Results for "saxophone, baritone"

Gail Thompson

Born: June 15, 1958

A gifted British baritone player, composer, flutist, and big-band leader, Gail Thompson’s music is comparable to that of Quincy Jones or Abdullah Ibrahim. Along with her hard bop jazz sound, she stirs in a soulful touch of African spirit and rhythm. Near the end of the ’80s, Thompson traveled by truck through Africa to reach Kenya. The experience clearly left its mark on her compositions. Thompson has performed with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers making her the only female Messenger ever, the Charlie Watts Orchestra, and the National Youth Orchestra; she has worked for Mick Jagger’s music company as director and she worked with Courtney Pine to help found the Jazz Warriors

Cecil Payne

Born: December 14, 1922

Cecil Payne (born December 14, 1922) is a jazz baritone saxophonist born in Brooklyn, NY. Payne can also play the alto saxophone and flute. He has played with other jazz greats, such as Illinois Jacquet, Machito, Woody Herman, Randy Weston, Duke Jordan, Wynton Kelly, Kenny Dorham, Harold Mabern and Count Basie, in addition to his solo work as bandleader. Payne received his first saxophone at age 13, asking his father for one after hearing Honeysuckle Rose by Count Basie, performed by Lester Young. Payne took lessons from a local alto sax player, Pete Brown. Payne began his professional recording career with J.J

Leo Parker

Born: April 18, 1925

Leo Parker was the proud owner of a big, beefy baritone sax tone and a fluent technique that struck a great match between the gritty, down-home feeling of R&B and the advanced harmonies of bebop.

At first, he studied alto in high school, even recording with Coleman Hawkins' early bebop band at age 18 on that instrument in 1944. Parker was very active during the 1940s in several bebop bands, like the Billy Eckstine Band, breeding ground for a lot of upcoming jazz musicians. When Billy needed a baritone saxophone player in his band, he gave one to Leo Parker, nicknamed The Kid, who played the alto sax up to that time. Another story says that he took up the baritone to be not mixed up with his namesake Charlie Parker seems to be far-fetched. He became an excellent baritone player in the bands of Dizzy Gillespie and Sir Charles Thompson and combined fine bebop elements with rhythm and blues licks.

Gerry Mulligan

Born: April 6, 1927

Gerry Mulligan grew up in Philadelphia and first learned piano, which he played occasionally. While in his teens, he wrote arrangements for Johnny Warrington's radio band (1944) and played reed instruments professionally. After moving to New York in 1946, he joined Gene Krupa's big band as staff arranger, attracting attention with his Disc Jockey Jump (1947). He then became involved with the nascent cool-jazz movement in New York, taking part in the performances (1948) and recording sessions (1949-50) of Miles Davis' nonet and contributing scores to the big bands of Elliot Lawrence and Claude Thornhill

Charlie Kohlhase

Born: November 28, 1956

Alto, tenor and baritone saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase has been a mainstay of Boston’s jazz scene for over twenty years. Whether leading his two newest bands, performing in a dozen others or writing over 50 compositions, his music spans a broad range of styles with an emphasis on the contemporary and the improvised. Born and raised in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (11/28/56), Charlie began playing saxophones at 18. After private studies with {{m: Stan Strickland = 13888}} and {{m: Roswell Rudd = 3958}} , he moved to Boston in 1980. In 1989, he formed the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet , an ongoing project that has performed locally and nationally for a decade and half

Fred Ho

Born: August 10, 1957

Fred Ho is a one-of-a-kind revolutionary Chinese American baritone saxophonist, composer, writer, producer, political activist and leader of the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and the Monkey Orchestra. For two decades, he has innovated an Afro Asian New American Multicultural Music imbedded in the swingest, most soulful and transgressive forms of African American music with the musical influences of Asia and the Pacific Rim. As Larry Birnbaum writes in Down Beat "Fred Ho's style is a genre onto itself, a pioneering fusion of free-jazz and traditional Chinese music that manages to combine truculence and delicacy with such natural ease that it sounds positively organic." Ho is a prodigious composer, having written over a half dozen critically acclaimed operas, music/theater epics, cutting edge multimedia performance works, martial arts ballet, oratorios and recording over a dozen albums as a leader

Lars Gullin

Born: May 4, 1928

Lars Gullin was born May 4, 1928, on the island of Gotland, off the Swedish east coast. Legend say he could read music before he learned to read Swedish. His first instrument was an accordion of the simplest kind. A few years later it was exchanged for a larger one with piano keys, and at the age of five he composed simple polkas. He actually won an accordion contest, still a juvenile. At the age of nine or ten he led his own little band, playing in local vaudevilles. The "book" consisted of tunes like After You've Gone and Tiger Rag, no doubt learned from Sonora 78s with accordionist Nisse Lind. At 13 Lars joined the military band in Visby, the main city on the island, as a clarinet player

Bob Gordon

Born: June 11, 1928

Bob Gordon was an American cool jazz baritone saxophonist born in St. Louis, Missouri, best known as a sideman for musicians like Stan Kenton, Shelly Manne, Chet Baker, Maynard Ferguson, Herbie Harper and Jack Montrose. He released one album as a bandleader. Gordon died in a car accident on his way to playing at a Pete Rugolo concert in San Diego. His friend saxophonist Jack Montrose wrote, "The union of Bob Gordon and the baritone saxophone must have been decreed in Heaven, for never have I viewed such rapport between the natural tendencies of a musical instrument and the mind of the man using it

Serge Chaloff

Born: November 24, 1923

The baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff was born in Boston on November 24th 1923 to two classical pianists. His father was the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s pianist and his mother was a famous piano teacher at the Boston conservatory whose students include such musicians as Keith Jarrett and Dick Twardzik. Serge himself learned to play the piano first then the clarinet in his teens but switched to the baritone sax as an adult. His two major influences were Harry Carney and Charlie Parker. The former on his choice of instrument and the latter on his choice of genre: he was the first bop baritonist

Harry Carney

Born: April 1, 1910

Harry Carney was a long tenured featured soloist in Duke Ellington's band and the first baritone saxophone soloist in jazz. Carney joined Duke Ellington's Orchestra when he was 17 in 1927 and remained for over 46 years, passing away in 1974 a few months after Ellington. . Born April 1910, Boston, Massachusetts, Carney began his professional musical career at the age of 13, playing clarinet and later the alto and baritone saxophone in Boston bands. Among his childhood friends were Johnny Hodges and Charlie Holmes, with whom he visited New York in 1927. Carney played at the Savoy Ballroom with Fess Williams before joining Duke Ellington, who was about to play in the young musician's home town, when this engagement was over Carney left for a tour with Ellington, who had taken on the role of guardian. The job with Ellington lasted until Duke's death 47 years later