Home » Search Center » Results: Profiles
Results for "Profiles"
Wayman Tisdale: Way Up!
by Woodrow Wilkins
As a power forward, Wayman Tisdale became the first player at the University of Oklahoma to have his jersey number, 23, retired. He went on to become a member of the USA gold medal basketball team and a 12-year star in the NBA. His other passion, music, has led to a successful second career with the ...
John Scofield: Sco'in For It
by Terrell Kent Holmes
One would shortchange guitar maestro John Scofield substantially by describing him simply as a jazz musician. He has played in various genres from fusion to straight ahead to soul jazz. He made his first recordings as a leader in the mid-1970s and several years later landed the gig of his career by joining Miles' band shortly ...
Eric Kamau Gr
by Russ Musto
“I'd like like to go out in a blaze of glory. If the drum set catches fire one day while I'm playing, I will have achieved my purpose, Eric Kamau Grávátt says with a hearty laugh from his home in Minneapolis, where he has resided for the better part of the last three decades. “For the ...
Dave Douglas: Keeping His Eye on the Ball
by Tom Greenland
Dave Douglas isn't one to sit around watching paint dry. Since 1994, he's made 25 recordings as bandleader/composer, collaborated with a Who's Who roster of jazz “names (uptown and Downtown) and garnered seven straight wins as Downbeat's “Jazz Trumpeter of the Year, two Grammy nominations, a Guggenheim fellowship and the artistic directorship of the Banff International ...
Maynard Ferguson: Influential
by Woodrow Wilkins
I remember the first time I saw Maynard Ferguson in concert. It was spring 1982, the Cross & Sword Amphitheater in St. Augustine, Fla. It was my first time seeing a live jazz act, and the program left me feeling very satisfied. I knew I was onto something, although that could have been said the first ...
Oscar Peterson: Will To Perfection
by Andrew Velez
Born in 1925 in Montréal, Canada, to immigrant parents of West Indian origin, it was clear from early on that pianist Oscar Peterson was a musical prodigy. A star attraction in his teens with Johnny Holmes' big band, by age 20 he'd made his first RCA recordings. During the '50s he joined Norman Granz' Jazz at ...
Kirk Lightsey
by Russ Musto
When Kirk Lightsey walked into Harlem's St. Mark's United Methodist Church in May, to attend funeral services for his friend John Hicks, it was the first time that most of the considerable cross section of the New York jazz community there had seen the once ubiquitous pianist in more than a dozen years. A native of ...
Jenny Scheinman: Ready for Anything
by Celeste Sunderland
Something cosmic occurred while violinist Jenny Scheinman and guitarist Bill Frisell were in the studio last June recording Lucinda Williams' new album. While listening to the playback of a song called “Where Is My Love they locked eyes and simultaneously tapped a finger to their foreheads. “It was this mutual experience of hearing a sound we ...
Don Byron: Thinking and Rethinking
by Riel Lazarus
Few musicians can lay claim to tackling the wild mix of music Don Byron has. No matter how hard critics and audiences try to corner him, the clarinetist and composer succeeds in slipping their grips, in search of new ground to break. And yet as predictably unpredictable as Byron has been, his approach to music remains ...
Butch Warren
by Erik R. Quick
A couple of years ago, advertisements appeared in the local free DC weekly for informal Wednesday evening jam sessions featuring Butch Warren at Twins Lounge. I recall eagerly calling the club to ask whether this was the former bassist who had extensively recorded on many a classic Blue Note album. Although the club didn't offer confirmation, ...
