Results for "Bass"

Ron McClure

Born: November 22, 1941

Ron McClure (b. November 22, 1941, in New Haven, Connecticut), a bassist, has played in hard bop, jazz-rock, and free and bebop sessions and bands. He started on piano at age five, and later played accordion and bass. McClure studied privately with Joseph Iadone and, later, with Hall Overton and Don Sebesky. He attended the Hartt School of Music, graduating in 1963 and worked in the Buddy Rich Sextet the same year. He then joined Maynard Ferguson's big band and, afterwards, Herbie Mann in 1964; and then assumed the bass chair in the Wynton Kelly Trio vacated by the late Paul Chambers in 1965 (playing behind guitarist Wes Montgomery)

Christian McBride

Born: May 31, 1972

The finest musicians to spring from the world of jazz have clearly had an advantage when it comes to branching into other genres of music. Their mastery of composition, arranging and sight reading coupled with their flair for improvisation and spontaneous creation make them possibly the most seasoned and adaptable musicians in the art. Grammy Award winner Christian McBride, chameleonic virtuoso of the acoustic and electric bass, stands tall at the top of this clique. Beginning in 1989—the beginning of an amazing career in which he still has wider-reaching goals to attain - the Philadelphian has thus far been first-call-requested to accompany literally hundreds of fine artists, ranging in an impressive array from McCoy Tyner and Sting to Kathleen Battle and Diana Krall. However, it is his own recordings—albums that encompass a diverse canon of original compositions and imaginatively arranged covers—that reveal the totality of his musicianship. He currently leads one of the hottest bands in music—the propulsive Christian McBride Band (saxophonist Ron Blake, keyboardist Geoffrey Keezer and drummer Terreon Gully).

Ahmed Abdul-Malik

Born: January 30, 1927

Bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik was one of the first musicians to introduce Arabic music into jazz and the first to use the oud, a pear-shaped, traditional Middle Eastern stringed instrument similar to a lute as a jazz instrument. He was born on January 30th 1927 to Sudanese parents in Brooklyn and grew up in the borough’s Arab neighborhood. According the most recent edition of the Rough Guide to Jazz he did not change his name to Ahmed Abdul-Malik in the mid- 50s but was given that name at birth. He started studying music at age 7; first violin then bass, piano and even tuba. His first jobs as a musician were when he was still a teenager and included symphony orchestras and different ethnic weddings

John Lindberg

Born: March 16, 1959

Bassist/composer/producer John Lindberg embarked on his professional career in 1975 at the age of sixteen. After having toured America working as a bassist in a variety of musical genres, he arrived in New York in 1977 and immersed himself in the world of jazz and improvised music, while pursuing private bass studies with Dr. David Izenzon and Dave Holland. In the same year he co-founded the String Trio of New York, a composers collective performance unit that has produced fifteen recordings and presented hundreds of concerts worldwide, and which is now celebrating its 30th anniversary season. In 1979 he formed his first ensemble dedicated to the performance of his compositions, and since has made more than two dozen recordings that feature his works, under his name

Jay Leonhart

Born: December 6, 1940

Jay Leonhart was born on December 6, 1940, in Baltimore Maryland. His parents, sisters, and brothers (6 kids in all), were all musically inclined. Everyone played the piano. By the age of 7, Jay and his older brother Bill were playing banjos and guitars and mandolins and basses. They played country music, jazz — anything with a beat. In their early teens, Jay and Bill were television stars in Baltimore and were touring the country performing on their banjos. When Jay was fourteen he started playing the bass in The Pier Five Dixieland Jazz Band in Baltimore and never looked back. After studying at The Peabody Institute, Jay attended The Berklee School of Music and The Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto, before leaving school to start touring with the traveling big bands of the late 50's and early 60's. At 21, Jay moved to New York City to start his career and to proceed on his oddessy towards adulthood

Joëlle Léandre

Born: September 12, 1951

Joelle Leandre started playing recorder but quickly moved to piano and from the age of 9 to 14 studied both piano and double bass in her home town of Aix-en-Provence. Her double bass teacher, Pierre Delescluse, encouraged her to apply to the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris where she won first prize for double bass. In 1976 she received a scholarship to the Center for Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo, a time that was to prove particularly influential due to encounters with Morton Feldman, and the music of Earl Brown, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi. At the same time, she was able to experience the downtown New York music scene and continue her involvement in improvised music. Joelle Leandre has continued to be involved with contemporary 'straight' music, not only as a member of contemporary music ensembles such as 2E2M, Itineraire and l'Ensemble Intercontemporain but particularly through the works of Cage and Scelsi, several of which have been recorded by her

Bill Laswell

Born: February 12, 1955

Over the course of some three decades, visionary bassist-producer Bill Laswell has been one of the most prolific and restlessly creative forces in contemporary music. A sound conceptualist who has always been a step ahead of the curve, he has put his inimitable stamp on nearly 3,000 recording projects by such artists as Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono, Iggy Pop, Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, Bootsy Collins, Nine Inch Nails, Motorhead, Peter Gabriel, Blur, The Ramones, George Clinton, Pharaoh Sanders, The Dalai Lama, Matisyahu, Angelique Kidjo, DJ Krush, RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ, Sting, The Last Poets, Afrika Bambaataa, Julian Schnabel, Whitney Houston, Manu Dibango, Fela Kuti and most notably Herbie Hancock, who collaborated with Laswell for the pivotal 1983 smash-hit single "Rock-It" which introduced scratching to the mainstream, inspired a generation of turntablists and gave the great jazz pianist instant street credibility among the burgeoning hip-hop cognoscenti. Laswell's sense of creative daring as a producer was further demonstrated on several recordings that have kept him on the cutting edge, including Afrika Bambaataa's collaboration with John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of Sex Pistols fame) on World Destruction and PiL's Album (which brought together an unlikely pairing of drumming greats Ginger Baker and Tony Williams, synth-pop pioneer Ryuichi Sakamoto of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame and rising guitar star Steve Vai)

Scott LaFaro

Born: April 3, 1936

Rocco Scott LaFaro (1936-1961) was a musician of the first order, who found his 'voice' in jazz in the mid-1950s. His played the double bass violin, better known today as the acoustic bass to differentiate this instrument from the electric (or electronic) bass. His life was cut short in an automobile accident in the summer of 1961 near Geneva, New York, his home town. Although he performed for only six years (1955-1961), his innovative approach to the bass astounded his contemporaries, and to this day his recorded performances continue to surprise and delight. Those who have found the Bill Evans Jazz Resource on the Internet know of the profound interplay among Paul Motian, Scott LaFaro and Bill Evans in a jazz trio that for many musicians to this day remains a model of sonority, complexity, and swing

Mick Karn

Born: July 24, 1958

Mick Karn first studied wood and wind instruments such as bassoon and clarinet. However, it is his highly distinctive fretless bass voice for which he is most renowned, an accolade placing him next to Jaco Pastorius. According to Karn, bass went unnoticed and his mission was to get it noticed. Even on early Japan recordings, his wiggly bass can be heard. By their swan song, Tin Drum in 1981, he was dubbed one of the best bass players in the world. He'd already supplied bass and sax work to Gary Numan's Dance album and was the first Japan member with a solo record -- Titles. In 1983, Japan's live album, Oil on Canvas, brought his playing to new ears: jazz legend Jan Garberek

Marc Johnson

Born: October 21, 1953

As a virtuoso bassist, versatile composer, and acclaimed bandleader, Marc Johnson has been a major innovator on the jazz scene for the past two decades.

Born in Nebraska in 1953, Johnson took up bass at the age of 16, having already studied piano and cello. While completing his formal education in the celebrated music program at the University of North Texas, at age19, Johnson began performing professionally with the Fort Worth Symphony. In 1977, he was on the road with the Woody Herman Band. A stop with Herman in New York City marked a major turning point for Johnson, where he was invited to sit in with Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard. In 1978, he joined Evans' trio, remaining with him until the pianist's death two years later. Johnson appears on numerous albums recorded with Evans, including the Grammy-winning We Will Meet Again and released in 1997, a six-CD box set of live recordings, Turn Out the Stars, weaving his distinctively warm tones and melodic lines into the complex harmonies of the Trio. "I was still a very young player when I was with Bill," Johnson says, “but by playing with him night after night I matured a lot.