Results for "Clarinet"

Kenny Davern

Born: January 7, 1935

John Kenneth Davern's embryonic days in the music world found him as a big band sideman in various sax sections, and then on to the classic jazz combos of Greenwich Village and New York's uptown clubs as a clarinetist, to his soprano sax adventures in the Soprano Summit, and now back to the clarinet.

Davern is a native of Huntingdon, Long Island. As a young professional at the age of 16, he sat in with many of the legendary groups in New York City and the fast company gave him the background he needed to become a member of Jack Teagarden's band and to record with Jack at age 19. The bands of Phil Napoleon and Pee Wee Erwin found Kenny in the front line alongside these giants from 1955 through 1965.

Matt Darriau

Matt Darriau, saxophonist, clarinettist, ethnic-woodwind specialist and composer, Darriau has made several innovative contributions to the New York music scene. His background in the fertile and eclectic milieu of the New England Conservatory of Music's Third Stream Program in the 80's, and the continued practice of Balkan, Klezmer and Celtic folk idioms, have helped shape his aesthetic and passion for creating new and unusual music. He has been awarded grants and commissions from the NEA, Chamber Music America (2005/7) and is a Grammy winner (2007) with the Klezmatics. Jazziz magizine selected him as one of the 150 most influential jazz musicians of the last fifteen years, for the impact he has had in bringing Balkan and world rhythms to jazz with his band Paradox Trio

Eddie Daniels

Born: October 19, 1941

Eddie Daniels is that rarest of rare musicians who is not only equally at home in both jazz and classical music, but excels at both with breathtaking virtuosity. Expert testimony from the jazz world comes from the eminent jazz critic Leonard Feather, who said of Eddie, "It is a rare event in jazz where one man can all but reinvent an instrument bringing it to a new stage of revolution." From the classical side, Leonard Bernstein said "Eddie Daniels combines elegance and virtuosity in a way that makes me remember Arthur Rubenstein. He is a thoroughly well-bred demon." Eddie first came to the attention of the jazz audience as a tenor saxophonist with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra

Evan Christopher

Born: August 31, 1969

Evan Christopher combines virtuosity, immaculate taste, and enthusiasm with a commitment to exploring the full range of possibilities in the New Orleans clarinet tradition. His highly personal brand of “contemporary, early jazz” strives to extend the legacies of early Creole clarinetists such as Sidney Bechet, Barney Bigard and Omer Simeon. Critics remarking on Christopher’s dynamic expressiveness have coined his style “close-encounter music” (NEW YORK TIMES) and have called his respect for the music traditions of New Orleans, “a triumph, joining the present seamlessly to a glorious past.” (THE OBSERVER, UK). His journey on Clarinet Road began in 1994, when he left his native California to join the New Orleans music community

Barney Bigard

Born: March 3, 1906

One of the premier clarinet players in the history of jazz, Barney Bigard remains immortal. Bigard carried the influence of his birth city, New Orleans, throughout his career. He played tenor sax but later concentrated on clarinet, which he studied with Lorenzo Tio. In 1925 he was hired by King Oliver and moved to Chicago. After two years with Oliver, he joined Duke Ellington’s Orchestra where he would remain for 15 years. Bigard’s New Orleans-style clarinet added another dimension to Ellington’s palette. His individual style and articulation were universally admired. His woody sound was a highlight of “Rose Room” and “Mood Indigo,” which he co-wrote with Ellington

Acker Bilk

Born: January 28, 1929

Acker Bilk has won immortality on rock oldies radio for his surprise 1962 hit "Stranger on the Shore," an evocative ballad featuring his heavily quavering low-register clarinet over a bank of strings. To the jazz world, though, he has a longer-running track record as one of the biggest stars of Britain's trad jazz boom, playing in a distinctive early New Orleans manner. After learning his instrument in the British Army, Bilk joined Ken Colyer's trad band in 1954 before stepping out on his own in 1956. By 1960, a record of his, "Summer Set" — a pun on the name of his home county — landed on the British pop charts, and Bilk was on his way, clad in the Edwardian clothing and bowler hats that his publicist told his Paramount Jazz Band to wear

Richard Stoltzman

Born: July 12, 1942

Richard Stoltzman's virtuosity, musicianship and sheer personal magnetism have made him one of today's most sought-after concert artists. As soloist with over a hundred orchestras, a captivating recitalist, an innovative jazz artist, and a prolific recording artist, this two-time Grammy Award winner has defied categorization, dazzling critics and audiences alike throughout many musical genres. Stoltzman's unique way with the clarinet has earned him an international reputation as he has opened up possibilities for the instrument that no one could have predicted. He gave the first clarinet recitals at both the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall, and became the first wind player to receive the Avery Fisher Prize

Artie Shaw

Born: May 23, 1910

Artie Shaw, a brilliant jazz clarinetist, was one of the most enigmatic, daring and adventurous bandleaders of the swing-era. An intellectual, he hated public life and the music industry. Over the course of his short career he formed ten orchestras and disbanding most of them after only a few months. At the peak of his career in the years just before World War II, Shaw was matched by few other musicians in popularity and technical skill. Born Arthur Arshawsky in New York City and raised in Connecticut, Shaw took up the saxophone at an early age and began playing professionally when he was only 14

Tony Scott

Born: June 17, 1921

Tony Scott, a distinguished jazz clarinetist who in the 1950s helped steer his instrument out of the swing era and into the sax-infested waters of bebop. With Buddy DeFranco, Mr. Scott was considered one of the leading bebop clarinetists. (The two men were often described as the only major clarinetists to take on bebop, a style thought to be incompatible with the instrument’s soft, sweet sound.) Mr. Scott, who also played the saxophone, performed and recorded with some of the titans of mid-20th- century jazz, among them Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday. If Mr. Scott was not widely known to the American public, it was partly because his eclectic style made him unclassifiable: over the years, he ranged through bebop and what today would be called New Age and world music

Tom Schmidt

Born San Francisco,1939,raised East Bay. Studied English at S.F. State with private lessons with altoist John Handy. Taught English at American River College, Sacramento, '65-'76. Musician thereafter, playing mostly Dixieland/swing with free jazz forays and a weakness for hillbilly (the most influential music of my childhood heard daily on Cactus Jack and the 30th & San Pablo Furniture Warehouse Hour, KWBR, Oakland). Widely published poet, worked with The Harmony Arts Mobile Unit as poet/musician, recorded with John Lescroart, Joe Craven, Dave Nachmanoff, Sourdough Slim. Current bands: Washboard Wizardz(Berekely), The Crawdad Poetry & Jazz Ensemble (Merced), Uke 'n Reed (Merced).