Results for "Various"

Rare Blend

Since 1995, Rare Blend’s music resonates with purists as well as those who embrace a progressive multi-genre approach to original instrumental music. Pulling from a variety of influences and musical styles, Rare Blend has gained rave reviews regionally and worldwide from major publications such as All About Jazz, Jazz Review, 20th Century Guitar magazine, Progression Magazine, Relix Magazine, Akron Beacon Journal, The Plain Dealer, Cleveland Scene, and many more...also receiving college & internet radio airplay and CD sales in the US, Europe, South America, Austrailia, Japan, etc...

Nick Storring

Born: October 4, 1981

Nick Storring is a Toronto-based composer, musician, writer, and curator. His varied and idiosyncratic body of musical work spans chamber compositions to meticulously constructed recordings consisting solely of Storring’s own overdubbed instrumental performances. This output reflects his eclecticism as a listener — juxtaposing the familiar and the abstract to conjure moments of hallucinatory reminiscence.

He has worked with a number of leading artists and organizations in contemporary music including Montréal’s AKOUSMA Festival, Oxford UK’s Audiograft Festival, Késia Decoté, the Esprit Orchestra, Arraymusic, Soundstreams, Eve Egoyan, Sophia Subbayya Vastek, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Quatuor Bozzini, and Vancouver New Music. Winner of the Canadian Music Centre’s 2011 Toronto Emerging Composer Award, he also placed first in the 2008 Jeux De Temps competition for electroacoustic composition. His recorded output has also been released on celebrated experimental music imprints such as Orange Milk Records, mappa editions, Scissor Tail, Notice Recordings and Entr’acte.

Reptet

Reptet is a sextet consisting of six multi-instrumentalists all of whom are members of the internationally acclaimed Monktail Creative Music Concern based out of Seattle, WA. They have established themselves as a group of considerable excitement, flair and vision while simultaneously debunking preconceived notions of what a jazz group ought to be. Their music has been aired on radio stations across the United States and Europe, and their members have toured internationally. The arts organization Earshot Jazz has described them as, “A hot progressive combo of Seattle's best young players. Their music is intense, taut, and fresh.” With the release of their second full length CD Do This!, Reptet has established themselves as an irrepressible force in modern jazz.

Ralph Escudero

Born: July 16, 1898

Ralph Escudero is largely forgotten now, but deserves to be better remembered. It was his meticulous sense of time that kept the intricate arrangements of such swinging big bands as McKinney's Cotton Pickers and the Fletcher Henderson band from falling apart. By age 12, he was already playing the Double Bass. Subsequently, under the auspices of the New Amsterdam Musical Association, he moved to New York city, where, during 1920-'21, his first recordings were backing vocalists Ethel Waters and Lucille Hegamin. While working a gig with the Wilbur Sweatman Orchestra (at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D

Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson

Born: May 25, 1878

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, was the most famous of all African American tap dancers in the twentieth century. Dancing upright and swinging, his light and exacting footwork brought tap “up on its toes” from an earlier flat-footed shuffling style, and developed the art of tap dancing to a delicate perfection. Born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, his parents, Maria and Maxwell Robinson, died in 1885. Young Bill was reared by his grandmother, Bedilia Robinson, who had been a slave. In Richmond, he got the nickname "Bojangles" from "jangler," meaning contentious, and invented the phrase "Everything's Copasetic," meaning tip-top

Lucky Peterson

Born: December 13, 1964

Lucky Peterson is the most dangerous triple threat working in the blues. A searing lead guitarist, fantastic organist, and first-rate vocalist, Lucky played his first gig at age three. By the time he was five, he had already recorded his first single, produced by none other than the legendary Willie Dixon. As a child prodigy, Lucky was somewhat of a novelty act. Now he is a true blues veteran. Over the last three decades, Lucky has played to audiences all over the world, dazzling both fans and critics with his multi-instrumental talents (he plays keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and trumpet), his soulful vocal style and his youthful approach to the blues

Gus Giordano

Born: 1923

Gus Giordano wrote the highly acclaimed Anthology of American Jazz Dance , the first book of its kind. Giordano organized the first Jazz Dance World Congress in August 1990. This event, co-sponsored by Northwestern University, assembled jazz dance greats such as Luigi, Matt Mattox, and Giordano and numerous jazz dance companies for a week of master classes and performances. Now an annual event, the Congress has been held at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at Northwestern University and University at Buffalo, in Phoenix, Chicago, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Costa Rica, and in August of 2005 returned to Chicago. Gus Giordano was the recipient of the 1984 Dance Educators of America Award for his “outstanding contribution to the world of jazz dance.” Additional honors include the 1988 Mayor’s Award for the Arts (Evanston, Illinois), the 1989 Governor’s Award for the Arts for exemplary individual artistic achievement, the 1991 Dance Teacher Now “Circle Award” for lifetime contributions to dance education, the 1993 Ruth Page Lifetime Service to the Field Award (presented to Gus and his late wife Peg); and in 1996 from the University of Missouri the “Distinguished Alumni Award” and the “William Francis English Scholar-in-Residence Award.” In 1985, Governor James Thompson declared April 25 “Gus Giordano Day” in appreciation of “his immense contribution to the cultural environment of the State of Illinois.” In 1995 he received the “Honorable Artist Award” from Chukyo University in Nagoya, Japan. In 1997 Gus served as National Spokesperson for National Dance Week

Leroy Foster

Born: February 1, 1923

Bluesman Baby Face Leroy Foster was born on 12 February 1923, in Algoma, Mississippi. He was one of the pioneers of the post-World War II southern blues resurgence in Chicago, arriving in the city in 1945.Between 1948 and 1952. Baby Face Leroy Foster waxed a handful of terrific sides under his own name for a number fledgling Chicago labels aided by some of the windy city’s best blues musicians. In addition his vocals, drumming, and guitar playing can be found backing some of the greatest Chicago blues records of the era. His death in 1958, at the age of 38, robbed the blues world of a singular, memorable talent and likely did much to hasten his unwarranted obscurity. Foster was first cousin to Little Johnny Jones and Little Willie Foster and came up to Chicago in 1945 in the company of Jones and Little Walter

Toumani Diabate

Born: August 10, 1965

Toumani Diabate is acknowledged to be the foremost kora player in the world. The kora is a 21-string harp-lute instrument that has been played in Africa for centuries. It was the signature of the medieval Mandingo Empire, which populated West Africa from the 13th to the 16th centuries.

Diabate has brought the kora to pop music, African orchestras, flamenco, jazz, and the blues. But his latest album, “The Mande Variations,” features the instrument solo.

Toumani Diabate comes from a long line of kora-playing griots.

Peter Apfelbaum

Born: August 21, 1960

Born in Berkeley, California in 1960, Peter Apfelbaum started playing drums at the age of three, taking up piano and saxophone in elementary school and forming his first band at age 11. A product of the Berkeley Schools' pioneering Jazz Project, Apfelbaum began performing professionally while in his early teens and was a member of the award-winning Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble under the direction of Phil Hardymon. In 1977 - his senior year at Berkeley High - he formed the 17-piece Hieroglyphics Ensemble as a vehicle for composing and exploring non-traditional musical forms. The Ensemble was initially largely comprised of fellow BHS classmates, some of whom would later move to New York and achieve recognition in their own right