Results for "George Duke"

George Duke

George Duke was born in San Rafael, California, and reared in Marin City, a working class section of Marin County. When he was just four years old, his mother took him to see Duke Ellington in concert. "I don't remember it too well," says George, "but my mother told me I went crazy. I ran around saying 'Get me a piano, get me a piano!'" He began his piano studies at age seven, absorbing the roots of Black music in his local Baptist church. "That's where I first began to play funky. I really learned a lot about music from the church. I saw how music could trigger emotions in a cause-and-effect relationship." By the age of sixteen, George had played with a number of high school jazz groups

Brooklyn Funk Essentials: Stay Good

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI

Back in the day, jazz bands like Roy Ayers' Ubiquity and soul bands like the Ohio Players played more than jazz and soul. Jazz and soul were their main ingredient, but only one ingredient among others stirred in from R&B, funk, pop, Latin and other music. You might have heard them on different radio stations, but ...

Back in the Day, Around the World

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI

Brooklyn Funk Essentials Stay Good Dorado Records 2019 Back in the day, jazz bands like Roy Ayers' Ubiquity and soul bands like the Ohio Players played more than jazz and soul. Jazz and soul were their main ingredient, but only one ingredient among others stirred in ...

Ruslan Sirota: A Journey Away

By MACKENZIE HORNE

Ruslan Sirota would bristle against the classification of “pianist," “multi-instrumentalist," or “composer." He is, of course, all of these things... which is precisely the point. Raised on the songs of the Soviet and nurtured by the fusion alumni of the 1960s, Sirota has thus far navigated his professional career with an acute sense of sound, unencumbered ...

Bob Sheppard: The Clark Kent of Jazz

By JIM WORSLEY

An unassuming bespectacled man in his mid-sixties walks on to the stage. In a band with stellar, famous, and maybe flashier musicians, one could be forgiven if they didn't even notice him right away. But as soon as Bob Sheppard presses a saxophone, clarinet, or flute onto his lips, he is super, man! An incredible musician ...

Charlton Singleton At The Jazz Corner

By MARTIN MCFIE

The Charlton Singleton Quartet The Jazz Corner Hilton Head Island, SC October 27th, 2019 It was Sunday. Charlton Singleton played the organ for the morning congregation at his church in jny: Charleston, South Carolina. Then he drove with his quartet a hundred miles south through the Carolina Lowcountry ...

Jazzmeia Horn: Love & Liberation

By IAN PATTERSON

It's a big step for any singer, the move from interpreter of jazz standards to songwriter. And when you've been Grammy-nominated for a debut album of covers, as Jazzmeia Horn was with A Social Call (Prestige, 2017), the temptation must be to carry on in the same vein. Horn, however, clearly has greater ambition, as the ...

Jazzkaar 2019

By MARTIN LONGLEY

Jazzkaar Tallinn, Estonia April 23-28, 2019 Towards the second half of Jazzkaar, there was an invasion of starry Americans, overwhelming the normally quite striking wealth of indigenous Estonian talent. As ever, the fundamental structure of this 10-dayer revolved around its two main stages in the Telliskivi Creative City, Vaba Lava ...

Jared Pauley: On Capitol Street

By ROGER FARBEY

Hailing from Charleston, West Virginia, but now resident in NYC, Jared Pauley's first musical experiments were with the guitar but he abandoned this in favor of piano as a teenager. His influences include Herbie Hancock, George Duke and Chick Corea and his first purchased albums were Miles Davis' Milestones (Columbia, 1958), Herbie Hancock's Headhunters (Columbia, 1973) ...

Festival International de Jazz de Montréal 2019

By JOHN KELMAN

Festival International de Jazz de Montréal Various Venues Montréal, Canada June 27 -July 1, 2019 Forty years. Not a lifetime, perhaps, but a remarkably long time for any festival to not only continue to exist but, despite increasing challenges, to thrive. An even greater achievement when it's the Festival International de ...