Results for "Donald Byrd"

Donald Byrd

Born: December 9, 1932

Trumpeter Donald Byrd was born in Detroit in 1932, his studies at Wayne State University (1954) were interrupted by military service, during which he played in an Air Force band. He then attended the Manhattan School of Music (MA in music education). At the same time he was the favorite studio trumpeter of the bop label Presitge (1956-58), though he also recorded frequently for Riverside and Blue Note.

He gave performances with George Wallington (1955), Art Blakey (1956), and along with Gigi Gryce was a member of the Jazz Lab Quintet (1957). He also performed with Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and others, before settling into a partnership with Pepper Adams (1958-61). After studying composition in Europe (1963-63) Byrd began a career in black music education, teaching at Rutgers, the Hampton Institute, Howard University, and (after receiving a law degree, 1976) North Carolina Central University; in 1982 he was awarded a doctorate by Columbia Teachers College.

Eri Yamamoto Trio & Choral Chameleon: Goshu Ondo Suite

by Glenn Astarita
December 21, 2019

Modern jazz combined with choral vocals has not been in vogue during the genre's varied history. Some notable recordings such as drummer Max Roach's It's Time (Impulse, 1962) and trumpeter Donald Byrd's melding of jazz with spiritual vocals on A New Perspective (Blue Note, 1964) were prolific outings of this ilk. And on Byrd's album, the ...

50th Anniversary Blue Notes for December, Including The Rare Jazz Wave on Tour

by Marc Cohn
December 18, 2019

50th anniversary Blue Notes from December 1969 this week from Jack McDuff (Moon Rappin') and Reuben Wilson (the seriously greasy Blue Mode) and part of a Donald Byrd session (Kofi) only released 25 years after the fact! Then, there's this one: Jazz Wave Ltd. on Tour, Volume 1. It's a double LP (it's in my lap ...

Jazz Musician of the Day: Donald Byrd

December 9, 2019

All About Jazz is celebrating Donald Byrd's birthday today! Trumpeter Donald Byrd was born in Detroit in 1932, his studies at Wayne State University (1954) were interrupted by military service, during which he played in an Air Force band. He then attended the Manhattan School of Music (MA in music education). At the same time he ...

Chris May's Best Releases of 2019

by Chris May
December 7, 2019

The world may be going to hell in a handcart, but the year has been full of uplifting jazz. Here are ten of the best albums--the first seven newly recorded, the final three reissued or recently unearthed. Each one is the coyote's cojones. Yazz Ahmed Polyhymnia Ropeadope The eagerly ...

EFG London Jazz Festival 2019

by Luke Seabright
November 29, 2019

A truly great event that advocates for an art form like jazz will celebrate both its history and its younger incarnations. It can breathe life into the music's traditions while exposing new ways forward. The EFG London Jazz Festival, through its vast programme of concerts in venues across the city, succeeds in doing just that. This ...

Woody Shaw: At Onkel Po's Carnegie Hall: Vol. 1: Hamburg 1979

by Chris May
November 6, 2019

Woody Shaw was born a decade or so after quintessential hard-bop trumpeters Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd and Freddie Hubbard, Shaw's professed role model. He came to the party late but he came bearing gifts—a strong technique, an ability to play inside and outside with equal conviction, and a lot of soul. These qualities were to the ...

Blue Note's 80th Anniversary Vinyl Initiative

by Patrick Burnette
September 30, 2019

Blue Note moves in mysterious ways. It seems like only a few months ago that the storied jazz label announced its Tone Poet vinyl series, because, well, it was only a few months ago, and here they are with yet another entry in the vinyl reissue game: the Blue Note 80th Anniversary Series. Like the Tone ...

Meet Andrew Rothman

by Tessa Souter and Andrea Wolper
September 4, 2019

Lawyer, audiophile, lifelong arts enthusiast, our newest Super Fan's life plan was to be a classical pianist, until college took him in another direction. But it was two “major epiphanies" (the first time he heard Miles Davis and, later, Bill Evans) that turned him into a jazz Super Fan--such a Super Fan, in fact, that he ...

Resavoir: Resavoir

by Gareth Thompson
August 29, 2019

In the early 1950s, David Axelrod was hanging out in a Los Angeles park when a group of thugs mistook him for their target and sliced the musician with a knife. It feels apt to mention this in tandem with Resavoir's debut album for two reasons. Firstly, the shimmering spirit of Axelrod's music is a clear ...