Black Unity
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Black Unity
''Black Unity'' is a composition and album by jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, recorded and released in late 1971. The whole album consists of a single thirty-seven-minute track, which was described by critic Joe S. Harrington as "an exercise in sustained harmonic groove that cannot be beaten" when he listed it at #38 on his Top 100 Albums. The compact disc reissue of 1997 unites the two parts as a single track, timed at 37:21. Reception In a review for AllMusic, Thom Jurek wrote: "The only cut on the album is 'Black Unity,' over 37 minutes of pure Afro-blue investigation into the black sounds of Latin music, African music, aborigine music, and Native American music, with a groove that was written into the standard three-chord vamp Sanders used, opening up a world of melodic and tonal possibilities while also bringing a couple of stellar talents to the fore... This is a solid, moving piece of work that seals the cracks in Sanders' vocabulary. His arrangement and the staggering of ...
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Album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual Phonograph record#78 rpm disc developments, 78 rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl LP record, long-playing (LP) records played at  revolutions per minute, rpm. The album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption from the mid-1960s to the early 21st century, a period known as the album era. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The 8-track tape was the first tape format widely used alongside vinyl from 1965 until being phased out by 1983 and was gradually supplanted by the cassette tape during the 1970s and early 1980s; the populari ...
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Soprano Saxophone
The soprano saxophone is a higher-register variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument invented in the 1840s. The soprano is the third-smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists (from smallest to largest) of the soprillo, sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, contrabass saxophone and tubax. Soprano saxophones are the smallest and thus highest-pitched saxophone in common use. The instrument A transposing instrument pitched in the key of B, modern soprano saxophones with a high F key have a range from concert A3 to E6 (written low B to high F) and are therefore pitched one octave above the tenor saxophone. There is also a soprano saxophone pitched in C, which is uncommon; most examples were produced in America in the 1920s. The soprano has all the keys of other saxophone models (with the exception of the low A on some baritones and altos). Soprano saxophones were originally keyed from low B to high E, but a low B mechanism was patented in 1887 and ...
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Billy Hart
Billy Hart (born November 29, 1940) is an American jazz drummer and educator. He is known internationally for his work with Herbie Hancock's "Mwandishi" band in the early 1970s, as well with Shirley Horn, Stan Getz, and Quest, among others. Biography Hart was born in Washington, D.C. He grew up in close proximity of the Spotlite Club, where he first heard the music of Lee Morgan, Ahmad Jamal, and Miles Davis, among others. Early on in his career he performed with Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, then with Buck Hill. Although he studied mechanical engineering at Howard University, he left school early to tour with Shirley Horn, whom Hart credits with accelerating his musical development. He was a sideman with the Montgomery Brothers (1961), Jimmy Smith (1964–1966), and Wes Montgomery (1966–68). Following Montgomery's death in 1968, Hart moved to New York City, where he recorded with McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, and Pharoah Sanders (playing on his famed record ...
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Norman Connors
Norman Connors (born March 1, 1947) is an American jazz drummer, composer, arranger, and producer who has led a number of influential jazz and R&B groups. He also achieved several big R&B hits of the day, especially with love ballads. He is possibly best known for the 1976 hit, "You Are My Starship" on which lead vocals were sung by Michael Henderson. Biography Connors lived in the same Philadelphia neighbourhood as comedian/actor Bill Cosby and had an interest in jazz from a very early age when he began to play drums. Whilst at elementary school, Connors was exposed to jazz extensively and became heavily influenced by the drummer Lex Humphries and the younger brother of bassist and Jazz-Messenger player, Spanky DeBrest. He first met his idol, Miles Davis, aged just 13 in 1960. He once sat in for Elvin Jones at a John Coltrane performance he attended while in middle school. Connors studied music at Temple University and Juilliard. His first recording was on Archie Shepp's 1967 ...
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Double Bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar in structure to the cello, it has four, although occasionally five, strings. The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, viola, and cello, ''The Orchestra: A User's Manual''
, Andrew Hugill with the Philharmonia Orchestra
as well as the concert band, and is featured in Double bass concerto, concertos, solo, and chamber music in European classical music, Western classical music.Alfred Planyavsky

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Cecil McBee
Cecil McBee (born May 19, 1935) is an American jazz bassist. He has recorded as a leader only a handful of times since the 1970s, but has contributed as a sideman to a number of jazz albums. Biography Early life and career McBee was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. He studied clarinet at school, but switched to bass at the age of 17, and began playing in local nightclubs. After gaining a music degree from Ohio Central State University, McBee spent two years in the U.S. Army, during which time he conducted the band at Fort Knox. In 1959, he played with Dinah Washington, and in 1962 he moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked with Paul Winter's folk-rock ensemble between 1963 and 1964. New York His jazz career began to take off in the mid-1960s, after he moved to New York, when he began playing and recording with a number of significant musicians including Miles Davis, Andrew Hill, Sam Rivers, Jackie McLean (1964), Wayne Shorter (1965–66), Charles Lloyd (1966), Y ...
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Stanley Clarke
Stanley Clarke (born June 30, 1951) is an American bassist, film composer and founding member of Return to Forever, one of the first jazz fusion bands. Clarke gave the bass guitar a prominence it lacked in jazz-related music. He is the first jazz-fusion bassist to headline tours, sell out shows worldwide and have recordings reach gold status. Clarke is a 5-time Grammy winner, with 15 nominations, 3 as a solo artist, 1 with the Stanley Clarke Band, and 1 with Return to Forever. Clarke was selected to become a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship. A Stanley Clarke electric bass is permanently on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Music career Early years Clarke was born on June 30, 1951 in Philadelphia. His mother sang opera around the house, belonged to a church choir, and encouraged him to study music. He started on accordion, then tried violin. But he felt awkward holding such a ...
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Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ...
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Joe Bonner
Joe Bonner (April 20, 1948 – November 20, 2014) was a hard bop and modal jazz pianist, influenced by McCoy Tyner and Art Tatum. He was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and studied at Virginia State College, but indicated that he learned more about music from musicians he worked with. In the seventies he played with Roy Haynes, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw and Billy Harper, among others. He died of heart disease in Denver at the age of 66. Discography As leader Compilation *''Two & One'' (Steeplechase); with Johnny Dyani (bass) As sideman With Richard Davis * '' Epistrophy & Now's the Time'' (Muse, 1972) With Billy Harper * ''Black Saint'' (Black Saint, 1975) With Azar Lawrence * '' Bridge into the New Age'' (Prestige, 1974) With Barbara Paris * ''Where Butterflies Play'' (Perea Productions, 1992) * ''P.S. I Love You'' (Perea Productions, 12/10/2000) * ''Happy Talk'' (Perea Productions, 2002) With Pharoah Sanders * ''Black Unity'' (Impulse!, 1971) * '' Live at ...
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Flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. According to the instrument classification of Hornbostel–Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown aerophones. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist or flutist. Flutes are the earliest known identifiable musical instruments, as paleolithic examples with hand-bored holes have been found. A number of flutes dating to about 53,000 to 45,000 years ago have been found in the Swabian Jura region of present-day Germany. These flutes demonstrate that a developed musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe.. Citation on p. 248. * While the oldest flutes currently known were found in Europe, Asia, too, has ...
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Carlos Garnett
Carlos Garnett (born December 1, 1938) is a Panamanian-American jazz saxophonist. Biography Garnett was born on December 1, 1938, in Red Tank, Panama Canal Zone. He was interested in jazz after hearing the music of Louis Jordan and James Moody in short films. He taught himself to play saxophone as a teenager and played with soldiers from the nearby United States Army base. In 1957 he started playing in calypso and Latin music groups. After moving to New York in 1962, he played in a rock 'n' roll group led by Leo Price. Around this time he also started learning music theory, being self-taught and having always played by ear. Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard hired him in 1968 and introduced him to many New York musicians. Garnett's first recording was Hubbard's 1969 album ''A Soul Experiment'', which contained two original compositions by him. In the late 1960s and early 1970 Garnett also played with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. He led his own g ...
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Trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B or C trumpet. Trumpet-like instruments have historically been used as signaling devices in battle or hunting, with examples dating back to at least 1500 BC. They began to be used as musical instruments only in the late 14th or early 15th century. Trumpets are used in art music styles, for instance in orchestras, concert bands, and jazz ensembles, as well as in popular music. They are played by blowing air through nearly-closed lips (called the player's embouchure), producing a "buzzing" sound that starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the instrument. Since the late 15th century, trumpets have primarily been constructed of brass tubing, usually bent twice into a rounded rectangular shape. There are many distinc ...
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