Results for "Atlanta"

Take Five with Tony Hightower

by AAJ Staff
November 21, 2021

Meet Tony HightowerSinger/Songwriter Tony Hightower is taking up the mantle to be a bridge that ushers R&B audiences into Jazz...Real Jazz. With years of experience as a musical performer and actor with familial roots that place him firmly within the music's firmament, Atlanta-native Hightower is still just getting started on this benevolent turn in his journey. ...

Tony Hightower

Singer/Songwriter Tony Hightower is taking up the mantle to be a bridge that ushers R&B audiences into Jazz…Real Jazz. With years of experience as a musical performer and actor with familiar roots that place him firmly within the music’s firmament, Atlanta-native Hightower is still just getting started on this benevolent turn in his journey. And he is bringing a lot of young people with him.

His sophomore project, LEGACY, finds Hightower exploring Jazz vocal stylings from a dazzling prism of angles. The 10-song album moves confidently and assuredly from original compositions such as the soulful scat-laced “All to the Good,” the seductive Brazilian bossa nova of “Rendezvous” and the tender carnal Jarreau-esque love beg “I Need You” to swingin’ covers of Earth, Wind & Fire’s classic Skip Scarborough-penned “Can’t Hide Love,” a mean shuffle boogie groove through Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” and a smoldering upright bass accompanied tiptoe through the 1929 Andy Razaf standard “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good To You” made further famous in 1944 by one of Hightower’s greatest and earliest Jazz vocal heroes, Nat “King” Cole. That one’ll make the women wiggle.

“I didn’t have a choice about doing this music,” Hightower confesses. “My mother, Theresa Hightower, lived her life onstage. She was a fiery and versatile vocal pro by age 16 and had me when she was 19. So, you could say I’ve been performing since the womb.” And though he did not know his father, Ralph Baker, well, the man’s DNA pulsed within his being as Hightower inherited the percussionist’s keen sense of fascinating rhythm, which led to Tony’s first pro gig at age 14 playing drums in the stage band for “The Dinah Washington Story” at the 14th Street Playhouse.

Growing up in Atlanta with a local legend mother who was a Funk-Rock singer but could sing anything and mentored many singers coming behind her, Tony learned music first-hand from Bobby Blue Bland and the Platters to Mother’s Finest, S.O.S. Band and Brick. And as mother Theresa evolved as a first-class singer - shifting her focus to Jazz that resulted in her historic residency at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in once fiercely segregated Buckhead. GA - so, too, did Tony’s taste begin to broaden. The artist that Theresa followed at The Ritz: Freddy Cole, Nat’s brother.

Rick Beato

Born: April 24, 1962

Richard Beato is an American YouTube personality, music professional, and educator. Since the early 1980s, he has worked variously as a musician, songwriter, audio engineer and record producer. Beato lives in Georgia, United States. He has written songs with, and produced music for, a variety of musical artists, including Needtobreathe, Parmalee, and Shinedown.

Beato was born into a large family from Rochester, New York. He studied at Ithaca College, obtaining a bachelor of arts degree in music. He earned a master's degree in jazz studies from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1987.

Beato has worked in academia and the music industry

Announcing World's Largest Ever Jazz Virtual 5K–Run / Walk / Ride Race During Jazz Appreciation Month

April 14, 2021

Jazz in Action on a Global Stage! Jazz fans all over the world, some exciting news has just been announced by The Jazzsippers Consortium. They have launched one of the biggest virtual races of 2021, where people all over the world can take part in the Jazz Virtual 5K Run/Walk/Ride Race, With a Jazz music near ...

2020: The Year in Jazz

by Ken Franckling
January 2, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic put the jazz world in a tailspin, just like the world at large, in 2020. And there is plenty of uncertainty going into the new year about what “new normal: might emerge from the darkness. International Jazz Day, like so many other things, became an online virtual event this time around. Pianist Keith ...

Jeff Bernstein

Born: July 1, 1959

Jeff Bernstein has been playing bass for 50 years, and has performed in a number of jazz, fusion and classic rock groups and big band jazz ensembles. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he now calls Atlanta home. His influences are Jaco Pastorius, Jimmy Haslip, Lee Ritenour, Leland Sklar, and others. He has performed over the years on numerous commercials and studio sessions, and performed live across the NY metro area's venues.

Hear Adam McIntyre's Tribute To Prince, Miles Davis; Thirteen-Minute "Voodoo" Taken From Atlanta Guitarist's Third Album Recorded During Pandemic

September 4, 2020

Blues guitarist Adam McIntyre first started jumping on stages at just fourteen-years-old and is now best known as the front man for Atlanta-based rockers The Pinx. During the pandemic, McIntyre has created a trilogy of solo albums, the third of which, Black Planet, a tribute to Prince and Miles Davis, will be released on Sept. 18th. ...

Adam McIntyre

Adam McIntyre is a multi-genre, multi-instrumentalist producer who fronts Atlanta rockers The Pinx.

Kabir Sehgal: Spirited Warrior for Jazz

by Michael Ricci
April 22, 2020

Kabir Sehgal has a history of championing meaningful causes for jazz. His wildly impressive background includes five Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards as a producer. He is also the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of fourteen books including Jazzocracy: Jazz, Democracy, and the Creation of a New American Mythology (Better ...

Tierney Sutton At The Jazz Corner

by Martin McFie
February 12, 2020

Tierney Sutton The Jazz Corner Hilton Head Island, SC February 8, 2020 When a lady has chosen nine new outfits, attended nine nerve wracking awards dinners and been nominated for nine Grammys since 2006, it would simply be impolite not to vote for her to win next time. Tierney Sutton certainly ...