically evolving. "When I first joined Miles' band, he didn't say much to me. I now know that to be one of his great gifts to artists: to encourage us to not play like the guys who came before us, but to explore our own creative solutions. At the time I remember reading a quote from the Sufi tradition that said, 'Plant your banner firmly in the desert sand.' That resonated with me. I knew I had to figure out what I could bring to the table to represent how I heard and felt the music."

Eager to pursue his own radical new sounds, Holland did what many of his peers would not have contemplated. He quit Davis’ band, giving up the arena gigs at vast venues like Madison Square Garden to commit to the creation of his own music. And then he got even busier. The 1970s found Holland prolific. Solo, and in collaboration, he became a dominant voice in the new music. Along with fellow Miles alum Chick Corea, he formed the shortlived supergroup Circle, and then joined Rivers for the epochal Conference of the Birds. The 1972 album, one of Holland’s first for the ECM label, was a quartet session that also featured multi-reedist Anthony Braxton and drummer Barry Altschul (both of Circle). Inspired by the birds that frequented the yard of Holland’s London home, and a 12th century Persian epic written by Farid ud-Din Attar, the album became a classic: outward-thinking music that made the avant-garde swinging and coherent, suffused in feeling yet attentive to form. Holland also explored the essence of his instrument in the duo record with Barre Phillips, Music for Two Basses (1971) and the remarkable solo album Emerald Tears (1977).

Interestingly enough, Holland’s solo albums – which also include the cello-driven Life Cycle (1983) and One’s All (a 1993 release on the German Intuition label) – brought him back full circle to his earliest fascination with the bass and strings. "I loved the richness of the sound and the instrument's expressiveness,” he says, recalling his exposure as teenager to albums featuring Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. “But what really knocked me out – and is still the key to playing this music – is the communicative quality of those players. The idea of the communion of playing struck me deeply. How they complemented each other during solos and how they interacted. This was so far ahead of anything I had heard up to that point. I saw a much wider horizon ahead to reach for. The emotion of jazz moved me. It knocked me off my feet”

DeJohnette marvels at his musicianship in this setting: "Dave is one of a few bassists who can get an audience on their feet during a solo. He learned from Miles to have a point of view in his playing." Singling out Bach's sonatas, Holland says that he's carrying on a stringed instrument tradition: "On my solo recordings and in my solo concerts, I try to find a variety of ways to play the bass so the music isn't boring and repetitive. There are different ways of pacing, and, of course, you can turn on a dime when you're playing by yourself."

It was Holland’s strengths as a collaborator that marked many of his most notable efforts of the decade. His ongoing association with Rivers, Braxton and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler saw Holland’s presence on a slew of important sessions, including a pair of improvisatory duets with Rivers and multiple credits on Braxton’s Arista recordings, such as the splendid New York (Fall 1974). Joining forces with DeJohnette again and guitarist John Abercrombie, Holland joined the collective Gateway trio from 1975-77 recording a pair of albums for ECM. (The trio recorded twice again in the 1990s and continues to play the occasional concert).
Ever versatile, Holland also recorded with folk and rock musicians. As the only acoustic bassist living in Woodstock, NY, at the time, the Englishman was in demand. Michael Cuscuna, who produced several Braxton sessions with Holland on board, solicted his talents for Bonnie Raitt’s Give It Up. Holland also got in the studio with bluegrass legend Vassar Clements and John Hartford. (It was in the same spirit that Holland found himself jamming with Jimi Hendrix one fleeting night in 1969 with drummer Buddy Miles).

Holland formed his first working quintet in 1983, featuring alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, trumpeter Wheeler and trombonist Julian Priester. A series of albums recorded over the next four years – including Jumpin’ In, Seeds of Time, and Razor’s Edge – laid the foundation for Holland’s songbook.

Subsequently, he formed the Dave Holland Trio (with Coleman and DeJohnette) for the 1988 album Triplicate, and teamed with Coleman, electric guitarist Kevin Eubanks and drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith for Extensions in 1989.

The bassist also continued to enjoy strong collaborations with a vast range of his peers, often connecting with celebrated figures from the previous generation of jazz icons. The following year, Holland got together in a unique trio of jazz legends, drummer Billy Higgins and pianist Hank Jones to record The Oracle – a genuine power summit. Other stellar projects included Question & Answer with Pat Metheny & Roy Haynes as well as Like Minds with Gary Burton. This has been a consistent pattern in Holland’s career. During the ‘90s, he renewed an affiliation, begun in the 1970s, with Joe Henderson, joining the tenor saxophonist on So Near (So Far), Porgy & Bess, and the Joe Henderson Big Band. Likewise, Holland reunited with vocalist Betty Carter, touring and recording the live album Feed the Fire. Fellow Davis album Herbie Hancock invited Holland to tour with him in 1992, subsequently recording The New Standard, Holland joined Hancock’s band again in 1996 and, more recently, was part of the sessions for River: The Joni Letters, winner of the 2008 Grammy for Album of the Year.

Throughout the '90s into the new century, Holland moved from strength to strength, both building and consolidating his position as one of the music's important and creatively seeking bandleaders. He launched his third quartet – and released Dream of the Elders (1995), which introduced the vibraphonist Steve Nelson to his ensembles. The Pittsburgh native has been a mainstay in all of Holland’s bands, save for his sextet, since the mid-‘90s. “He’s one of the great improvisers I’ve had a chance to play with,” Holland says. “He brings something new to the table every time. I see guys scratching their heads at what he’s doing. I wanted a chordal instrument in the group. I didn’t necessarily want a piano. I wanted something to give more openness to the music, chordally. Steve’s approach to playing can be very spacious at times. He knows when to lay out and when to play. There are often long stretches where he’s not playing and then he comes in just at the right moment. A lot of people ask me why I’m using vibes. The reason is Steve Nelson.”

Holland also formed his current quintet, which includes tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, trombonist Robin Eubanks and, a more recent addition, drummer Nate Smith. Among their notable recordings are Not for Nothin, Prime Directive and Extended Play.
Eubanks, who has been in Holland’s ensembles since the mid-1980s, brings an expansive range to the band. “He can get a very pure French horn-like sound on the high register and can go from that to a real gutbucket sound, and all the points in between,” Holland says. “It’s really important to me that the musicians are deeply grounded in the tradition of the music but at the same time are looking to move that forward. Not only in their playing but in their composing as well.”

Holland first heard Potter when the award-winning tenor saxophonist was about 19, and playing alto with Red Rodney at the Blue Note. “I was doing a gig there with Joe Henderson,” Holland recalls. Later, he joined Potter on a recording session with DeJohnette and John Scofield. “I was struck by the composure he had for a young musician and his sense of balance. He played with a great deal of assurance.” Potter also knew Eubanks from their stints in the Mingus Big Band, which already made for great chemistry in the horn section.

Drummer Nate Smith was also quite young when Holland first encountered him, during a visit to the University of Virginia in Richmond, Va., where Smith was a student. After another encounter at a memorial concert for Betty Carter, with whom Smith performed in the voclalist’s last years, Holland invited him to join the quintet in 2003. “He’s got a great warmth to his playing, a great sense of community,” Holland says. “I always need players who can really get into a dialogue with each other in the music and are really listenjng to each other and are not up there playing for themselves. And, again, he’s another fine composer in the band. Because of his generation, he brings a particular perspective to the music, as does Chris, which I really appreciate and enjoy.

When Holland talks about the musicians, it’s clear that he’s found an ideal mix of talents and attitudes with which to develop a full, complex and exciting sound that is, above all, of the moment. "We’re all looking to play music that is relevant to the time we live in,” he says. “In the quintet we’re interested in a wide range of context for the music to work in. I’m not looking for a book of music that is only following one direction. I’m lookikng for something that covers a very broad range of approaches to improvisation, a balance between composition and improvisaton, and different compositional settings that have different influences on the performance.”
Holland has only gathered momentum with the new century. In 2000, he debuted his Big Band and its debut What Goes Around. “As a player, I like the situation where you point me in a direction, and let me give a piece momentum,” says Holland. “That’s my aim, giving everyone in the big band the opportunity to delve into their own creative possibilities. There’s a fine line for balance—utilizing the band for my composing and arranging, but also keeping the flexibility and freedom in the music.”
Potter, an MVP in multiple settings for Holland, says the leader’s "core" bass lines allow him to launch his saxophone improvisations in many different directions. "As a leader, Dave approaches the band as something you wind up and let go," he says. "Of course, he's serious about the music. He wants us all to play at our highest level. He's very curious to see how far we can take an idea and run with it."

Charlotte Ann Langston aka "Poetryizme" was born and raised in Seattle, WA January 10 1975 to Charelene Ann Jordan and Bruce Michael Langston. I am the only girl of 7 brothers. Currently I reside in the city of Auburn in Washington State. I have been writing poetry since 6th grade and professionally for 15 yrs. Majority of my writing projects were part of a group collab done thru the Famous Poets Society which I joined in 1993.

The writer I admire the most is Alfred Edward Housman who most of his work were poems that centered on themes of pastoral beauty, unrequited love, fleeting youth, grief, death. When I first encountered this poet these were the things that were most prevalent in my life and or in the lives of those within my circle. His work inspired my to be free with my emotions and not fear what others may think. A large number of his work was based upon the unforbidden love between himself and his male roommate. It took a lot of courage to put that part of him out there. A recent poet that my admiration has fallen upon is Renard Yearby. His flow is smooth yet is words and imagery is strong and pact a wealth of emotions. Because of his work I have started working on my own word play, use of imagery as well as the ability to use historical facts to make a point or imagery stand out.

Writing is a form of release of emotional tension. Most of my writing is an outlet for either personal experiences or the experiences which friends and or family have experienced which have affected me in one form or fashion. I also use my writing to express the world as seen thru my eyes and or as seen by others. The latter is something I have recently began to share outside of my personal journal.
Most of my inspiration comes from personal experience and daily activities and interactions. Majority of my writing comes from pages of my personal journal. Taking daily interactions and feelings and writing about them.

I write daily. My writing process starts in my personal journal then transfers to poetry journal and transformed from journal entries to poems. I may start 5 or 6 pieces a day but usually only really finish 1 or 2 poems.

I believe that I can improve in the strength of my verse structures with using fewer words in some occasions and utilizes words and phrases that may have said the same thing. As well as bring a little more power in my deliver of some of my pieces. The soft laid back tone is not always a sure fit for my work.

The last time I was given unfavorable feed back, was when I first started sharing my work on air. I was so focused on getting thru the reading of my pieces that I forgot about delivering the emotion behind the pieces. I took time to practice my reading and this individual would be my sounding board as I did practice until I got more comfortable with verbally sharing my work.

My goals as a writer are to be able to educate and motivate a positive change even if in one person only. With the hope of causing a ripple effect. Making positive change just a way of life and not just something that occasionally happens. My main aspiration as a writer is to create a platform that allows our youth and adults alike to come together to express cares and concerns without any worries of being judged to assist in breaking some of the generation gaps that exist.
Future projects include: Working on a new poetry book "Widows Chronicles" short stories in a form of poems (collab project with Ashley Hines)... look for it to be released spring of 2011...

Working on a 3rd at the same time "Without the Power of the Pen"... look for it to be released summer of 2011-One woman play on video to be released September 2011-- Play based upon Book Unrequited Love and Letting Go-- which the book is inspired by Betzy Hughes poem Unrequited Love....CD being released September 2011---"Heartache and Butterflies" original date was July 14th but pushed it back some to incorporate new creative flows...Also a mother and daughter poetry book collab... to be released November 2011 " Our Bond"-Collection of poems that deal with the struggles our youth are undergoing, as well as supplying encouragement to our youth. The proceed from this book will go to the The Prideland Youth Crisis Center in Chicago which I also have the pleasure of being on the board of directors.

My thoughts on the poetry world are that we have an opportunity to move and inspire people with the power of our words. Whether it’s in on matters of love, family, relationships, economic, social, political or environmental. We can assist many to a point of healing or gaining additional knowledge or even self esteem that one did not possess before. I feel that my role in the ‘poetry world’ is one of emotional support and assist ones to a point of healing. I say this because I write mostly about situation that have emotionally or physically abusive and at the end of that grey piece show that there is a bright light awaiting those that have gone thru that abusive situation.

Even though I am active in walk-athons and other fundraising avenues for different organizations I do not consider myself a revolutionist because I do use my work to further educate or fight for causes. I am just starting to touch the topics that most would consider a revolutionary poet to touch, I touch these topics to give a view of how these topics look thru my eyes. And nothing more than that.

Awards and Recognitions:

1993 Award of Recognition
Honored as a Famous Poet
Award Given by Famous Poet Society
1994 Award of Recognition
Honored as a Famous Poet
Award Given by Famous Poet Society
1996 Award of Recognition
Honored as a Famous Poet
Award Given by Famous Poet Society
2004 Famous Poet Society
Certificate of Achievement in Poetry “What Lies Within”
2005 Famous Poet Society
Certificate of Achievement in Poetry “Letter to My Daughter”
2005-2006 Poetry.com
Editors Choice Award

SOJP's 3rd Anniversary "ELEVENTH HOUR"

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:11:13 PST

Mulgrew Miller was born in 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 currently resides in Easton, Pennsylvania. As of 2006 he is 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 400 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 is 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.

Donna Kirven, better known in the poetry world as “Celestial Dancer,” was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pa., but currently lives in Northern California with her husband and two daughters. Coping with life through love, laughter, music and her passion for writing, she has found a way to combine the beautiful arts of poetry and music and invites the world to share the joyous blend.. She has written poetry since age 10, and had her first poem published in her high school newspaper. Donna attended Temple University, and is currently a master’s candidate in organizational psychology.

Her first book, When a Band-Aid Isn't Enough, and other poetic perspectives was released in February 2005, and offers a eclectic compilation of traditional and non-traditional poetry that provokes soul deep images of any given moment in time, ones that we all, or someone close to us, have experienced but often have been unwilling or unable to express. Just as in her first book, she remains true to her mission of sculpting life with words and painting feelings that touch souls. She continues to capture unspoken moments of love, laughter, mood and passion in poetic verse.

She has released her second book of poetry, The Alchemy of Understanding, Poetic Soul Therapy, released December 2007, where she has included a collection of poems that reveal facets of living where understanding is, isn’t, was or wished for. Reflecting on her latest book, Celestial writes that her poetry is delicately crafted to leave readers breathless, not just because it sifts your breath away through shock or extracts it with sudden expressive impact, but because the potency of human emotion and speed with which these portraits of feeling have been painted have entered the deepest realm of your heart, mind and soul at a pace that pulls your breath inward in its wake, allowing you to experience the most cherished and often unspoken human sentiment.

Celestial Dancer has been featured several times on IndieFeed Radio, here on Spotlight on Jazz and Poetry, and in many cafes throughout Northern California. She hopes that on some level, at least one part of her poetry will touch the life of another and bring peace of understanding and comfort of kinship. Her life’s mantra is live simply, love generously, care deeply,
speak kindly, and leave the rest to God.

"The Best Of SOJP 2010"

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 06:50:24 PST

During the past year Spotlight On Jazz and Poetry has featured some fantastic artists, both legendary and on the cusp of greatness in the world's of jazz and poetry. We've also held conversations with some of these wonderful musicians and poets, delving into their world and finding out why their respective artforms are important to them as well as our culture. We also held our third "LIVE" show "SILK SESSIONS" right here in Philadelphia, Pa. in October 2010.

We asked you, the listener's, to tell us what your favorite programs were in 2010 and what artists you truly enjoyed. Your feedback was incredible!

"Vibin' with a Lady" featuring Pheralyn Dove and Khan Jamal, "Silk N Soul" featuring Lou Rawls and Victor Fields, MJQ, Erroll Garner, "Silhouettes Spoken in Silver" featuring Horace Silver and Heidi Bacon and "Mingus In A Dream Deferred" featuring Langston Hughes and Charles Mingus, were a few of the SOJP programs you voted as some of the best of 2010.

We've compiled a program which we hope reflects these choices to the fullest.

So sit back, relax and enjoy the program!

"A Tribute to Blue Note, The Harlem Renaissance and The Black Arts Movement Part 3"

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 07:19:48 PST

The Black Arts Movement

or BAM is the artistic branch of the Black Power movement. It was started in Harlem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones). Time Magazine describes the Black Arts Movement as the "single most controversial moment in the history of African-American literature-- possibly in American literature as a whole. The Black Arts Repertory Theatre is a key institution of the Black Arts Movement.

The movement was one of the most important times in the African American literature. It inspired black people to establish their own publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. It led to the creation of African American Studies programs within universities. The movement was triggered by the assassination of Malcolm X Other well-known writers that were involved with this movement included Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, and Rosa Grey. Although not strictly involved with the Movement, other notable African American writers such as novelists Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed share some of its artistic and thematic concerns. Although Ishmael Reed is neither a movement apologist nor advocate, he said:
I think what Black Arts did was inspire a whole lot of Black people to write. Moreover, there would be no multiculturalism movement without Black Arts. Latinos, Asian Americans, and others all say they began writing as a result of the example of the 1960s. Blacks gave the example that you don't have to assimilate. You could do your own thing, get into your own background, your own history, your own tradition and your own culture. I think the challenge is for cultural sovereignty and Black Arts struck a blow for that.

BAM influenced the world of literature, portraying different ethnic voices. Before the movement, the literary canon lacked diversity, and the ability to express ideas from the point of view of racial and ethnic minorities was not valued by the mainstream.

Theatre groups, poetry performances, music and dance were centered around this movement, and therefore African Americans were becoming recognized in the area of literature and arts. African Americans were also able to educate others through different types of expressions and media about cultural differences. The most common form of teaching was through poetry reading. African American performances were used for their own political advertisement, organization, and community issues. The Black Arts Movement was spread by the use of newspaper advertisements. The first major arts movement publication was in 1964.

History

The Black Arts movement, usually referred to as a "sixties" movement, came together in 1965 and broke apart around 1975/1976. In March 1965 following the 21 February assassination of Malcolm X, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) moved from Manhattan's Lower East Side uptown to Harlem, an exodus considered the symbolic birth of the Black Arts movement. Jones was a highly visible publisher (Yugen and Floating Bear magazines, Totem Press), a celebrated poet (Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, 1961, and The Dead Lecturer, 1964), a major music critic (Blues People, 1963), and an Obie Award-winning playwright (Dutchman, 1964) who, up until that fateful split, had functioned in an integrated world. Other than James Baldwin, who at that time had been closely associated with the civil rights movement, Jones was the most respected and most widely published Black writer of his generation.
Although Jones' 1965 move uptown to establish the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS) is considered the formal beginning (it was Jones who came up with the name "Black Arts"), the Black arts movement grew out of a changing political and cultural climate in which Black artists attempted to a place for themselves amidst remaining ideologies of the Cold War, decolonization, and the civil rights movement. Black artists and intellectuals like Baraka made it their project to reject older political, cultural, and artistic traditions.

In his seminal 1965 poem "Black Art," which quickly became the major poetic manifesto of the Black Arts literary movement, Jones declaimed "we want poems that kill." He was not simply speaking metaphorically. During that period armed self-defense and slogans such as "Arm yourself or harm yourself' established a social climate that promoted confrontation with the white power structure, especially the police (e.g., "Off the pigs"). Indeed, Amiri Baraka (Jones changed his name in 1967) had been arrested and convicted (later overturned on appeal) on a gun possession charge during the 1967 Newark rebellion. Additionally, armed struggle was widely viewed as not only a legitimate, but often as the only effective means of black liberation. Black Arts' dynamism, impact, and effectiveness are a direct result of its partisan nature and advocacy of artistic and political freedom "by any means necessary." America had never experienced such a militant artistic movement.
Although the success of sit-ins and public demonstrations of the Black student movement in the 1960s may have “inspired black intellectuals, artists, and political activists to form politicized cultural groups,” many Black Arts activists rejected the non-militant integrational ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement and instead favored those of the Black Liberation Struggle, which placed an emphasis on “self-determination through self-reliance and Black control of significant businesses, organization, agencies, and institutions.” According to the Academy of American Poets, “African American artists within the movement sought to create politically engaged work that explored the African American cultural and historical experience.” The importance that the movement placed on Black autonomy is apparent through the creation institutions such as the Black Arts Repertoire Theatre School (BARTS), created in the spring of 1964 by Amiri Baraka and other Black artists. The opening of BARTS in New York city often overshadow the growth of other radical Black Arts groups and institutions all over the United States. In fact, transgresional and international networks, those of various Left and nationalist (and Left nationalist) groups and their supports, existed far before the movement gained popularity. Although the creation of BARTS did indeed catalyze the spread of other Black Arts institutions and the Black Arts movement across the nation, it was not solely responsible for the growth of the movement.

While it is easy to assume that the movement began solely in the Northeast, it actually started out as “separate and distinct local initiatives across a wide geographic area”, eventually coming together to form the broader national movement. New York City is often referred to as the “birthplace” of the Black Arts Movement, because it was home to many revolutionary Black artists and activists. However, the geographical diversity of the movement opposes the misconception that New York (and Harlem, especially) was the primary site of the movement.

In its beginning states, the movement came together largely through printed media. Journals such as Liberator, The Crusader, and Freedomways created “a national community in which ideology and aesthetics were debated and a wide range of approaches to African American artistic style and subject displayed. These publications tied communities outside of large Black Arts centers to the movement and gave the general Black public access to these sometimes-exclusive circles.
As a literary movement, Black Arts had its roots in groups such as the Umbra Workshop. Umbra (1962) was a collective of young Black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side; major members were writers Steve Cannon, Tom Dent, Al Haynes, David Henderson, Calvin C. Hernton, Joe Johnson, Norman Pritchard, Lenox Raphael, Ishmael Reed, Lorenzo Thomas, James Thompson, Askia M. Touré (Roland Snellings; also a visual artist), Brenda Walcott, and musician-writer Archie Shepp. Touré, a major shaper of "cultural nationalism," directly influenced Jones. Along with Umbra writer Charles Patterson and Charles's brother, William Patterson, Touré joined Jones, Steve Young, and others at BARTS.

Umbra, which produced Umbra Magazine, was the first post-civil rights Black literary group to make an impact as radical in the sense of establishing their own voice distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, the prevailing white literary establishment. The attempt to merge a Black-oriented activist thrust with a primarily artistic orientation produced a classic split in Umbra between those who wanted to be activists and those who thought of themselves as primarily writers, though to some extent all members shared both views. Black writers have always had to face the issue of whether their work was primarily political or aesthetic. Moreover, Umbra itself had evolved out of similar circumstances: In 1960 a Black Nationalist literary organization, On Guard for Freedom, had been founded on the Lower East Side by Calvin Hicks. Its members included Nannie and Walter Bowe, Harold Cruse (who was then working on Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 1967), Tom Dent, Rosa Guy, Joe Johnson, LeRoi Jones, and Sarah Wright, among others. On Guard was active in a famous protest at the United Nations of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion and was active in support of the Congolese liberation leader Patrice Lumumba. From On Guard, Dent, Johnson, and Walcott along with Hernton, Henderson, and Touré established Umbra.

Another formation of Black writers at that time was the Harlem Writers Guild, led by John O. Killens, which included Maya Angelou, Jean Carey Bond, Rosa Guy, and Sarah Wright among others. But the Harlem Writers Guild focused on prose, primarily fiction, which did not have the mass appeal of poetry performed in the dynamic vernacular of the time. Poems could be built around anthems, chants, and political slogans, and thereby used in organizing work, which was not generally the case with novels and short stories. Moreover, the poets could and did publish themselves, whereas greater resources were needed to publish fiction. That Umbra was primarily poetry- and performance-oriented established a significant and classic characteristic of the movement's aesthetics. When Umbra split up, some members, led by Askia Touré and Al Haynes, moved to Harlem in late 1964 and formed the nationalist-oriented "Uptown Writers Movement," which included poets Yusef Rahman, Keorapetse "Willie" Kgositsile from South Africa, and Larry Neal. Accompanied by young "New Music" musicians, they performed poetry all over Harlem. Members of this group joined LeRoi Jones in founding BARTS.

Jones's move to Harlem was short-lived. In December 1965 he returned to his home, Newark (N.J.), and left BARTS in serious disarray. BARTS failed but the Black Arts center concept was irrepressible mainly because the Black Arts movement was so closely aligned with the then-burgeoning Black Power movement. The mid- to late 1960s was a period of intense revolutionary ferment. Beginning in 1964, rebellions in Harlem and Rochester, New York, initiated four years of long hot summers. Watts, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, and many other cities went up in flames, culminating in nationwide explosions of resentment and anger following Martin Luther King, JR. April 1968 assassination.

Nathan Hare, the author of The Black Anglo-Saxons (1965), was the founder of 1960s Black Studies. Expelled from Howard University, Hare moved to San Francisco State University where the battle to establish a Black Studies department was waged during a five-month strike during the 1968-1969 school year. As with the establishment of Black Arts, which included a range of forces, there was broad activity in the Bay Area around Black Studies, including efforts led by poet and professor Sarah Webster Fabio at Merrit College.

The initial thrust of Black Arts ideological development came from the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a national organization with a strong presence in New York City. Both Touré and Neal were members of RAM. After RAM, the major ideological force shaping the Black Arts movement was the US (as opposed to "them') organization led by Maulana Karenga. Also ideologically important was Elijah Muhammad’s Chicago-based Nation of Islam These three formations provided both style and ideological direction for Black Arts artists, including those who were not members of these or any other political organization. Although the Black Arts movement is often considered a New York-based movement, two of its three major forces were located outside New York City.

As the movement matured, the two major locations of Black Arts' ideological leadership, particularly for literary work, were California's Bay Area because of the Journal of Black Poetry and the Black Scholar, and the Chicago-Detroit axis because of Negro Digest/Black World and Third World Press in Chicago, and Broadside Press and Naomi Long Madgett's Lotus Press in Detroit. The only major Black Arts literary publications to come out of New York were the short-lived (six issues between 1969 and 1972) Black Theatre magazine published by the New Lafayette Theatre and Black Dialogue, which had actually started in San Francisco (1964–1968) and relocated to New York (1969–1972).

Although the journals and writing of the movement greatly characterized its success, the movement placed a great deal of importance on collective oral and performance art. Public collective performances drew a lot of attention to the movement, and it was often easier to get an immediate response from a collective poetry reading, short play, or street performance than it was from individual performances.
In 1967 LeRoi Jones visited Karenga in Los Angeles and became an advocate of Karenga's philosophy of Kawaida. Kawaida, which produced the "Nguzo Saba" (seven principles), Kwanzaa and an emphasis on African names, was a multifaceted, categorized activist philosophy. Jones also met Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver and worked with a number of the founding members of the Black Panthers. Additionally, Askia Touré was a visiting professor at San Francisco State and was to become a leading (and longlasting) poet as well as, arguably, the most influential poet-professor in the Black Arts movement. Playwright Ed Bullins and poet Marvin X had established Black Arts West, and Dingane Joe Goncalves had founded the Journal of Black Poetry (1966). This grouping of Ed Bullins, Dingane Joe Goncalves, LeRoi Jones, Sonia Sanchez, Askia M. Touré, and Marvin X became a major nucleus of Black Arts leadership.

As the movement grew, ideological conflicts arose and eventually became too great for the movement to continue to exist as a large, coherent collective.

The Black Aesthetic

Many discussions of the Black Arts movement posit it as the “aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept.” The Black Aesthetic refers to ideologies and perspectives of art that center around Black culture and life. This Black Aesthetic encouraged the idea of Black separatism, and in trying to facilitate this hope to further strengthen black ideals, solidarity, and creativity.
In his well-known essay on the Black Arts Movement, Larry Neal attests, “When we speak of a 'Black aesthetic' several things are meant. First, we assume that there is already in existence the basis for such an aesthetic. Essentially, it consists of an African-American cultural tradition. But this aesthetic is finally, by implication, broader than that tradition. It encompasses most of the usable elements of the Third World culture. The motive behind the Black aesthetic is the destruction of the white thing, the destruction of white ideas, and white ways of looking at the world.”

Effects on society

According to the Academy of American poets, “many writers--Native Americans, Latinos/as, gays and lesbians, and younger generations of African Americans have acknowledged their debt to the Black Arts movement.”[8]
The movement lasted for about a decade, through the mid 1960s and into 1970s. This was a period of controversy and change in the world of literature. One major change came through the portrayal of new ethnic voices in the United States. English language literature, prior to the Black Arts Movement, was dominated by white authors.

African Americans became a greater presence not only in the field of literature, but in all areas of the arts. Theater groups, poetry performances, music and dance were central to the movement. Through different forms of media, African Americans were able to educate others about the expression of cultural differences and viewpoints. In particular, black poetry readings allowed African Americans to use vernacular dialogues. This was shown in the Harlem Writers Guild which included black writers such as Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy. These performances were used to express political slogans and as a tool for organization. Theater performances also were used to convey community issues and organizations. The theaters, as well as cultural centers, were based throughout America and were used for community meetings, study groups and film screenings. Newspapers were a major tool in spreading the Black Arts Movement. In 1964, Black Dialogue was published making it the first major Arts movement publication.

The Black Arts Movement, although short, is essential to the history of the United States. It spurred political activism and use of speech throughout every African American community. It allowed African Americans the chance to express their voices in the mass media as well as becoming involved in communities.
It can be argued that “the Black Arts movement produced some of the most exciting poetry, drama, dance, music, visual art, and fiction of the post-World War II United States” and that many important “post-Black artists” such as Toni Morrison, Ntzoake Shange, Alice Walker, and August Wilson were shaped by the movement..
The Black Arts movement also provided incentives for public funding of the arts, and increased public support of various arts initiatives.

Key writers and thinkers of this movement

Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka (Born Everett LeRoy Jones.) Jean Carey, Bond Walter Bowe Gwendolyn Brooks, Ed Bullins, Steve Cannon, Harold Cruse, Tom Dent Ray Durem Addison Gayle Nikki Giovanni Rosa Guy Lorraine Hansberry Al Haynes David Henderson Calvin Hicks Marvin X (known as Marvin Jackson) Ron Karenga Adrienne Kennedy Keorapetse John O. Killens Robert MacBeth Haki Madhubuti "Willie" Kgositsile Nannie Larry Neal Yusef Rahman, Sonia Sanchez, Barbara Ann Teer, Lorenzo Thomas, Askia M. Touré

"A Tribute to Blue Note, The Harlem Renaissance and The Black Arts Movement Part 2"

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 06:31:05 PST

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

The first major movement of African-American literature, beginning around 1923 and flourishing until the depression, but providing a stimulus that lasted through the 1940s.

The renaissance mainly involved a group of writers and intellectuals associated (often loosely) with Harlem, the district of Manhattan that, during the migration of African Americans from the rural South, became the major center for urbanized blacks. Harlem was described by Alain Locke (1886-1954) as "not merely the largest Negro community in the world, but the first concentration in history of so many diverse elements of Negro life." The renaissance was associated with the New Negro Movement, so called because of the anthology, "The New Negro" (1925) edited by Locke, whose introductory essay is the closest to a manifesto or statement of ideals that the Harlem Renaissance has. In it he writes of the Negro who is no longer apologetic for blackness but who takes a new pride in a racial identity and heritage, of the "renewed self-respect and self-dependence" felt in the contemporary black community, which is "about to enter a new phase."

Elsewhere Locke urged writers to examine the meaning of an African past and to utilize this in their art. This urging coincided with a growing interest among whites at the time in primitivism, evident for example in Eugene O'Neill's plays "The Emperor Jones" (1920) and "All God's Chillun Got Wings" (1924). The Harlem Renaissance was partly fostered by the existence of this interest, and by the concurrent development of American modernism and the readiness to accept experimentation and to expand the breadth of artistic expression. The renaissance was greatly assisted by several whites, especially Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964), whose enthusiasm for African-American culture was reflected in his popular 1926 novel NIGGER HEAVEN. Locke had explicitly called for social and artistic interracial cooperation in "The New Negro," commenting that, "The fiction is that the life of the races is separate, and increasingly so. The fact is that they have touched too closely at the unfavorable and too lightly at the favorable levels." One characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance was a move toward so-called "high art" in black writing, rather than the use of folk idioms, comic writing, and vernacular that had often been considered the special realm of African-American writing up to that time. In some respects this shift mirrors the change from rural to urban life for many blacks in this period. However, several of the Harlem writers made powerful use of folk idioms such as the blues, particularly Langston Hughes (1902-67). The Harlem writers also engaged in an intense debate regarding the place of the African American in American life, and on the role and identity of the African-American artist.

In this sense the Harlem Renaissance is by no means a monolithic movement with a single purpose. For example, the artistic differences between Hughes and the poet Countee Cullen (1903-46) are instructive. Cullen believed that an African-American poet should be free to write in mainstream established traditions, and need not racialize poetry. "I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet," he said, and wrote in forms such as the sonnet and became a translator of Euripides. Hughes, on the other hand, saw this attitude as a betrayal of racial identity, an aping of white European-ness, and sought in his work to accept and explore his blackness using forms and idioms that he associated with it. Both are major poets but their differences point to the relative breadth of the movement and to the development of quite different kinds of African-American writing in the Harlem Renaissance.

Prominent Harlem Renaissance writers include James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961), the Jamaican-born Claude McKay (1889-1948), Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), Nella Larsen (1893-1964), Jean Toomer (1894-1967), Arna Bontemps (1902-73), Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-81), and Helene Johnson (1907-95).

"A Tribute to Blue Note, The Harlem Renaissance and The Black Arts Movement Part 1"

celdancer@sojpradio.com (Big Trigger) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 06:32:12 PST

BLUE NOTE RECORDS HISTORY
In 1925,16-year old Alfred Lion noticed a concert poster for Sam Wooding's orchestra near his favourite ice-skating arena in his native Berlin, Germany. He'd heard many of his mother's jazz records and began to take an interest in the music, but that night his life was changed. The impact of what he heard live touched a deep passion within him. His thirst for the music temporarily brought him to New York in 1928 where he worked on the docks and slept in Central Park to get closer to the music.

On December 23, 1938, Lion attended the celebrated Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall. The power, soul and beauty with which boogie woogie piano masters Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis rocked the stage gripped him. Exactly two weeks later, on January 6 at 2 in the afternoon, he brought them into a New York studio to make some recordings. They took turns at the one piano, recording four solos each before relinquishing the bench to the other man. The long session ended with two stunning duets. Blue Note Records was finally a reality.

The label's first brochure in May of 1939 carried a statement of purpose that Lion rarely strayed from throughout the many styles and years during which he built one of the greatest jazz record companies in the world. It read: "Blue Note Records are designed simply to serve the uncompromising expressions of hot jazz or swing, in general. Any particular style of playing which represents an authentic way of musical feeling is genuine expression. By virtue of its significance in place, time and circumstance, it possesses its own tradition, artistic standards and audience that keeps it alive. Hot jazz, therefore, is expression and communication, a musical and social manifestation, and Blue Note records are concerned with identifying its impulse, not its sensational and commercial adornments.”

At the end of 1939, Lion's childhood friend Francis Wolff caught the last boat out of Nazi-controlled Germany bound for America. He found employment at a photographic studio and joined forces with Lion at night to continue Blue Note. In the late 1940s, jazz had changed again, and Lion and Wolff could no longer resist the be-bop movement. Saxophonist Ike Quebec had become a close friend and advisor to both of them. Just as he had ushered in their swingtet phase, he would also bring them into modern jazz, introducing them to many of the new music's innovators and encouraging them to document it. Soon they were recording Fats Navarro and Bud Powell and giving Tadd Dameron, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, among others, their first dates as leaders. Lion and Wolff became especially fascinated with Monk and helped his career in every conceivable way. Despite critical resistance and poor sales, they recorded him frequently until 1952.

Monk's case was the first major example of what Horace Silver described in a 1980 interview, "Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff were men of integrity and real jazz fans. Blue Note was a great label to record for. They gave a first break to a lot of great artists who are still out there doing it today. They gave me my first break. They gave a lot of musicians a chance to record when all the other companies weren't interested. And they would stick with an artist, even if he wasn't selling. You don't find that anymore."

Album covers started to become a distinctive component in the Blue Note mix. Frank Wolff's extraordinarily sensitive and atmospheric photos and the advanced designs of Paul Bacon, Gil Melle and John Hermansader gave Blue Note a look that was both distinctive and beautiful.

Meanwhile, Lion was making first albums by the likes of Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson, Clifford Brown, Wynton Kelly, Elmo Hope, Kenny Drew, Tal Farlow and Kenny Burrell. He was also recording significant sessions with established modern talents like Kenny Dorham, George Wallington, Milt Jackson, Miles Davis, Thad Jones, Sonny Rollins and Herbie Nichols.

In 1952, Alfred became intrigued by the sound of a Triumph recording that saxophonist-composer Gil Melle had done at engineer Rudy Van Gelder's parents' home in Hackensack, New Jersey, where Van Gelder had a recording set-up in the living room. Blue Note had always been known for its superior sound and balance, but in Rudy, Alfred found an intelligent, kindred soul from whom he could extract an ideal sound. Van Gelder engineered most of the major jazz recordings of the '50s and '60s for many labels. He told me, "Alfred knew exactly what he wanted to hear. He communicated it to me and I got it for him technically. He was amazing in what he heard and how he would patiently draw it out of me. He gave me confidence and support in any situation."

By 1954, Blue Note naturally gravitated toward a system that was much akin to a repertory theatre company: using a revolving cast of sidemen and leaders who would assure them the creativity, compatibility and dependability that Blue Note sought. Leaders would appear on each other's projects: recurring sidemen would be groomed to grow into leaders. Sometimes such instances could be purely serendipitous. Horace Silver's first session was to have been a Lou Donaldson quartet date that Lou had to cancel at the last minute to go out of town. Alfred thought it was time for Silver to make his debut anyway and offered him the same date as his own trio session.

On the subject of Horace Silver, Lion felt in late 1954 that Horace should do a record with horns. He and the pianist arrived at the ideal personnel: Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Doug Watkins and Art Blakey. The date went so well that these five men decided on a common purpose and formed a co-operative band called The Jazz Messengers. The group's idea was to present soulful modern jazz that incorporated the language of be-bop (without the virtuosic cliches of its second-generation followers) and the soulful, warm roots of blues and gospel music. It worked, and it became, with Van Gelder's engineering, the Blue Note sound.

Soon after, Blue Note would set in motion another trend in jazz. On the advice of Babs Gonzales and other musicians, Lion and Wolff ventured out to hear a Philadelphia pianist who had abandoned his original instrument and woodshedded intently for more than a year on a rented Hammond organ in the corner of a warehouse. As Frank Wolff told it in 1969, "I first heard Jimmy Smith at Small's Paradise in January of 1956. It was his first gig in New York. He was a stunning sight. A man in convulsions, face contorted, crouched over in apparent agony, his fingers flying, his feet dancing over the pedals. The air was filled with waves of sound I had never heard before. The noise was shattering. A few people sat around, puzzled, but impressed. He came off the stand, smiling, the sweat dripping all over him. 'So what do you think?' 'Yeah', I said. That's all I could say. Alfred Lion had already made up his mind."

Around the same time, Wolff met Reid Miles, a commercial artist who was a devout classical music fan. They struck up a rapport and Miles became the designer for the label for the next 11 years. He relied on Alfred to describe the mood and intent of each album and then created wonderful graphic covers that were different from each other, but still maintained an indefinable Blue Note look.

It was 1956, and the cast that gave the label its sound and identity - Lion, Wolff, Van Gelder, Miles, Blakey, Silver, and Smith - was complete. For the next decade or so Blue Note dominated the artistic and commercial courses of the music. As Wolff once said, "We established a style, including recording, pressing and covers. The details made the difference."

The early '60s saw Blue Note move to a higher plateau in the record industry. While they had always had strong sales with Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver and others, Donald Byrd's "A New Perspective", a unique 1963 album for jazz group and wordless choir, began crossing over to more general audiences. The next year, the company released two albums that were unexpected blockbusters, which had lengthy stays on the pop charts: Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder" and Horace Silver's "Song For My Father".

In addition to continuing its hard bop tradition with Morgan, Mobley, Silver, Blakey and younger men like Hancock, Green, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard and Joe Henderson, the label also moved cautiously into the avant-garde. Although a lot of chaotic and inferior music was passing for art in that movement, Lion and Wolff typically found the best and most substantial artists of the genre to record. Their first project was Jackie McLean's 1963 group with Grachan Moncur, Bobby Hutcherson and Tony Williams, all of whom would soon be recording their own albums as well. Tony's albums led to an association with Sam Rivers. There were also impressive works by Larry Young and Andrew Hill as well as the grand old masters of the avant-garde: Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman.

When Liberty Records made them an offer to sell out of Blue Note in 1965, they took it. Lion stayed on until mid-1967, when health problems forced him to retire. Wolff and Duke Pearson divided the producing chores, and the roster still maintained many fine straight ahead artists, but jazz was moving into another cycle of hard times, economically and artistically. There were few working groups and few decent, good-paying clubs. The scene did not provide an environment in which it could nurture young talent and perpetuate itself.

Frank Wolff slaved away at Blue Note until his death in 1971. With Wolff's death and the lessening involvement of Duke Pearson, the label's emphasis shifted more toward fusion. Donald Byrd discovered Larry Mizell and asked him to produce "Black Byrd", a huge hit. Mizell later produced Bobbi Humphrey who was brought to the label by Lee Morgan.

The old Blue Note managed to survive through a program of reissues and previously unreleased material that Blue Note executive Charlie Lourie and Michael Cuscuna started in 1975. That program survived sporadically until 1981: the last active Blue Note artist was Horace Silver, who recorded for the label from 1952 until 1980.

In 1982, Lourie and Cuscuna started Mosaic Records as a by-product of trying to convince current owner Capitol Records to restart Blue Note. Our first releases were complete Blue Note collections by Thelonious Monk and Albert Ammons-Meade Lux Lewis. In mid 1984, EMI hired Bruce Lundvall to resurrect the label in earnest in the United States. The label was relaunched the following February with the "One Night With Blue Note" concert of all-star bands composed of new and old Blue Note artists at New York's Town Hall. Blue Note was reborn.