Jazz Articles about Ray Scro

About Ray Scro

Album Review

Santi Debriano & Arkestra Bembe: Ashanti

by Jack Bowers
January 18, 2023

Panama-born bassist Santi Debriano's Arkestra Bembe is a nonet whose centerpiece is the bembe music of west Africa. During the Coronavirus pandemic, Debriano began hosting weekly bembes (musical celebrations) in the basement of his Staten Island, New York home, gradually assembling a group of musicians who would comprise the Arkestra and perform Debriano's compositions and arrangements. The result is Ashanti, an impressive studio recording whose framework is jazz but whose heart and soul are clearly in bembe. ...

244

Interview

Ray Scro: What Jazz Education Means

by Andrew J. Sammut
August 16, 2011

For Ray Scro, music education is a redundancy. He's been performing, studying and teaching music for nearly fifty years in his home of Staten Island, and throughout New York City. In the early seventies Scro studied under saxophonist and guru Lee Konitz, and he's played with Jimmy Knepper, Chuck Wayne, Charlie Persip, and Chico Hamilton, among others. In addition to his own groups, he works regularly alongside bass legend and jazz scribe Bill Crow. For fifteen years, Scro has also ...