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Clifford Thornton
Clifford Edward Thornton III (September 6, 1936 – November 25, 1989) was an American jazz trumpeter, trombonist, activist, and educator. He played free jazz and avant-garde jazz in the 1960s and '70s. Career Clifford was born in Philadelphia. The year of his birth has been reported as early as 1934 or as late as 1939. He briefly attended Morgan State University and Temple University. Jazz pianist Jimmy Golden was his uncle, while his cousin, drummer J. C. Moses, had a jazz career that was cut short by failing health. Clifford began piano lessons when he was seven-years-old. Several biographers report that Clifford studied with trumpeter Donald Byrd during 1957, after Byrd had left Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and also that he worked with 17-year-old tuba player Ray Draper and Webster Young. Following a late 1950s stint in the U.S. Army bands Thornton moved to New York City. Clifford's political and musical motivations are epitomized by his statement: "For a lot of brothers l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freedom & Unity (album)
''Freedom & Unity'' is an album by valve trombonist Clifford Thornton. It was recorded in July 1967 at Sound City Studios in New York City, and was released by Third World Records in 1969. On the album, Thornton is joined by members of the Clifford Thornton New Art Ensemble: saxophonist Sonny King, trumpeter Joe McPhee, cornetist Edward Avent, vibraphonist Karl Berger, bassists Don Moore, Jimmy Garrison, and Tyrone Crabb, and drummer Harold (Nunding) Avent. Reception In a review for AllMusic, Rob Ferrier wrote: "For those who don't know better, the free jazz movement is considered a sharp break with the past heritage of the music. That really wasn't the case. As Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp hearkened back to field hollers and very basic folk forms, musicians like Clifford Thornton went in the opposite direction, building on the music of the sophisticates and expanding the possibilities for jazz. Listening to music with this much space in it, it might be hard for some listeners ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avant-garde Jazz
Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz and experimental jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through to the late 1960s. Originally synonymous with free jazz, much avant-garde jazz was distinct from that style. History 1950s Avant-garde jazz originated in the mid- to late 1950s among a group of improvisors who rejected the conventions of bebop and post bop in an effort to blur the division between the written and the spontaneous. Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor led the way, soon to be joined by John Coltrane. Some would come to apply it differently from free jazz, emphasizing structure and organization by the use of composed melodies, shifting but nevertheless predetermined meters and tonalities, and distinctions between soloists and accompaniment. 1960s In Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians began pursuing their own variety of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet. Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex improvisation often involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. His technique has been compared to percussion. Referring to the number of keys on a standard piano, Val Wilmer used the phrase "eighty-eight tuned drums" to describe Taylor's style. He has been referred to as being "like Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings". Early life and education Cecil Percival Taylor was born on March 25, 1929, in Long Island City, Queens, and raised in Corona, Queens. Ratliff, Ben (May 3, 2012)"Lessons From the Dean of the School of Improv" ''The New York Times''. Retrieved December 9, 2017: "I recently spoke with the 83-year-old improvising pianist Cecil Taylor for about five hours over two days. One day was at his three-story home ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Garrison
James Emory Garrison (March 3, 1934 – April 7, 1976) was an American jazz double bassist. He is best remembered for his association with John Coltrane from 1961 to 1967. Career Garrison was raised in both Miami and Philadelphia where he learned to play bass. Garrison came of age in the 1950s Philadelphia jazz scene, which included fellow bassists Reggie Workman and Henry Grimes, pianist McCoy Tyner and trumpeter Lee Morgan. Between 1957 and 1962, Garrison played and recorded with trumpeter Kenny Dorham; clarinetist Tony Scott; drummer Philly Joe Jones; and saxophonists Bill Barron, Lee Konitz, and Jackie McLean, as well as Curtis Fuller, Benny Golson, Lennie Tristano, and Pharoah Sanders, among others. In 1961, he recorded with Ornette Coleman, appearing on Coleman's albums '' Ornette on Tenor'' and '' The Art of the Improvisers''. He also worked with Walter Bishop, Jr. and Cal Massey during the early years of his career. He formally joined Coltrane's quartet in 1962, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Berger
Karl Hans Berger (born March 30, 1935 in Heidelberg, Germany) is a German jazz pianist, composer, and educator. Career Berger played piano in Germany when he was ten and worked in his teens at a club in Heidelberg. He learned modern jazz from visiting American musicians, such as Don Ellis and Leo Wright. During the 1960s, he started playing vibraphone and received a doctoral degree in musicology. He worked as a member of Don Cherry's band in Paris. When the band went to New York City to record ''Symphony for Improvisers'', he recorded his debut album as a leader. With Ornette Coleman and Ingrid Sertso, he founded the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, in 1972, to encourage students to pursue their own ideas about music. Berger considered Coleman his friend and mentor, and like Coleman he was drawn to avant-garde jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation. He has worked with Carla Bley, Dave Holland, Lee Konitz, John McLaughlin, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders, Gunther S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pro ..., bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the Jazz#Post-war jazz, history of jazz and 20th-century music. Born and raised in North Carolina, Coltrane moved to Philadelphia after graduating high school, where he studied music. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of Modal jazz, modes and was one of the players at the forefront of free jazz. He led at least fifty recording sessions and appeared on many albums by other musicians, including trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk. Over the course of his career, Coltrane's music t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marzette Watts
Marzette Watts (March 9, 1938, Montgomery, Alabama – March 2, 1998, Nashville) was an American jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist. He performed and recorded on bass clarinet as well. He had a brief career in music and is revered for his 1966 self-titled free jazz release. He was known also as a sound engineer. Watts played piano early in his life; he did not play music regularly in his teens. He studied at Alabama State College, where he was a founding member of SNCC; this association led to his being forced to leave the state at the behest of the governor of Alabama. He moved to New York, where he lived in a loft building on Cooper Square which also had as a tenant Leroi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), with whom he participated in the Organization of Young Men. Watts returned to college in New York, completing his studies in 1962; he then moved to Paris to study painting at the Sorbonne and began playing saxophone for extra money. Returning to New York in 1963, Watts studied unde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umbra (poets)
Umbra was a collective of young black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side that was founded in 1962. Background Umbra was one of the first post-civil rights Black literary groups to make an impact as radical in the sense of establishing their own voice distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, the prevailing white literary establishment. The attempt to merge a Black-oriented activist thrust with a primarily artistic orientation produced a classic split in Umbra between those who wanted to be activists and those who thought of themselves as primarily writers, though to some extent all members shared both views. Black writers have always had to face the issue of whether their work was primarily political or aesthetic. Moreover, Umbra itself had evolved out of similar circumstances: in 1960 a Black nationalist literary organization, On Guard for Freedom, had been founded on the Lower East Side by Calvin Hicks. Its members included Nannie and Walter Bowe, Harold Cruse (who wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freedomways
''Freedomways'' was the leading African-American theoretical, political and cultural journal of the 1960s–1980s. It began publishing in 1961 and ceased in 1985. The journal's founders were Louis E. Burnham, Louis Burnham, Edward Strong, W.E.B. Du Bois and its first general editor Shirley Graham Du Bois. It was later edited by Esther Cooper Jackson. For a time, Alice Walker was a contributing editor. ''Freedomways'' reported on the progressive political movements of the time and especially the American civil rights movement, uniting the diverse perspectives of the North and the South, but was also notable for its international scope in the era of anti-colonial victories and Pan-Africanism, an aspect that contributor, editor, and writing solicitor John Henrik Clarke emphasized. In addition to noted African-American intellectuals and artists whose work appeared in ''Freedomways'' (among them writers James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Paul Robeson, Nikki Giovanni, Lorraine Hansberry, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nathan Hare
Nathan Hare (born April 9, 1933) is an American sociologist, activist, academic, and psychologist. In 1968 he was the first person hired to coordinate a Black studies program in the United States. He established the program at San Francisco State. A graduate of Langston University and the University of Chicago, he had become involved in the Black Power movement while teaching at Howard University. After being fired as chair of the Black Studies program at San Francisco State, in November 1969 Hare and Robert Chrisman co-founded the journal, '' The Black Scholar: A Journal of Black Studies and Research''), of which Nathan Hare was founding publisher from 1969-75. After earning his Ph.D., in clinical psychology, Hare set up a private practice in Oakland and San Francisco. Together with his wife, Julia Hare, he founded the Black Think Tank and for several years published a periodical, ''Black Male/Female Relationships.'' He and his wife have written and published several books ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Askia M
Askia Muhammad I (b. 1443 – d. 1538), born Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Turi or Muhammad Ture, was the first ruler of the Askia dynasty of the Songhai Empire, reigning from 1493 to 1528. He is also known as Askia the Great, and his name in modern Songhai is Mamar Kassey. Askia Muhammad strengthened his empire and made it the largest empire in West Africa's history. At its peak under his reign, the Songhai Empire encompassed the Hausa states as far as Kano (in present-day Northern Nigeria) and much of the territory that had belonged to the Songhai empire in the east. His policies resulted in a rapid expansion of trade with Europe and Asia, the creation of many schools, and the establishment of Islam as an integral part of the empire. Muhammad was a prominent general under the Songhai ruler Sunni Ali. When Sunni Ali was succeeded by his son, Sunni Baru, in 1492, Muhammad challenged the succession on the grounds that the new ruler was not a faithful Muslim. He defeated Baru and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outside (jazz)
In jazz improvisation, outside playing describes an approach where one plays over a scale, mode or chord that is harmonically distant from the given chord. There are several common techniques to playing outside, that include side-stepping or side-slipping, superimposition of Coltrane changes, and polytonality. Side-slipping The term side-slipping or side-stepping has been used to describe several similar yet distinct methods of playing outside. In one version, one plays only the five "'wrong'" non- scale notes for the given chord and none of the seven scale or three to four chord tones, given that there are twelve notes in the equal tempered scale and heptatonic scales are generally used. Another technique described as sideslipping is the addition of distant ii–V relationships, such as a half-step above the original ii–V. This increases chromatic tension as it first moves away and then towards the tonic. Lastly, side-slipping can be described as playing in a scale a half ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
