Charles Mingus
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Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz Double bass, upright bassist, composer, bandleader, pianist, and author. A major proponent of collective Musical improvisation, improvisation, he is considered one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history,See the 1998 documentary ''Triumph of the Underdog'' with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Eric Dolphy. Mingus's work ranged from advanced bebop and avant-garde jazz with small and midsize jazz ensemble, ensembles to pioneering the post-bop style on seminal recordings like ''Pithecanthropus Erectus (album), Pithecanthropus Erectus'' (1956) and ''Mingus Ah Um'' (1959) and progressive big band experiments such as ''The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady'' (1963). Mingus's compositions continue to be played by contemporary musicians ranging from the repertory bands Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty (b ...
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Nogales, Arizona
Nogales (; English: or ) is a city in and the county seat of Santa Cruz County, Arizona. The population was 20,837 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census and estimated 20,103 in 2019. Nogales forms part of the larger Tucson–Nogales List of Combined Statistical Areas, combined statistical area, with a total population of 1,027,683 as of the 2010 Census. Nogales forms Arizona's largest transborder agglomeration with its adjacent, much larger twin Nogales, Sonora, Nogales, Sonora, across the Mexico–United States border, Mexican border. The southern terminus of Interstate 19 is located in Nogales at the U.S.–Mexico border; the highway continues south into Mexico as Mexico Federal Highway 15. The highways meeting in Nogales are a major road intersection in the CANAMEX Corridor, connecting Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Nogales also is the beginning of the Arizona Sun Corridor, an economically important trade region stretching from Nogales to Prescott, Arizona, ...
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United Artists Records
United Artists Records was an American record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 to issue movie soundtracks. The label expanded into other genres, such as easy listening, jazz, pop, and R&B. History Genres In 1958, United Artists released an album of music from the film '' The Big Country'', for which composer Jerome Moross received an Academy Award nomination. In 1959, United Artists released ''Forest of the Amazons,'' a cantata by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos adapted from the music he composed for MGM's '' Green Mansions'', with the composer conducting the Symphony of the Air. Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão was the featured soloist on the unusual recording, which was released on both LP and reel-to-reel tape. United Artists releases included soundtracks and cover versions from the James Bond movies, '' It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' (1963), '' A Hard Day's Night'' starring the Beatles (1964), '' The Greatest Story Ever Told'' (196 ...
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Pithecanthropus Erectus (album)
''Pithecanthropus Erectus'' is a studio album by jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus. It was released in August 1956 through Atlantic Records. Mingus noted that this was the first album where he taught arrangements to his musicians by ear instead of putting the chords and arrangements in writing. Music According to Mingus' liner notes, the title song is a ten-minute tone poem, depicting the rise of man from his hominid roots ('' Pithecanthropus erectus'') to an eventual downfall due to "his own failure to realize the inevitable emancipation of those he sought to enslave, and his greed in attempting to stand on a false security." The song's title refers to the Java Man fossil, which at the time of its discovery was the oldest human fossil ever found. Reception ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' gave it a maximum four-star rating and included it in its “core collection” of essential recordings, describing it as "One of the truly great modern jazz albums".Cook, Richard & Mort ...
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Jazz Ensemble
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, and dance music. 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. 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. However, 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 h ...
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Eric Dolphy
Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader. Primarily an alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and flautist, Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence during the same era. His use of the bass clarinet helped to establish the unconventional instrument within jazz. Dolphy extended the vocabulary and boundaries of the alto saxophone, and was among the earliest significant jazz flute soloists. His improvisational style was characterized by the use of wide intervals, in addition to employing an array of extended techniques to emulate the sounds of human voices and animals. He used melodic lines that were "angular, zigzagging from interval to interval, taking hairpin turns at unexpected junctures, making dramatic leaps from the lower to the upper register." Although Dolphy's work is sometimes classified as free jazz, his compositions and solos were often rooted in conventional (if ...
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Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He also played with his daughter Maxine Roach, a Grammy nominated violist. He was inducted into the ''DownBeat'' Hall of Fame in 1980 and the '' Modern Drummer'' Hall of Fame in 1992. In the mid-1950s, Roach co-led a pioneering quintet along with trumpeter Clifford Brown. In 1970, he founded the percussion ensemble M'Boom. Biography Early life and career Max Roach was born to Alphonse and Cressie Roach in the Township of Newland, Pasquotank County ...
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Charlie Parker
Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz Saxophone, saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, Virtuoso, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. He was a virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid Passing chord, passing chords, new variants of Altered chord, altered chords, and Chord substitution, chord substitutions. Parker was primarily a player of the alto saxophone. Parker was an icon for the hipster (1940s subculture), hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual rather than just an entertainer. Early life Charles Parker Jr. was born in Kansas City, Kansas, to Charles Parker Sr. and Adelaide "Addie" Bailey, who was of mixed Choctaw and African-A ...
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Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous Big band, jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become Standard (music), standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan (1937 song), Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty five-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writ ...
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Musical Improvisation
Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which combines performance with communication of Emotion, emotions and Musical technique, instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians. Sometimes musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous, but may be based on Chord (music), chord changes in classical music and many other kinds of music. One definition is a "performance given extempore without planning or preparation". Another definition is to "play or sing (music) extemporaneously, by inventing Variation (music), variations on a melody or creating new melodies, rhythms and harmonies". ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' defines it as "the extemporaneous composition or free performance of a musical passage, usually in a manner conforming to certain stylistic norms but unfettered by the prescriptive features of a specific musical text." Improvisation is often done within ...
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Author
In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculptor, painter, or composer is considered the author of their respective sculptures, paintings, or musical compositions. Although in common usage, the term "author" is often associated specifically with the writer of a book, Article (publishing), article, Play (theatre), play, or other written work. In cases involving a work for hire, the employer or commissioning party is legally considered the author of the work, even if it was created by someone else. Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the creator of the copyrighted work, i.e., the author. If more than one person created the work, then joint authorship has taken place. Copyright laws differ around the world. The United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as "a ...
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Pianist
A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, rock and roll. Most pianists can, to an extent, easily play other musical keyboard, keyboard instruments such as the synthesizer, harpsichord, celesta, and the organ (music), organ. Pianists past and present Contemporary classical music, classical pianists focus on dedicating their careers to performing, recording, teaching, researching, and continually adding new compositions to their repertoire. In contrast to their 19th-century counterparts, they typically do not engage in the composition or transcription of music. While some classical pianists may specialize in accompaniment and chamber music, a smaller number opt for full-time solo careers. Classical Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart could be considered the first concert pianist, as ...
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Bandleader
A bandleader is the leader of a music group such as a dance band, rock or pop band or jazz quartet. The term is most commonly used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music.''Club Date Musicians: Playing the New York Party Circuit''. Bruce A. MacLeod. University of Illinois Press. (1993) Most bandleaders are also performers with their own band, either as singers or as instrumentalists, playing an instrument such as electric guitar, piano, or other instruments. Roles The bandleader must have a variety of musical skills. A bandleader needs to be a music director who chooses the "setlist" (the list of songs that will be played in a show), sets the tempo for each song and starts each song (often by "counting in"), leads the start of new sections of songs (e.g., signalling for the start of a guitar solo or drum solo) and leads the endings of each song. The bandleader is also o ...
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