Results for "composer/conductor"

Randy Simon Jazz Project

Born: May 20

Randy Simon was born and raised in Los Angeles. Although he had piano lessons for a year as a child, and took classical piano lessons for a period while in graduate school, music took a back seat for many years as he built up a successful career as a physicist. "I did not come back to the piano until about 12 years ago when I inherited the grand piano that I grew up with. I had it shipped to the East Coast, completely restored, and I started taking jazz piano lessons. After several years of study with jazz pianist Adrian Cohen, it occurred to me that I was a much more creative writer than I was a pianist

Bebe Barron

Born: June 16, 1925

The 1956 sci-fi thriller Forbidden Planet was the first major motion picture to feature an all- electronic film score a soundtrack that predated synthesizers and samplers. It was like nothing the audience had seen or heard. The composers were two little-known and little-appreciated pioneers in the field of electronic music, Louis and Bebe Barron. Married in 1947, the Barrons received a tape recorder as a wedding gift. They used it to record friends and parties, and later opened one of the first private sound studios in America. The 1948 book "Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine", by MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener, inspired Louis Barron to build electronic circuits, which he manipulated to generate sounds

John Cooper

Born: April 23, 1963

John Cooper is a jazz artist and composer who makes his home in Macomb, IL and is Director of Jazz Studies at Western Illinois University. Cooper began his musical career in 1983 in Detroit, Michigan where he completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Wayne State University in Jazz Studies. While in Detroit, he performed with the Johnny Trudell Orchestra as well as jazz artists Jon Faddis, Carl Fontana, Jim McNeely, Clark Terry, John Fedchock, David Liebman, Gary Foster, Alan Vizutti, James Moody, J. C. Heard, Duffy Jackson, Chico O'Ferrill, Jiggs Wigham Terry Gibbs, Slide Hampton, Ken Watters, and other national touring acts including Aretha Franklin, The Four Freshmen, The Four Lads, Mitzi Gaynor, Henny Youngman, Lola Falana, Roger Williams, Rosemary Clooney, Jerry Lewis, The Temptations, Rich Little, Joan Rivers, The Four Tops, The Spinners, Tony Orlando and Dawn, The Nelson Riddle Orchestra, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and Lou Rawls. Cooper continued his education, obtaining a Master's degree in Music Composition from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, where he worked as a teaching assistant in Jazz Studies under the supervision of Jazz Studies Director, Jeff Halsey

Sammy Cahn

Born: June 18, 1913

Sammy Cahn was nominated for more than 30 Oscars, and won four times. His songs were recorded by virtually every major singer. And he wrote some of the best known of all popular songs. He was born Samuel Cohen in New York on June 18, 1913 into a family of Jewish immigrants from Polish Galicia, and spent his childhood on the Lower East Side. He attended Seward Park High School. Early on, he learned to play the violin, and from the time he was fourteen he played in local Bar Mitzvah bands. While still in his teens, he played the violin in pit bands of burlesque houses. He became friendly with fellow band-member, pianist Saul Chaplin, and they began writing songs together

Joshua Shneider

Composer and Saxophonist Joshua Shneider has enjoyed a career that has included writing for and playing with some of the most inspiring and inspired artists of our time. He has had his compositions and arrangements performed by such artists as Donald Brown, James Williams, Bill Pierce, John Abercrombie, George Bohanon, Bill Mobley, Bobby Caldwell, John McNeil, The BMI Jazz Orchestra and many others. He leads and conducts his own 17 piece ensemble performing his original compositions. He has collaborated on music for the theater with playwrights Eve Ensler and Rosemary Moore. He is a founding member of Pulse, a chamber ensemble of composers and performers dedicated to presenting contemporary music without boundaries. Joshua Shneider has been recognized by The National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, ASCAP and as a member of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop was a finalist for the BMI Charlie Parker Award for Composition

Troy Floyd

Born: January 5, 1901

Jazz bandleader and instrumentalist Troy Floyd was born in 1901 in Texas. Floyd led various jazz groups in San Antonio during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He played alto and tenor saxophone and clarinet. His first unit was a sextet, organized in 1924 and increased to nine pieces by 1926. His band broadcast regularly on radio station HTSA from the Plaza Hotel in San Antonio, from which the group took the name Troy Floyd and His Plaza Hotel Orchestra when it recorded for the first time on March 14, 1928. This was one of the first black bands to record in Texas. Floyd's band also appeared at the Shadowland club, from which its 1928 recording of "Shadowland Blues" derived its title

John Cage

Born: September 5, 1912

In 1952, David Tudor sat down in front of a piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds and did nothing. The piece 4?33--written by John Cage, is possibly the most famous and important piece in twentieth century avant-garde. 4?33--was a distillation of years of working with found sound, noise, and alternative instruments. In one short piece, Cage broke from the history of classical composition and proposed that the primary act of musical performance was not making music, but listening. Born in Los Angeles in 1912, Cage studied for a short time at Pamona College, and later at UCLA with classical composer Arthur Schoenberg

Paul McCartney

Born: June 18, 1942

Original member of the Fab Four, The Beatles. Composed many songs for the Lad's before departing to a solo career. Began a new group, Wings which was very successful. Continued to make the Playboy's Best Bass Player of the year. McCartney composed title tracks for several Motion Pictures, including HELP!, A Hard Days Night, James Bond and Vanilla Sky, which the later two were nominated for an Academy Award. He received an Oscar in 1970 for Best Music, Original Song Score, Let It Be. He has toured around the world several times, drawing a large audience, performed with many artists over the years, and been covered by just everybody

Chris Schlarb

Born: July 10, 1977

Chris Schlarb is a musician, composer and producer based in Long Beach, California. His newest album, Psychic Temple, is a four song mediation on beauty featuring a 29-musician ensemble. Time Out New York said the album “blurs the line between avant-garde jazz and chamber music,” while National Public Radio mused, “in its wordless pastoral journey, Psychic Temple is boundary-less.” His debut solo album, Twilight & Ghost Stories, was critically hailed as both, “40 minutes of avant-garde bliss” by the New York Observer and as “a monumental achievement” by FFWD Weekly. His following release, Interoceans, with experimental jazz duo I Heart Lung, was chosen by NPR as one of the Top 5 Jazz albums of the year in 2008. In 2011, the Nicklas “Nifflas” Nygren video game NightSky was released over 45 minutes of original music composed by Chris Schlarb

Jussi Lampela

Born: December 14, 1972

Majoring in electric guitar, has studied in Musicians Institute (Los Angeles, US), Kungliga Musikhögskolan (Stockholm, Sweden) and Sibelius-Academy jazz department (Helsinki, Finland). Also studies in music composition.
As a freelance musician in many of the best Finnish groups, including:
UMO Jazz Orchestra, Jean S, Markku Johansson group, Sinfonia Lahti, Kuopio City Orchestra, Helsinki Police Band and also major festivals, for example April Jazz, Lahti Jazztori, Kerava Jazz, Imatra Big Band Festival, Jyväskylä Summer Jazz, Ylläsjazz, Pori Jazz and Kaamosjazz.
Performances with leading Finnish musicians and singers, including Emma Salokoski, Johanna Iivanainen, Jenny Robson, Maria Ylipää, Sami Pitkämö, Sami Saari, Marzi Nyman ja Jukka Perko.
Compositions for many TV-productions and documentaries, including documentary ”Lepakkomies ja Rajanvetäjä” with violin performances by Pekka Kuusisto, several documentaries for Mandart Productions, various productions for film houses Broadcasters, Optipari and MTV3.
First soloalbum in 2007 as a guitarist/composer