Al Levitt
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Al Levitt
Alan Levitt (November 11, 1932 – November 28, 1994) was an American jazz drummer. Career Levitt was born in New York City to Ben Levitt (1908-1941) and Florence Cohen Levitt (1912-1950). Early in life he showed an interest in music. In the early 1940s he went to an inter-racial summer camp, Camp Wo-Ch-Ca, where he met Mike Stoller. They became close friends and both became interested in boogie-woogie and jazz. In 1947 when they were 14 years old they visited a social club at in Harlem. For the next two years they spent weekend evenings listening to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Oscar Pettiford, and Erroll Garner. In 1949 Mike Stoller moved to Los Angeles. Levitt went on to be a jazz drummer. Stoller met another young man in Los Angeles and they wrote songs together. They were known as Leiber & Stoller. Levitt studied with Lennie Tristano for many years, along with Lee Konitz. Levitt also studied occasionally with Max Roach. Levitt studied piano with Moses Chusids in high scho ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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Martial Solal
Martial Solal (born August 23, 1927) is a French jazz pianist and composer. Biography Solal was born in Algiers, French Algeria, to Algerian Jewish parents. He was persuaded to study clarinet, saxophone, and piano by his mother, who was an opera singer. He was expelled from school in 1942 because of his parents' Jewish ancestry. Algeria was a French colony, and the Vichy regime in France was following Nazi policies. Solal educated himself after having studied classical music in school. He imitated music he heard on the radio. When he was 15, he performed publicly for United States Army audiences. After settling in Paris in 1950, he began working with Django Reinhardt and U.S. expatriates such as Sidney Bechet and Don Byas. He formed a quartet (occasionally also leading a big band) in the late 1950s, although he had been recording as a leader since 1953. Solal then began composing film music, eventually providing over 20 scores. He composed music for Jean-Luc Godard's debut featur ...
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Bob Dorough
Robert Lrod Dorough (December 12, 1923 – April 23, 2018) was an American bebop and cool jazz vocalist, pianist, composer, songwriter, arranger, and producer. Dorough became famous as the composer and performer of songs in the TV series ''Schoolhouse Rock!'', as well as for his work with Miles Davis, Blossom Dearie, and others. Early life Robert Lrod Dorough was born in Cherry Hill, Polk County, Arkansas and grew up in Plainview, Texas. During World War II, he participated in Army bands as pianist, clarinetist, saxophonist, and arranger. After that, he attended North Texas State University, where he studied composition and piano. Career From 1949 to 1952 Dorough was a graduate student at Columbia University in New York City, and on the side played piano at local jazz clubs. He was hired for a tour by boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, who had interrupted his boxing career to pursue music. In Paris from 1954 to 1955 he worked as a musician and musical director, recording with jazz vocal ...
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Nathan Davis (saxophonist)
Nathan Tate Davis (February 15, 1937 – April 8, 2018) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played the tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute. He is known for his work with Eric Dolphy, Kenny Clarke, Ray Charles, Slide Hampton and Art Blakey. Career Davis traveled extensively around Europe after World War II and moved to Paris in 1962. He held a Ph.D in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and was a professor of music and director of jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh from 1969, an academic program that he helped initiate. He was also founder and director of the University of Pittsburgh Annual Jazz Seminar and Concert, the first academic jazz event of its kind in the United States. He also helped to found the university's William Robinson Recording Studio as well as establish the International Academy of Jazz Hall of Fame located in the school's William Pitt Union and the University of Pittsburgh-Sonny Rollins International Jazz Archi ...
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Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz, and first recorded several months before trumpeter Louis Armstrong. His erratic temperament hampered his career, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim. Bechet spent much of his later life in France. Biography Early life Bechet was born in New Orleans in 1897 to a middle-class Creole of color family. Bechet's father Omar was both a shoemaker and a flute player, and all four of his brothers were musicians as well. His older brother, Leonard Victor Bechet, was a full-time dentist and a part-time trombonist and bandleader. Bechet learned and mastered several musical instruments that were kept around the house (he began on the cornet), mostly by teaching himself; he decided to specialize in the clarinet (which he played almost exclusively until about 1919). At the age of six, he started to perform w ...
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Jazz Exchange Vol
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style ...
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