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June Birthdays Featuring Reginald Workman, NEA Jazz Master
by Marc Cohn
June jazz birthdays! Our featured honoree is bassist Reggie Workman, 82 years young, who got a fine birthday present: a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award. So, we have three tracks from his own recordings, which may surprise you. One features Andrew Hill and Julian Priester. Other birthday honors include Marcus Belgrave (Horace ...
In Memoriam: Jazz Musicians Who Passed in 2018
by Maxim Micheliov
As 2018 comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment to remember the extraordinarily gifted musicians who made an indelible mark on jazz. With sadness, we bid farewell to NEA Jazz Masters Bob Dorough, Nancy Wilson and Cecil Taylor as well as trumpeters Hugh Masekela, Tomasz Stanko, Jerry González and Roy Hargrove.
Gary Urwin: Inside the Mind of an Arranger
by Rob Wood
The arranger of music scores is as important as a crankshaft in an engine. Yet many are destined to live in the shadows. Ralph Carmichael was subsumed by the luster of Stan Kenton. Arranger Paul Riser, who wrote the opening bars to “Dancing in the Street," is a virtual unknown. And then there is ...
Bill Watrous (1939-2018)
Bill Watrous, a jazz trombonist who came up in the 1960s just as jazz was fading and the trombone was transitioning into studio orchestras and funk-soul groups such as the Jazz Crusaders and Kool and the Gang, died on July 2, 2018. He was 79. Watrous's finest work was on ballads. His singing trombone style on ...
Take Five with Ralph Hepola
by AAJ Staff
About Ralph Hepola Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in the United States, Ralph Hepola studied piano before starting on the tuba at age twelve. At seventeen, he was chosen to play before the British Royal Family in the Manitoba All-Province Band at Brandon, Manitoba in Canada. While still in high school, Ralph began performing ...
Art Pepper: Presents “West Coast Sessions” Volumes 5 & 6
by C. Michael Bailey
Omnivore Records concludes its remastering and re-release of Art Pepper's Yupiteru (later to become Atlas Records) recordings volumes 5 and 6, featuring, trumpeter Jack Sheldon, and drummer Shelly Manne, respectively. To date, the label has remastered and released four volumes: Art Pepper: Presents “West Coast Sessions" Volumes 1: Sonny Stitt (2017); Art Pepper: Presents “West Coast ...
Los Angeles Jazz Institute Festival "Big Band Spectacular" 2017, Part 3-4
by Simon Pilbrow
Los Angeles Jazz Institute Festival Big Band Spectacular LAX Westin Hotel Los Angeles, CA May 24-28, 2017 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Saddleback Jazz Combo The young Saddleback five piece jazz combo featured a tenor and baritone sax ...
Art Pepper: More West Coast
In February, I posted about two superb Art Pepper albums that have were remastered on the Omnivore label. The recordings were originally made for the Japanese Atlas label, with Pepper's featured guest as the leader so he could get around his contracts with Fantasy. One was with Pete Jolly and the other was with Sonny Stitt. ...
Art Pepper: Presents “West Coast Sessions” Volumes 3 & 4
by C. Michael Bailey
Today is the day that I finally come clean about Art Pepper and me. In 1984, I was taking a year off between having finished Pharmacy School and beginning a graduate program in Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Design. During this time, I had my yearly eye appointment with my ophthalmologist, one Dr. A. Henry Thomas, with ...
A Big Band Spectacular? You Bet Your Brass!
by Jack Bowers
On May 23, Betty and I flew to Los Angeles to attend the L.A. Jazz Institute's semi-annual ode to swinging, this one labeled Big Band Spectacular and slated for Thursday through Sunday, May 25-28. We rearranged our schedule to arrive a day early, even before Wednesday's “bonus" event, to attend the funeral of a longtime friend ...
