Results for "piano"

Barry Harris

Born: December 15, 1929

Dr. Harris has devoted his life to the advancement of Jazz and in the 1980’s founded the Jazz Cultural Theatre. For the past several decades Dr. Harris has been an exponent of the classic Jazz style that was developed by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Coleman Hawkins.

Harris' earliest musical mentor was his mother who played for church and taught him his first song at the age of 4. This led him studying with different teachers in Detroit. In intermediate school he played clarinet and somehow he heard Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Fats Navarro

Herbie Hancock

Born: April 12, 1940

Herbie Hancock is a true icon of modern music. Throughout his explorations,he has transcended limitations and genres while still maintaining his unique,unmistakable voice. Herbie's success at expanding the possibilities of musicalthought has placed him in the annals of this century's visionaries. With anillustrious career spanning five decades, he continues to amaze audiences andnever ceases to expand the public's vision of what music, particularly jazz, isall about today.

Herbie Hancock's creative path has moved fluidly between almost everydevelopment in acoustic and electronic jazz and R&B since 1960. He hasattained an enviable balance of commercial and artistic success, arriving at apoint in his career where he ventures into every new project motivated purelyby the desire to expand the boundaries of his creativity.

Tardo Hammer

Born: February 26, 1958

Born in Queens, New York in 1958, Tardo Hammer began playing piano at age 5, and after dabbling with clarinet and guitar, returned to piano at age 13. By his mid teenage years he was listening heavily to jazz recordings of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and others and teaching himself to play that music on the piano and with other young musicians

Hammer's first professional appearance was on New Year's Eve, 1973, when he and five other fifteen year olds entertained the revelers with renditions of Ornithology, Four, Round Midnight, Scrapple From the Apple, Buzzy and So What. They were fired shortly before midnight.

Bengt Hallberg

Born: September 13, 1932

Bengt Hallberg is, without doubt, one of the most influential pianists in the history of Swedish jazz. In his Encyclopedia of Jazz, Leonard Feather called him “his country’s foremost jazz pianist,” praising his “unique, light-fingered style, exceptionally effective in single note lines on medium tempi.”

Throughout the 1950s he played not only with all the most important domestic stars of the idiom, most notably baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin and altoist Arne Domnérus, but with American visitors such as Stan Getz, with whom he cut a recording of an old Swedish folk tune, “Ack Värmeland du sköna." This became a hit when released in the U.S. as “Dear Old Stockholm”. In January 1954, the Swedish jazz magazine Estrad named him “musician of the year.”

Sadik Hakim

Born: July 15, 1919

Pianist Sadik Hakim was born Argonne Thornton on July 15, 1919. His maternal grandfather was a violinist, composer, conductor and professor of his own school of music. His grandmother was a cellist, his mother a violinist, his aunt a pianist and violinist and they performed together as a chamber music group. In 1961 Hakim made his first record as a leader (in conjunction with Duke Jordan). He played around New York with his own trio, then returned to Canada from 1966-76 and made records for CBS. He left Canada to tour Europe for a year, making a trip back to his native Duluth to play in the Bi- Centennial festival in 1976. Returning to New York he made several recordings on the Progressive, Steeplechase, and CBS labels

Al Haig

Born: July 22, 1924

A fine bebop pianist, Al Haig will come to mind as a participant on the Miles Davis “Birth of the Cool” sessions. Though this might be the primary recollection point on his resume, Al Haig was quite a player in his own right, though time has unjustly diminished his reputation. Haig was born July 22, 1922, in Newark, New Jersey, and his early jazz leanings were heavily influenced by Teddy Wilson. Moving to New York in 1944, he started playing with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. He performed and recorded with Gillespie from 1944 to 1946, Parker from 1948 to 1950, and then joined up with Stan Getz from 1949 to 1951

Cliff Habian

Born: December 16, 1956

About Cliff Habian The late jazz critic, Leonard Feather of the Los Angeles Times, said that “Cleveland has an engaging eclectic in Habian, everything switches around from cut to cut: the size of the band, the genre of the music, the source of Habian's inspitation”. That was twenty years ago, and since then, Cliff has remained true to those words. He began piano lessons at the age of nine and was composing music just a few years later. With both classical and jazz music being strong influences, he decided early on to integrate the two genres into his own unique style. A multifarious pianist, Cliff can play in virtually and style, and he performs comfortably in group settings as well as solo performances

Onaje Allan Gumbs

Born: September 3, 1949

Onaje Allan Gumbs is one of the industry’s most respected and talented musical collaborators. He has worked for more than 30 years with an illustrious list of jazz, R&B and pop artists. In 1974, he created a special arrangement of "Stella By Starlight" for the New York Jazz Repertory Company as part of a concert honoring Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall. He followed that with live and recorded performances with such artists as Lenny White, Buster Williams, Cecil McBee and Betty Carter. In 1975,Onaje joined forces with trumpeter, Nat Adderley as part of his quintet contributing to the group’s releases on Atlantic and Steeplechase Records

Dave Grusin

Born: June 26, 1934

David Grusin (born June 26, 1934 in Littleton, Colorado) is an American composer, arranger and pianist. Grusin has composed many scores for feature films and television, and he has won numerous awards for his soundtrack work. Although he has worked in many musical styles, Grusin is often thought of as a jazz artist.

Grusin has a filmography of about 100 credits. His many awards include an Oscar for best original score for The Milagro Beanfield War, as well as Oscar nominations for The Champ, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Firm, Havana, Heaven Can Wait, and On Golden Pond. He also received a best original song nomination for "It Might Be You" from the film Tootsie. Six of the fourteen cuts on the soundtrack from The Graduate are his. Other film scores he has composed include Three Days of the Condor, The Goonies, Tequila Sunrise, Hope Floats, Random Hearts and his timeless classic The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Vince Guaraldi

Born: July 17, 1928

By Derrick Bang

Like most so-called overnight successes, Vincent Anthony Guaraldi—who forever described himself as "a reformed boogie-woogie piano player"—worked hard for his big break.

The man eventually dubbed "Dr. Funk" by his compatriots was born in San Francisco on July 17, 1928; he graduated from Lincoln High School and then San Francisco State College. Guaraldi began performing while in college, haunting sessions at the Black Hawk and Jackson's Nook, sometimes with the {{Chubby Jackson = 7916}} / {{Bill Harris = 7445}} band, other times in combos with {{Sonny Criss = 5984}} and {{Bill Harris = 7445}}. He played weddings, high school concerts, and countless other small-potatoes gigs.