JAM 2010: 156 Artists for a New Jazz Experience (Part XI)
April 15, 2010 at 6:00 AM Good morning!
I have so many delightful artists to share with you! Find out about saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Ted Nash and Tia Fuller; trumpeters Thomas Heflin, Terell Stafford and Terence Blanchard; vocalist Sy Smith, bass guitarist Tal Wilkenfeld; pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs and others.
Enjoy ~
1. (131) Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930 in New York City) is a Grammy-Award winning tenor saxophonist. Widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians of the post-bebop era, Rollins' long, prolific career began at the age of 11, and he was playing with piano legend Thelonious Monk before reaching the age of 20. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards.
As of 2010, Rollins is still touring and recording, having outlived most of his contemporaries such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Max Roach, and Art Blakey, all performers with whom he recorded.
Rollins was elected to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1973.
2. (132) As a child growing up on a small peninsula called Seltjarnarnes not far from Reykjavik, Iceland, Sunna Gunnlaugs began taking lessons on the organ at the urging of her mother. "The idea of playing the piano didn't appeal to me as a kid. I associated it with classical pianists who seemed to have no fun. But on the organ you could play anything, the Beatles, polkas, Strauss and that seemed like more fun."
By her teens, having realized that you could in fact play a variety of music on the piano, it was the gift of a Bill Evans trio record (appropriately named "You're Gonna Hear from Me") that sold her on modern jazz.
The Washington Post has described her music as possessing "such timeless virtues as lyricism and grace… elegantly bridges soul-searching passages with uncluttered swing."
On her 2009 CD, "Songs From Iceland
3. (133) Torontonian by way of Zambia (where he was born) and the U.K., trumpeter Suresh Singaratnam boasts a background that defies classification as nimbly as his artistic taste. In eighth grade he asked a music teacher if she knew of anyone who played both jazz and classical trumpet at a high level and she steered him to Wynton Marsalis, two of whose records he promptly went out and bought.
In his last year of high school he studied with Toronto Symphony trumpeter Barton Woomert, then spent a year at the University of Toronto studying with Chase Sanborn.
After one year at the University of Toronto Singaratnam transferred to Manhattan School of Music in New York City, a move whose tremendous impact on his life and psyche he chronicles in his recent album "Lost in New York
Here's a teaser from the "Lost in New York" (let me stress teaser):
4. (134) Vocalist and songwriter Sy Smith was born in New York City (1978). She began her career leading an all-female Washington, DC go go band. After graduating from Howard University with a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and a minor in music therapy, she moved to Los Angeles, CA.
She soon charted territory singing backup for Usher, Eric Benet, Me'Shell NdegeOcello, Ginuwine, Brandy, and spent more than a year on the road with Whitney Houston. Along with all of that, Smith made appearances in GAP advertisements, as well as being a regular fixture behind Vonda Shepard on the FOX television show Ally McBeal.
Here she is singing "The Look of Love" with Chris Botti:
5. (135) Tal Wilkenfeld is a bassist who has gained worldwide attention performing alongside some of rock and jazz music's most notable artists. In 2008, Wilkenfeld was voted "The Year's Most Exciting New Player" for the year in a Bass Player Magazine reader's choice poll. She has impressed critics and fans alike with musical achievements usually reserved for players with relatively long established careers.
Wilkenfeld became a professional bassist after only three years on the instrument. In addition to her work as a sideman for many of music's legendary musicians, she has assumed the role of bandleader to her own eponymous trios, whose musicians have included Wayne Krantz, Keith Carlock, and Jeff "Tain" Watts.
6. (136) Two-Time Grammy Nominee Taylor Eigsti (born September 24, 1984) is a pianist, mostly associated with post-bop. He also incorporates elements of funk and soul into his music.
He began at an unusually early age and because of this was often called a child prodigy. He started studying piano at four and by age eight he opened for David Benoit. He had his first CD, not sold nationally, at 14 with Dan Brubeck on drums and at 15 joined the teaching staff at the Stanford Jazz Workshop at Stanford University.
7. (137) Ted Nash is a jazz-composer and saxophonist, not to be confused with his uncle of the same name, a swing saxophonist.
Best known for his associations with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra directed by Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz Composers Collective, and his own inventive groups, Nash enjoys an extraordinary career as a performer, conductor, composer, arranger, and educator.
His albums are Conception, "Rhyme & Reason
He also wrote a musical piece called "Portrait in Seven Shades: Ted Nash
It debuted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at the Rose Theater in the Time Warner Center in New York City.
8. (138) Terell Stafford is a trumpet player and current Director of Jazz Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.
Stafford was born in Miami, FL and raised in both Chicago, IL and Silver Spring, MD. He went on to get a degree in music education from University of Maryland in 1988 and a degree in classical trumpet performance from Rutgers University in 1993. Originally a classical trumpet player, Stafford soon branched out to jazz with the University of Maryland jazz band.
9. (139) Trumpeter, composer, Golden Globe-nominated film score composer, and educator Terence Oliver Blanchard was born on 13 March 1962 in New Orleans.
Since he emerged on the scene in 1980 with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and then shortly thereafter with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Blanchard has been a leading artist in jazz.
He was an integral figure in the 1980s jazz resurgence having recorded several award-winning albums and having performed with the jazz elite. He is known as a straight-ahead artist in the hard bop tradition but has recently utilized an African-fusion style of playing that makes him unique from other trumpeters on the performance circuit.
However, it is as a film composer that Blanchard reaches his widest audience. His trumpet can be heard on nearly fifty film scores; more than forty bear his unmistakable compositional style. Since 2000, Blanchard has served as Artistic Director at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
10. (140) Drummer, composer, professor, record producer Terri Lyne Carrington was born in Medford, MA (1965).
She has played with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Clark Terry, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Joe Sample, Al Jarreau, and many more. She has toured with each of Hancock's musical configurations (from electric to acoustic) between 1997 and 2007.
In 2007 she was appointed professor at her alma mater, Berklee College of Music, which is also where she received an honorary doctorate in 2003.
11. (141) A rising star in the jazz world, trumpeter Thomas Heflin made waves on the international jazz scene in 2005 when he placed second in the prestigious Carmine Caruso International Trumpet Solo Competition in Seattle. One reviewer described his playing as “a very fluid approach... generating lines in a seamless, highly polished manner that is really a joy to experience." He is a recording artist with Blue Canoe Records.
12. (142) Saxophonist, composer, educator and a member of Beyonce’s all-female band, Tia Fuller was born in Aurora, CO (1976).
Her father, Fred plays bass and her mother, Elthopia sings. She grew up listening to her parents rehearse in the basement of their home, as well as the music of jazz greats, such as John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughn and Charlie Parker.
Inspired by her older sister, Shamie Royston a great composer in her own right (and wife of the drummer Ruddy Royston), Fuller began playing classical piano when she was just three years old and continued until she was thirteen. She also began studying the flute when she was nine. Her interest in jazz came into fruition in high school. It was during this time that she began playing the saxophone.
13. (143) At the age of 3, pianist Tigran Hamasyan was singing a great deal of Led Zeppelin's, Deep Purple's, Beatles', Louis Armstrong's, and Queens' songs trying to accompany himself on the piano. It was obvious to his parents that music was an inseparable part of this child's life. At the age of 7 he entered the world of jazz. He listened to different jazz melodies and improvising on the piano all day long. Soon he began to attend music school for classic education. In 1997, his family moved to Yerevan.
The profound study of the art of Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, Miles Davis, Bud Powell and others had began.