Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery
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Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery
Carolyn Leonhart (born July 10, 1971) is a jazz singer, daughter of jazz bassist Jay Leonhart and sister of the trumpeter Michael Leonhart. She has performed as a back-up vocalist for Steely Dan on several tours and recordings. Childhood and education Carolyn Leonhart was born in New York City on 10 July 1971, daughter of bassist and composer Jay Leonhart and vocalist Donna Leonhart. She was exposed to music from a very early age, attending her father's gigs where she saw him accompany famous singers such as Sarah Vaughan, Mel Tormé and Peggy Lee. Leonhart sang on television commercials as a young child. She attended The High School of Music & Art in New York City, and for four years sang in the school's Gospel Choir. While at school, she performed in the TV show "It's Showtime At The Apollo". At home she would spend hours singing while her father and brother played jazz standards. She won the Lena Horne High School Jazz Vocalist competition while in her senior year. Leonhart att ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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Al Jarreau
Alwin Lopez Jarreau (March 12, 1940 – February 12, 2017) was an American singer and musician. His 1981 album '' Breakin' Away'' spent two years on the ''Billboard'' 200 and is considered one of the finest examples of the Los Angeles pop and R&B sound. The album won Jarreau the 1982 Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. In all, he won seven Grammy Awards and was nominated for over a dozen more during his career. Jarreau also sang the theme song of the 1980s television series ''Moonlighting'', and was among the performers on the 1985 charity song "We Are the World." Early life and career Jarreau was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 12, 1940, the fifth of six children. His father Emile Alphonse Jarreau was a Seventh-day Adventist Church minister and singer, and his mother Pearl (Walker) Jarreau was a church pianist. Jarreau and his family sang together in church concerts and in benefits, and Jarreau and his mother performed at PTA meetings. Jarreau was student c ...
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Everything Must Go (Steely Dan Album)
''Everything Must Go'' is the ninth studio album by American rock group Steely Dan. It was released on June 10, 2003, by Reprise Records, and was the band's second album following their 20-year studio hiatus spanning 1980 through 2000, when they released ''Two Against Nature''. ''Everything Must Go'' is the band's most recent studio album and their last with founding member Walter Becker before his death in 2017. Background "Godwhacker" developed from a blasphemous lyric Fagen wrote a few days after his mother died of Alzheimer's. "It's about an elite squad of assassins whose sole assignment is to find a way into heaven and take out God", he later explained. "If the deity actually existed, what sane person wouldn't consider this to be justifiable homicide?" Reviews ''Everything Must Go'' received mixed reviews upon release. During a concert at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre on July 8, 2011, Donald Fagen said that he felt the album was "underrated". Releases ''Everything Must Go'' ...
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Two Against Nature
''Two Against Nature'' is the eighth studio album by American rock band Steely Dan. Their first studio album in 20 years, it was recorded from 1997 to 1999 and released on February 29, 2000, by Giant Records. A critical success, ''Two Against Nature'' won the group four Grammy Awards: Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Engineered Album – Non-Classical, and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals (for the single "Cousin Dupree"). Commercially, it peaked at number six on the U.S. ''Billboard'' 200 chart and sold more than one million copies, earning a Platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. Reception and legacy ''Two Against Nature'' was met with both commercial and critical success. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an average score of 77, based on 13 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Writing in March 2000 for ''The ...
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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 ...
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Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the ''Birth of the Cool'' sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he signed a long-term contract wi ...
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Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. In the 1970s, Hancock experimented with jazz fusion, funk, and electro styles, utilizing a wide array of synthesizers and electronics. It was during this period that he released perhaps his best-known and most influential album, ''Head Hunters''. Hancock's best-known compositions include " Cantaloupe Island", " Watermelon Man", " Maiden Voyage", and " Chameleon", all of which are jazz standards. During the 1980s, he enjoyed a hit single with the electronic instrumental " Rockit", a collaboration with bassist/producer Bill Laswell. Hancock has won an Academy Award and 14 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for his 200 ...
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Ahmad Jamal
Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and educator. For six decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. Biography Early life Jamal was born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1930. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity ("Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does," he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recogniz ...
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Woody Shaw
Woody Herman Shaw Jr. (December 24, 1944 – May 10, 1989) was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer, arranger, band leader, and educator. Shaw is widely known as one of the most important and influential jazz trumpeters and composers of the twentieth century. He is often credited with revolutionizing the technical and harmonic language of modern jazz trumpet playing, and to this day is regarded by many as one of the major innovators of the instrument. He was an acclaimed virtuoso, mentor, and spokesperson for jazz and worked and recorded alongside many of the leading musicians of his time. Biography Early life and background Woody Shaw was born in Laurinburg, North Carolina, United States. He was taken to Newark, New Jersey, by his parents, Rosalie Pegues and Woody Shaw Sr., when he was one year old. Shaw's father was a member of the African American gospel group known as the "Diamond Jubilee Singers" and both his parents attended the same secondar ...
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Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter (born August 25, 1933) is an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Shorter came to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of, and eventually primary composer for, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the 1960s, he joined Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, and then co-founded the jazz fusion band Weather Report. He has recorded over 20 albums as a bandleader. Many Shorter compositions have become jazz standards, and his music has earned worldwide recognition, critical praise and commendation. Shorter has won 11 Grammy Awards. He is acclaimed for his mastery of the soprano saxophone since switching his focus from the tenor in the late 1960s and beginning an extended reign in 1970 as ''Down Beat''s annual poll-winner on that instrument, winning the critics' poll for 10 consecutive years and the readers' for 18. ''The New York Times Ben Ratliff described Shorter in 2008 as "probably jazz's greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improv ...
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Walter Becker
Walter Carl Becker (February 20, 1950 – September 3, 2017) was an American musician, songwriter, and record producer. He was the co-founder, guitarist, bassist, and co-songwriter of the jazz rock band Steely Dan.Russonello, Giovanni,Listen to 13 Essential Walter Becker SongsNew York Times 2017-09-04. Accessed 2019-05-29. Becker met future songwriting partner Donald Fagen while they were students at Bard College. After a brief period of activity in New York City, the two moved to Los Angeles in 1971 and formed the nucleus of Steely Dan, which enjoyed a critically and commercially successful ten-year career. Following the group's dissolution, Becker moved to Hawaii and reduced his musical activity, working primarily as a record producer. In 1985, he briefly became a member of the English band China Crisis, producing and playing synthesizer on their album ''Flaunt the Imperfection''. Becker and Fagen reformed Steely Dan in 1993 and remained active, recording '' Two Against Nat ...
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Donald Fagen
Donald Jay Fagen (born January 10, 1948) is an American musician best known as the co-founder, lead singer, co-songwriter, and keyboardist of the band Steely Dan, formed in the early 1970s with musical partner Walter Becker. In addition to his work with Steely Dan, Fagen has released four solo albums. He began his solo career in 1982 with the album ''The Nightfly'', which was nominated for seven Grammy Awards. In 2001, Fagen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Steely Dan. Following Becker's death in 2017, Fagen has continued to tour as the only original member of Steely Dan. Early life Fagen was born in Passaic, New Jersey, on January 10, 1948, to Jewish parents, Joseph "Jerry" Fagen, an accountant, and his wife, Elinor, a homemaker who had been a swing singer in upstate New York's Catskill Mountains from childhood through her teens.Sweet, ''Steely Dan: Reelin' in the Years'' 7. His family moved to the suburb of Fair Lawn around 1958 and soon after to ...
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