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Big Chief (Sunny Murray Album)
''Big Chief '' is an album by American free jazz drummer Sunny Murray. It was recorded in Paris in January, 1969, and was originally released on the Pathé label later that year. In 2008, it was reissued on LP by Eremite Records. On the album, Murray is joined by flutist Becky Friend, saxophonists Ronnie Beer and Kenneth Terroade, trumpeter Bernard Vitet, violinist Alan Silva, pianist François Tusques, and bassist Beb Guérin. In addition, poet H. Le Roy Bibbs joins the group on one track. Reception In a review for ''All About Jazz'', Clifford Allen called the album "a set that traverses the vicious to the romantic to the whimsical," and commented: "The term 'swing' might not obviously apply to dense, go-for-broke collective improvisations without countable beats, but that is not the type of 'swing' rhythm Murray is going for. The emphasis here is on 'acoustical,' the ensemble creating music at alternately very high or very low continuous audible levels into which sounds of diffe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sunny Murray
James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray (September 21, 1936 – December 7, 2017) was an American musician, and was one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming. Biography Murray was born in Idabel, Oklahoma, where he was raised by an uncle who later died after being refused treatment at a hospital because of his race. He began playing drums at the age of nine. As a teen, he lived in a rough part of Philadelphia, and spent two years in a reformatory. In 1956, he moved to New York City, where he worked in a car wash and as a building superintendent. During this time, he played with musicians such as trumpeters Red Allen and Ted Curson, pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith, and saxophonists Rocky Boyd and Jackie McLean. In 1959, he played for the first time with pianist Cecil Taylor and, according to Murray, " r six years all the other things were wiped from my mind..." "With Cecil, I had to originate a complete new direction on drums." Murray stated: "We played for about a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beb Guérin
Bernard "Beb" Guérin (December 22, 1941 in La Rochelle – November 14, 1980 in Paris) was a French jazz double-bassist. Beb Guérin first began playing bass at age 23, working in the 1960s with Sonny Criss, Jacques Coursil, François Tusques, Alan Silva, and Claude Delcloo later in the decade, as well as with free jazz groups in Paris clubs. In the early 1970s he worked with Ambrose Jackson, Steve Lacy, Sunny Murray, Sonny Sharrock, Archie Shepp, Alan Shorter, and Clifford Thornton, and worked frequently with Michel Portal for most of the 1970s. Discography As co-leader * ''Chateauvallon 76'' (L'Escargot, 1979) with Léon Francioli, Bernard Lubat, and Michel Portal * ''Conversations'' (Nato, 1981) with François Méchali As sideman With Jacques Coursil * ''Way Ahead'' (BYG, 1969) * ''Black Suite'' (BYG, 1969 971 With Colette Magny * ''Feu et Rythme'' (Le Chant du Monde, 1971) * ''Répression'' (Le Chant du Monde, 1972) With William Parker * ''Testimony'' (Zero In, 1995) * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 – December 30, 1979) was an American Musical composition, composer who worked primarily in musical theater. With 43 Broadway musicals and over 900 songs to his credit, Rodgers was one of the most well-known American composers of the 20th century, and his compositions had a significant influence on popular music. Rodgers is known for his songwriting partnerships, first with lyricist Lorenz Hart and then with Oscar Hammerstein II. With Hart he wrote musicals throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including ''Pal Joey (musical), Pal Joey'', ''A Connecticut Yankee (musical), A Connecticut Yankee'', ''On Your Toes'' and ''Babes in Arms.'' With Hammerstein he wrote musicals through the 1940s and 1950s, such as ''Oklahoma!'', ''Flower Drum Song'', ''Carousel (musical), Carousel'', ''South Pacific (musical), South Pacific'', ''The King and I'', and ''The Sound of Music''. His collaborations with Hammerstein, in particular, are celebrated for brin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
This Nearly Was Mine
''South Pacific'' is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, running for 1,925 performances. The plot is based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize–winning 1947 book ''Tales of the South Pacific'' and combines elements of several of those stories. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Michener's work that would be financially successful and, at the same time, send a strong progressive message on racism. The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. Marine lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of racial p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Coursil
Jacques Coursil (March 31, 1938 – June 26, 2020) was a composer, jazz trumpeter, scholar, and professor of literature, linguistics, and philosophy. Early life Coursil was born in Paris, France, of Martinican parents. At age nine, he began studying the violin, but switched to trumpet as a teenager. His earliest musical influences included classical composers such as Webern and Schoenberg, jazz, especially that of New Orleans musicians such as Albert Nicholas and Sidney Bechet, and liturgical music, as well as Martinican-influenced biguine. At the age of 14, Coursil had the opportunity to hear saxophonist Don Byas, who made a deep impression, "with a white suit, white shoes, a shiny saxophone, playing so sweetly." In 1958, Coursil left for Africa, spending three years in Mauritania and Senegal, where he befriended Léopold Sédar Senghor, politician, poet and theorist of Négritude. In 1961, he returned to France, working as a teacher and studying literature and mathematics. New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Corbett (writer)
John Corbett (born 1963) is an American writer, musician, radio host, teacher, record producer, concert promoter, and gallery owner based in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known among musicians and music fans as a champion of free jazz and free improvisation. In recent years he has become known in the visual art world as well through his Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery. Corbett's activities include: * musician playing free improvisation, usually on acoustic guitar * staff writer for Down Beat magazine * curator, with Ken Vandermark, of the Wednesday night jazz series at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, circa 1996–2004 * artistic director of the Berlin Jazz Festival in 2002 * record producer; he curates the Unheard Music Series for Atavistic Records, reissuing both classic and obscure recordings of free jazz and free improvisation, and has also produced new recordings by Peter Brötzmann and others * adjunct associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has tau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stuart Broomer
Stuart Broomer is a Canadian editor, music critic, pianist, writer, jazz historian, and composer. He is a former editor with ''CODA'' magazine and currently works as an editor at Coach House Books. As a music critic he has written articles for Amazon.com, ''The Globe and Mail'', ''Toronto Life'', ''Down Beat'', ''Musicworks'', ''Cadence Magazine'', '' ParisTransatlantlic'' and '' Signal to Noise''. He has also authored more than 60 liner essays for musicians internationally. His book ''Time and Anthony Braxton'' () was published by The Mercury Press in 2009. He is a member of the music faculty at George Brown College. Broomer is a graduate of The Royal Conservatory of Music where he studied music composition and piano with Samuel Dolin. As a pianist, he is best known for playing in the jazz trio "Broomer, Mars & Smith" in the 1970s and later the duo "Stuart Broomer & John Mars" during the 1980s, both of which included compositions by Broomer in their repertoire. The duo released a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
All About Jazz
''All About Jazz'' is a website established by Michael Ricci in 1995. A volunteer staff publishes news, album reviews, articles, videos, and listings of concerts and other events having to do with jazz. Ricci maintains a related site, ''Jazz Near You'', about local concerts and events. The Jazz Journalists Association voted ''All About Jazz'' Best Website Covering Jazz for thirteen consecutive years between 2003 and 2015, when the category was retired. In 2015, Ricci said the site received a peak of 1.3 million readers per month in 2007. Another source said that the site has over 500,000 readers around the world. Ricci was born in Philadelphia. He heard classical and jazz from his father's music collection. He played trumpet and went to his first jazz concert when he was eight. With a background in computer programming, he combined his interest in jazz and the internet by creating the ''All About Jazz'' website in 1995. The website publishes reviews, interviews, and articles pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
François Tusques
François Tusques (born January 27, 1938 in Paris, France) is a French jazz pianist. Tusques played a significant role in the emergence of a community of free jazz musicians in France. Discography * ''Free Jazz'', with Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin, Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, 1965. * ''La Maison Fille du Soleil'',with Don Cherry, Beb Guérin, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, 1965. * ''Le Nouveau Jazz'', with Barney Wilen, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Aldo Romano, 1967. *''François Tusques – La Reine des Vampires - Eddy Gaumont plays violin, 1967'' * ''Sunny Murray'', concert ''live'' with l'Acoustical Swing Unit, 1968. * ''Big Chief'', Acoustical Swing Unit, 1969. * ''Piano Dazibao'', 1970 - Futura Ger 14 * ''The Panther and the Lash'', with Clifford Thornton, Beb Guérin, Noel McGhee, 1970. * ''Dazibao n°2'', 1971 - Futura Ger32 * ''Intercommunal Music'' with Sunny Murray, Alan Silva, Beb Guérin, Steve Potts, Alan Shorter, Bob Reid, Louis Armfield, 1971. * ''Répression'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during this period believed that the bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz that had been played before them was too limiting. They became preoccupied with creating something new and exploring new directions. The term "free jazz" has often been combined with or substituted for the term "avant-garde jazz". Europeans tend to favor the term "free improvisation". Others have used "modern jazz", "creative music", and "art music". The ambiguity of free jazz presents problems of definition. Although it is usually played by small groups or individuals, free jazz big bands have existed. Although musicians and critics claim it is innovative and forward-looking, it draws on early styles of jazz and has been described as an attempt to return to primitive, often re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Silva
Alan Silva (born Alan Lee da Silva; January 22, 1939 in Bermuda) is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player. Biography Silva was born a British subject to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as "Ruby". He emigrated to the United States at the age of five with his mother, eventually acquiring U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19. He adopted the stage name of Alan Silva in his twenties. Silva was quoted in a Bermudan newspaper in 1988 as saying that although he left the island at a young age, he always considered himself Bermudian. He was raised in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, where he first began studying the trumpet, and moved on to study the upright bass. Silva is known as one of the most inventive bass players in jazz and has performed with many in the world of avant-garde jazz, including Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Sunny Murray, and Archie Shepp. Silva performed in 1964's October ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
