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Damon Smith
Damon Smith (born October 17, 1972) is an American free improvising bassist. He has worked with Cecil Taylor, Peter Brötzmann, Marshall Allen, John Tchicai, Elliott Sharp, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Jim O'Rourke etc. Biography Smith spent his childhood in eastern Washington but moved to Oakland in the mid-1980s. He took up bass in his late teens, inspired by the Minutemen's Mike Watt. His love of Minutemen got him to explore other bands on the SST Records label which led to his discovery of Henry Kaiser, Elliott Sharp and Saccharine Trust. Smith credited Saccharine Trust's improvised live album '' Worldbroken'' with altering his views on punk rock, jazz, and free-form jamming. Eventually Damon was fortunate enough to meet Kaiser and the two have collaborated for over twenty years including more than ten recordings together. Initially an electric bass player due to his love of Minutemen and Watt's followup band fIREHOSE, Smith switched to double bass and began focusing on impr ... [...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] |
East Bay Express
The ''East Bay Express'' is an Oakland-based weekly newspaper serving the Berkeley, Oakland and East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is distributed throughout Alameda County and parts of Contra Costa County every Wednesday. The ''Express'' is known for its investigative and longform news and feature stories, along with its award-winning arts, food and wine coverage. The paper is also well known for its opinionated viewpoint and for engaging in advocacy journalism. A typical issue of the ''Express'' contains one or two in-depth news stories; an "Eco Watch" column about environmental issues; a political column called Seven Days; a cover story, events and music listings; music, dining and movie reviews; a culture column; a parenting column; a tech column; and the syndicated columns "Savage Love" and Free Will Astrology. As of September 2020, Josh Koehn is its editor and D. Scott Miller is its arts editor. Daedalus Howell served as editor-at-large after its sale by Tel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. He is known for his unique filmmaking process, such as disregarding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing the cast and crew into similar situations as characters in his films. Herzog started work on his first film ''Herakles'' in 1961, when he was nineteen. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature films and documentaries, such as ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' (1972), ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'' (1974), '' Heart of Glass'' (1976), '' Stroszek'' (1977), ''Nosferatu the Vampyre'' (1979), ''Fitzcarraldo'' (1982), ''Cobra Verde'' (1987), ''Lessons of Darkness'' (1992), ''Little Dieter Needs to Fly'' (1997), ''My Best Fiend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Moses (musician)
Bob Moses (born January 28, 1948) is an American jazz drummer. Biography He was born in New York, United States. Moses played with Roland Kirk in 1964–65 while he was still a teenager. In 1966, he and Larry Coryell formed The Free Spirits, a jazz fusion ensemble, and from 1967 to 1969 he played in Gary Burton's quartet, including drumming for the Grammy-nominated album '' Gary Burton Quartet in Concert''. He played on the landmark 1967 Burton album '' A Genuine Tong Funeral'', but due to creative disputes with the album's composer Carla Bley the drummer was credited as "Lonesome Dragon". Moses and Bley would later reconcile and he became a vocal booster for her music. Moses recorded with Burton in the 1970s, in addition to work with Dave Liebman/Open Sky, Pat Metheny, Mike Gibbs, Hal Galper, Gil Goldstein, Steve Swallow, Steve Kuhn/Sheila Jordan (from 1979 to 1982), George Gruntz, and Emily Remler (from 1983 to 1984). In the early 1970s he was a member of Compost with Har ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vinny Golia
Vinny Golia (born March 1, 1946) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in woodwind instruments. He performs in the genres of contemporary music, jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation. Career As a composer, Golia fuses the rich heritage of jazz, contemporary classical music and world music. Also a bandleader, he has presented his music to concert audiences in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States in ensembles varying dramatically in size and instrumentation. Golia has won numerous awards as a composer, including grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Lila Wallace Commissioning Program, the California Arts Council, Meet the Composer, Clausen Foundation of the Arts, Funds for U.S. Artists and the American Composers Forum. In 1982, he created the ongoing 50-piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble to perform his compositions for chamber orchestra and jazz ensembles. A multi-woodwind performer, Golia's recordings ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DownBeat
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois. It is named after the " downbeat" in music, also called "beat one", or the first beat of a musical measure. ''DownBeat'' publishes results of annual surveys of both its readers and critics in a variety of categories. The ''DownBeat'' Jazz Hall of Fame includes winners from both the readers' and critics' poll. The results of the readers' poll are published in the December issue, those of the critics' poll in the August issue. Popular features of ''DownBeat'' magazine include its "Reviews" section where jazz critics, using a '1-Star to 5-Star' maximum rating system, rate the latest musical recordings, vintage recordings, and books; articles on individual musicians and music forms; and its famous "Blindfold Test" column, in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weasel Walter
Weasel Walter (born Christopher Todd Walter, May 18, 1972) is an American composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and founder of ugEXPLODE Records. Walter's work has been informed by techniques and traditions of music including Avant-garde, experimental, no wave, free jazz, extreme metal, punk jazz, hardcore punk, noise, new music and free improvisation. He coined the term "brutal prog" to describe the aggressively dissonant strain of prog played by groups like his band The Flying Luttenbachers. Known as an unrelenting and abrasive provocateur whose performances trend toward overblown antics and "nihilistic glee", Walter has been described by renowned guitarist Mary Halvorson as "completely manic and extraordinarily sensitive" and by ''The Chicago Reader'' as "a splinter lodged beneath the fingernail". Avant-garde artist Glenn Branca once called him "one of the greatest rock composers who ever lived". He has performed as leader and sideperson in a number of ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertram Turetzky
Bertram Jay Turetzky (born February 14, 1933) is a contemporary American double bass (contrabass) soloist, composer, teacher, and author of ''The Contemporary Contrabass'' (1974, 1989), a book that looked at a number of new and interesting ways of playing the double bass including featuring it as a solo performance vehicle with no other instrumental accompaniment. Career Turetzky has performed and recorded more than 300 pieces written by and for him. He is a composer whose music has achieved some prominence, as have his interpretations of early music and composers like Domenico Dragonetti. Music critic Michael Steinberg has praised his continuo playing. Turetzky has appeared as a featured soloist in the major music centers of the world and is the most widely recorded solo doublebass player with seven albums on Advance, Ars Nova, Nonesuch, Takoma, Desto and Finnadar music labels.''20th Century Ukrainian Violin Music'' 1987 recording CYFP 2032 by Yevshan Corporation, Canada, L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lisle Ellis
Lisle Ellis, (born November 17, 1951) is a Canadian jazz bassist and composer who is known for his improvisational style and use of electronics. Biography Ellis was born in Campbell River, British Columbia. Ellis began playing electric bass in his teens and worked professionally from an early age in numerous environments including studios, radio & TV shows, and strip clubs. He was born Lyle Steve Lansall, but used his initials L. S. as his stage name Ellis; he also used the name L. S. Lansall-Ellis professionally. Ellis studied at the Vancouver Academy of Music with Walter Robertson and attended Douglas College in Vancouver. He later studied at the Creative Music Studio in New York City from 1975-1979. Ellis lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 1982 until 1983 and then Montreal, Quebec, Canada from 1983 until 1992. In 1986 Ellis was the first recipient of Canada's Fred Stone Award, given annually to a musician for integrity and innovation. In the early 1980s in Vancouver, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Douglas (musician)
Bill Douglas (born November 7, 1944) is a Canadian musician, composer, pianist, and bassoonist whose works received influence from classical music, jazz, African, Brazilian and Indian music, 1970s funk and many other genres. He has toured and recorded for thirty years with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. As a bassoonist, he has played with the Toronto and New Haven Symphony Orchestras and has recorded three RCA albums with Peter Serkin and Tashi (Ida Kavafian, Fred Sherry, Richard Stoltzman and Peter Serkin). As a jazz pianist, he has toured and recorded with vibraphonist Gary Burton and bassist Eddie Gómez. In 1994, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), the Canadian equivalent of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), presented him with their classical composer of the year award. His compositions have been performed by major orchestras and chamber groups around the world. He h ... [...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] |
Peter Kowald
Peter Kowald (21 April 1944 – 21 September 2002) was a German free jazz and free improvising double bassist and tubist. Career A member of the Globe Unity Orchestra, and a touring double-bass player, Kowald collaborated with many European free jazz and American free-jazz players during his career, including Peter Brötzmann, Irène Schweizer, Karl Berger, Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, Karl E. H. Seigfried, Conny Bauer, Jeffrey Morgan, Wadada Leo Smith, Günter Sommer, William Parker, Barre Phillips, Joëlle Léandre, Alfred Harth, Lauren Newton and Evan Parker. He also recorded a number of solo double-bass albums, and was a member of the London Jazz Composer's Orchestra until 1985. He also recorded a number of pioneering double bass duets with Maarten Altena, Barry Guy, Joëlle Léandre, Barre Phillips, William Parker, Damon Smith and Peter Jacquemyn. In addition, Kowald collaborated extensively with poets and artists and with the dancers Gerlinde Lambeck, Anne M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
