Results for "piano"

Bob James

Born: December 25, 1939

The career of Bob James is long, varied and continues to evolve at every turn. From his first days in Marshall, Missouri, the music of Bob James has captivated audiences throughout the world. Discovered by Quincy Jones at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival in 1963, James recorded his first solo album, Bold Conceptions, that year for Mercury Records. 58 albums and innumerable awards would follow through five decades. He honed his skills working with Creed Taylor, working on albums for artists like Hank Crawford, Grover Washington, Jr, among others. While with CTI, James found great popular success overseeing significant hits for Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, Maynard Ferguson, and Kenny Loggins. In 1974, James finally recorded his own album, One, which launched a lifelong career of recording and performing live

Ahmad Jamal

Born: July 2, 1930

In 1951, Mr. Jamal first recorded 'Ahmad's Blues' on Okeh Records. His arrangement of the folk tune 'Billy Boy', and 'Poinciana' (not his original composition), also stem from this period. In 1955, he recorded his first Argo (Chess) Records album that included 'New Rhumba', 'Excerpts From The Blues', 'Medley' (actually 'I Don't Want To Be Kissed'), and 'It Ain't Necessarily So' —all later utilized by Miles Davis and Gil Evans on the albums "Miles Ahead" and "Porgy and Bess." In his autobiography, Mr. Davis praises Mr. Jamal's special artistic qualities and cites his influence. In fact, the mid-to-late 1950's Miles Davis Quintet recordings notably feature material previously recorded by Mr. Jamal: 'Squeeze Me', 'It Could Happen To You', 'But Not For Me', 'Surrey With The Fringe On Top', 'Ahmad's Blues', 'On Green Dolphin Street' and 'Billy Boy'.

Tony Jackson

Born: June 5, 1876

Acknowledged as a seminal New Orleans piano professor, Tony Jackson was born in uptown New Orleans on June 5, 1876. He showed musical talents at a young age. At the age of 10 he constructed a type of crude but working and properly tuned harpsichord out of junk in his back yard, since his family lacked the money to buy or rent a piano. On this contraption young Tony was able to reproduce hymns he heard in church; news of this accomplishment soon spread around the neighborhood and he was offered use of neighbors' pianos and reed organs to practice on. Jackson got his first musical job at age 13, when he began playing piano during off hours at a local honky tonk run by bandleader Adam Olivier

Calvin Jackson

Born: May 26, 1919

Calvin Jackson - pianist, composer, arranger, band leader, radio host (1919-1985) Calvin Jackson was born on May 26, 1919, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied music at the Juilliard School for a year (1941), and then went to California as assistant music director at the Hollywood studios of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In addition to his film studio work, Jackson also arranged music for orchestra leader Harry James and recorded with Phil Moore's band. He moved back to New York in 1947, where he was billed with Mildred Bailey at the Cafe Society. He continued to pursue a career as a recording artist in his roles as arranger, pianist and ensemble leader, touring widely in North and South America with a trio or quartet. Jackson moved to Toronto, Canada, in 1950

Vijay Iyer

Born: October 26, 1971

Composer-pianist VIJAY IYER (pronounced “VID-jay EYE-yer”) has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in modern music. He was described by Pitchfork as "one of the best in the world at what he does," by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” by the New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.” A musical innovator, an active collaborator, and a member of multiple artistic communities, Iyer continues to reimagine the role of the musician in the 21st century. Iyer’s Uneasy, a trio recording made with his friends and collaborators Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, was released by ECM in April 2021 to wide acclaim, the Boston Globe calling it “extraordinary,” and noting it as “another entry in Iyer’s extensive oeuvre, reaffirming his status as one of the most creative figures in improvised music.”

Ethan Iverson

Born: February 11, 1973

Ethan Iverson is a pianist, composer, and critic best known for his work in the jazz trio The Bad Plus with bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King. Iverson was born in Menomonie, Wisconsin. Before forming The Bad Plus, he was musical director of the Mark Morris Dance Group and a student of Fred Hersch and Sophia Rosoff. He has worked with artists such as Billy Hart, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Tim Berne, Mark Turner, Ben Street, Lee Konitz, Albert "Tootie" Heath, Paul Motian, Larry Grenadier, Charlie Haden and Ron Carter. He currently studies with John Bloomfield and is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory

Keith Ingham

Born: February 5, 1942

Keith Ingham is an English jazz pianist, mainly active in swing and Dixieland revival. Ingham's first professional gigs occurred in 1964. He played with Sandy Brown, Bruce Turner, and Wally Fawkes that decade. He played with Bob Wilber and Bud Freeman in 1974, and moved to New York City in 1978. In the 1980s he played with Benny Goodman, the World's Greatest Jazz Band, and Susannah McCorkle. He also worked with Maxine Sullivan, Marty Grosz, Harry Allen, and Eddie Condon. He recorded several albums of 1930s songs for Jump Records.

Abdullah Ibrahim

Born: October 9, 1934

Abdullah Ibrahim’s new solo program transcends category, combining the intimate and the universal in a unique way that is hinted at in its title. SENZO means “Ancestor” in both Chinese and Japanese. SENZO also echoes the name of Abdullah Ibrahim’s Sotho father, in whose language the word translates as “Creator”.

Abdullah Ibrahim, South Africa’s most distinguished pianist and a world-respected master musician, was born in 1934 in Cape Town and baptized Adolph Johannes Brand. His early musical memories were of traditional African Khoi-san songs and the Christian hymns, gospel tunes and spirituals that he heard from his grandmother, who was pianist for the local African Methodist Episcopalian church, and his mother, who led the choir. The Cape Town of his childhood was a melting-pot of cultural influences, and the young Dollar Brand, as he became known, was exposed to American jazz, township jive, CapeMalay music, as well as to classical music. Out of this blend of the secular and the religious, the traditional and the modern, developed the distinctive style, harmonies and musical vocabulary that are inimitably his own.

Dick Hyman

Born: March 8, 1927

Throughout a busy musical career that got underway in the early '50s, Dick Hyman has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in film scores, orchestral compositions, concert appearances and well over 100 albums recorded under his own name. While developing a masterful facility for improvisation in his own piano style, Mr. Hyman has also investigated ragtime and the earliest periods of jazz and has researched and recorded the piano music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake and Fats Waller, which he often features in his frequent recitals. Other solo recordings include the music of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Duke Ellington. Some of his recordings with combos are From The Age Of Swing, Swing Is Here, Cheek To Cheek, and If Bix Played Gershwin, plus numerous duet albums with Ruby Braff, Ralph Sutton and others. In a different vein, Mr. Hyman was one of the first to record on the Moog synthesizer, and his ?Minotaur? landed on the Billboard charts.

Ivory Joe Hunter

Born: October 10, 1914

Ivory Joe Hunter will forever be associated with his songs “I Almost Lost My Mind,” and “Since I Met You Baby,” which are essentials in the standard songbooks of popular music. His music was very polished and well thought out. Though starting out as a blues and then an R&B sensation, he comfortably crossed over into ballads, country, soul and pop. Born in Kirbyville, Texas, in 1914, Hunters’ mother was a gospel singer and his father, Dave Hunter, played guitar. A young Ivory Joe ( yes his real name) took an early interest in music and in 1933 made his first recording for the Library of Congress