Results for "piano"

George Wallington

Born: October 27, 1924

George Wallington, accomplished pianist, composer, and arranger, had been closely associated with the progressive jazzmovement since the mid-40s when this new phase of American music was being nurtured in New York’s Harlem and along 52nd St. He was, in fact, the pianist with Dizzy Gillespie’s firstbop band at the Onyx club in 1944, where his contributionsreflected his innate creative ability, a talent that established himas one of the best composers in the progressive field. 

Wallington’s astonishing, fast-moving eloquence as a pianist, contrasted strangely with his introvert, laconic manner as a person

Johnny Big Moose Walker

Born: June 27, 1929

Johnny Walker--Big Moose, Busy Head, Moose John, J. W. Walker--by whatever name he was called him, he was Chicago’s irrepressible wild man of blues piano. He wore a splendid smile and long, wavy hair; in his briefcase he carried a gorilla mask and a “Big Moose” jersey. Just as musicians and audiences enjoyed Moose’s antics, they also admired the exuberant, two-fisted blues he played. He’s worked alongside the best in the business and rambled from coast to coast. John Mayon Walker’s story was colorful from the start. He was born June 27, 1927, in Stoneville, Mississippi, but the way Moose told it, “I was really born in a graveyard, playing with the tombstones.” Indian blood and long flowing hair ran in the family

Randy Waldman

Although Randy Waldman is not widely known to the general public, he is one of the most respected pianists, arrangers, composers, and producers in the music business today. Over a 40-year career, he has worked with a veritable Who’s Who of music legends in the jazz and pop worlds, including Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Patti LaBelle, Celine Dion, Beyoncé, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Olivia Newton-John, Josh Groban, Ray Charles, Michael Bublé, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mathis, Stevie Wonder, Andrea Bocelli, Minnie Ripperton, Lou Rawls, Paul Anka, and George Benson, with whom he toured for seven years as his pianist, conductor and arranger

Claudia Villela

Born: August 27, 1961

Claudia Villela’s voice gets all the attention, and it’s easy to understand why. Her glorious five-octave instrument is one of the wonders of jazz, lithe and startlingly beautiful in every register. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, she sings mostly in Portuguese, interpreting lyrics with keen emotional insight and supple rhythmic command. A supremely inventive scat singer, she has honed a vivid vocabulary of sounds that can evoke the hollow thump of a tabla drum, the muted trumpet ofMiles Davis, the insistent twang of a berimbau, the ethereal call of a flute, or the distortion-laden Stratocaster licks of Jimi Hendrix. Based in the Santa Cruz area since the mid-1980s, Villela has evolved into an expressive pianist and percussionist and an ingenious composer and lyricist with an astonishing body of original material, as well as a repertoire of jewels from the Brazilian songbook. Inspired by Brazilian songwriters, composers and multi-instrumentalists such as Egberto Gismonti, Hermeto Pascoal and Milton Nascimento, Villela draws on a vast range of Brazilian traditions, from samba and bossa nova to the carnival groove partido alto, and baião, a highly syncopated northeastern song form popularized by Luiz Gonzaga in the mid-1940s. While growing up in Rio, Villela literally soaked up music from the air, falling asleep at night to the sounds wafting over from the samba school behind her grandmother’s house

Johnny Varro

Born: January 11, 1930

Johnny Varro (born 1930) is a pianist with roots in the swing style of jazz. He is also a leader and arranger. Varro was born in Brooklyn, New York. He began studying piano at the age of ten. During his teenage years he was introduced to jazz by way of the Commodore Music Shop in New York City. There he met the manager Jack Crystal (father of Billy Crystal), who was running jam sessions on the Lower East Side. At these sessions Johnny met some of the greatest players of the era, such as Willie "The Lion" Smith, Big Sid Catlett, Joe Thomas, Hot Lips Page, Joe Sullivan, Pete Brown and others

Bebo Valdes

Born: October 9, 1918

Valdés played piano from an early age and was very active as a performer, composer, arranger, and musical director at various Havana nightclubs, throughout the 40s and on into the 50s. During these years, he was also playing and arranging for numerous recording dates. Very highly regarded within the Cuban musical world, Valdés worked with many artists, including Mario Bauza and Ernesto Lecuona. With the growth of Afro-Cuban music worldwide, Valdés toured Europe and the USA. In 1960, unhappy with the new political power in Cuba, Valdés left his homeland, taking up residence in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1963

Chucho Valdes

Born: October 9, 1941

Chucho Valdés, born Jesús Dionisio Valdés, is a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger. He was born in Quivicán, Cuba. In 1972 he founded the group Irakere, one of Cuba's best-known Latin jazz bands. Together with pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Valdés is revered as one of Cuba's greatest jazz pianists.

His father Bebo Valdés, also a pianist, is the former director of Havana's famous "Tropicana" night club. Bebo Valdés, now in his 80's, is still performing, and won a Latin Grammy award in 2003 together with Israel "Cachao" López and Patato Valdés, and in 2005 together with flamenco singer Diego El Cigala.

McCoy Tyner

Born: December 11, 1938

It is not an overstatement to say that modern jazz has been shaped by the music of McCoy Tyner. His blues-based piano style, replete with sophisticated chords and an explosively percussive left hand has transcended conventional styles to become one of the most identifiable sounds in improvised music. His harmonic contributions and dramatic rhythmic devices form the vocabulary of a majority of jazz pianists. Born in 1938 in Philadelphia, he became a part of the fertile jazz and R&B scene of the early ‘50s. His parents imbued him with a love for music from an early age. His mother encouraged him to explore his musical interests through formal training. At 17 he began a career-changing relationship with Miles Davis’ sideman saxophonist John Coltrane

Richard Twardzik

Born: April 30, 1931

Richard Twardzik (born April 30, 1931 in Danvers, Massachusetts; died October 21, 1955 in Paris) was a jazz pianist known for bebop and for dying young from a heroin overdose. He trained in classical piano as a child and made his professional debut at 14. He was taught by Serge Chaloff's mother, who was a well-respected piano teacher in Boston, and worked with him on several occasions. He also accompanied Charlie Parker. His teens also saw the start of his drug addiction. He died on a European tour with Chet Baker who also had drug problems although not as severe at this point as later.

Lennie Tristano

Born: March 19, 1919

A pianist of exceptional co-ordination and skill, for whom playing in different metres with each hand held no terrors, Lennie Tristano overcame blindness to become one of the leading teachers in jazz. While he was studying for his music degree in Chicago in the early 1940s, he had already begun playing and working with a circle of musicians who became his pupils - including saxophonist Lee Konitz and guitarist Billy Bauer. Tristano mastered the bebop style, playing both intricate runs and sustained chordal passages, and by the late 1940s was working in New York, where he made some significant discs with the musicians who had developed bebop - notably Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie