|
Frank Hewitt
Frank Hewitt (October 23, 1935 – September 5, 2002) was an American hard bop jazz pianist. Life and career Born in Queens, New York, Hewitt lived most of his life in Harlem. His mother was a church pianist, and he initially studied classical and gospel music, but switched to jazz after hearing a Charlie Parker record. He took the bop pianists Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Elmo Hope as his role models. In the 1950s and 1960s, he worked with Howard McGhee, Cecil Payne, John Coltrane, Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday, among others; in 1961, he also participated in the Living Theater's production of Jack Gelber's '' The Connection''. He became a regular figure in the circle of the pianist Barry Harris. In the 1990s, Hewitt became a central figure at New York's Smalls Jazz Club; aside from playing there several nights a week, he sometimes also ended up using the walk-in refrigerator as a place to bunk when times were rough. During his lifetime only one track of Hewitt's pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hard Bop
Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing. David H. Rosenthal contends in his book ''Hard Bop'' that the genre is, to a large degree, the natural creation of a generation of African-American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music. Prominent hard bop musicians included Horace Silver, Clifford Brown, Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk and Lee Morgan. Musical style Hard bop is sometimes referred to as "funky hard bop". The "funky" label refers to the rollicking, rhythmic feeling associated with the style. The descriptor is also used to describe soul jazz, which is commonly a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Gelber
Jack Gelber (April 12, 1932 – May 9, 2003) was an American playwright best known for his 1959 drama '' The Connection'', depicting the life of drug-addicted jazz musicians. The first great success of the Living Theatre, the play was translated into five languages and produced in ten nations. Gelber continued to work and write in New York, where he also taught writing, directing and drama as a professor, chiefly at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, where he created the MFA program in playwriting. In 1999 he received the Edward Albee Last Frontier Playwright Award in recognition of his lifetime of achievements in theatre. Early life and education Jack Gelber was born April 12, 1932 in Chicago, the first of three sons of Molly (Singer) and Harold Gelber, a Jewish American couple of Russian and Romanian descent. Harold was a sheet metal worker, a trade the younger Gelber would briefly adopt to finance his education at the University of Illinois. While at the un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Male Pianists
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Jazz Pianists
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1935 Births
Events January * January 7 – Italian premier Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval conclude Franco-Italian Agreement of 1935, an agreement, in which each power agrees not to oppose the other's colonial claims. * January 12 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to successfully complete a solo flight from Hawaii to California, a distance of 2,408 miles. * January 13 – A plebiscite in the Saar (League of Nations), Territory of the Saar Basin shows that 90.3% of those voting wish to join Germany. * January 24 – The first canned beer is sold in Richmond, Virginia, United States, by Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company. February * February 6 – Parker Brothers begins selling the board game Monopoly (game), Monopoly in the United States. * February 13 – Richard Hauptmann is convicted and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. in the United States. * February 15 – The discovery and clinical development of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenny Dorham
McKinley Howard "Kenny" Dorham (August 30, 1924 – December 5, 1972) was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and composer. Dorham's talent is frequently lauded by critics and other musicians, but he never received the kind of attention or public recognition from the jazz establishment that many of his peers did. For this reason, writer Gary Giddins said that Dorham's name has become "virtually synonymous with ''underrated''." Dorham composed the jazz standard "Blue Bossa", which first appeared on Joe Henderson's album ''Page One''. Biography Dorham was one of the most active bebop trumpeters. He played in the big bands of Lionel Hampton, Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, and Mercer Ellington and the quintet of Charlie Parker. He joined Parker's band in December 1948. He was a charter member of the original cooperative The Jazz Messengers, Jazz Messengers. He also recorded as a sideman with Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, and he replaced Clifford Brown in the Max Roach Quintet af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smalls Jazz Club
Smalls Jazz Club is a jazz club at 183 West 10th Street, Greenwich Village, New York City. Established in 1994, it earned a reputation in the 1990s as a "hotbed for New York's jazz talent" with a "well-deserved reputation as one of the best places in the city to see rising talent in the New York jazz scene". Its jazz musicians are noted for being "talented, though largely unknown" while its music is characterized as "modern versions of bebop and hard bop". The club's main room is in a basement with a capacity of 50 people that expanded to 60 people. Smalls Jazz Club should not be confused with Smalls Paradise in Harlem, which was founded in 1925 by Ed Smalls and closed in the 1950s. History Smalls Jazz Club was established in 1993 by Mitchell "Mitch" Borden, a former submariner, nurse, and teacher. Its target audience was characterized as young, Bohemianism, bohemian, and talkative. Music commenced every night at 10:30 and at times lasted until 6:00 the following morning. The entr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barry Harris
Barry Doyle Harris (December 15, 1929 – December 8, 2021) was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, composer, arranger, and educator. He was an exponent of the bebop style. Life and career Harris was born in Detroit, Michigan, on December 15, 1929, to Melvin Harris and Bessie as the fourth of their five children. Harris took piano lessons from his mother at the age of four. His mother, a church pianist, asked him if he was interested in playing church music or jazz. Having picked the latter, he was influenced by Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. In his teens, he learned bebop largely by ear, imitating solos by Powell. He described Powell's style as being the "epitome" of jazz. He performed for dances in clubs and ballrooms. He was based in Detroit through the 1950s and worked with Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, and Thad Jones, and substituted for Junior Mance in the Gene Ammons band. In 1956, he toured briefly with Max Roach, after Richie Powell, the band's pianist and younger brot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Connection (1959 Play)
''The Connection'' is a 1959 play by Jack Gelber. It was first produced by the Living Theatre, directed by Living Theatre co-founder Judith Malina, and designed by co-founder Julian Beck. The play has a play-within-a-play format, with characters Jim Dunn as the "producer" and Jaybird as the "writer" attempting to stage a production about the underbelly of society using "real" addicts. Some of the addicts are jazz musicians. They all (except for the "producer", "writer", and two "photographers") have one thing in common: they are waiting for their drug dealer, their "connection". The dialogue of the characters is interspersed with jazz music. The music for the original production was composed by jazz pianist Freddie Redd. Original cast *Jim Dunn – Leonard Hicks *Jaybird – Ira Lewis *Leach – Warren Finnerty *Solly – Jerome Raphel *Sam – John McCurry *Ernie – Garry Goodrow *1st Musician – Freddie Redd (composer, piano) *4th Musician – Michael Mattos (bass) *First Phot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Living Theater
The Living Theatre is an American theatre company founded in 1947 and based in New York City. It is the oldest experimental theatre group in the United States. For most of its history it was led by its founders, actress Judith Malina and painter/poet Julian Beck. After Beck's death in 1985, company member Hanon Reznikov became co-director with Malina; the two were married in 1988. After Malina's death in 2015, her responsibilities were taken over by her son Garrick Maxwell Beck. The Living Theatre and its founders were the subject of the 1983 documentary ''Signals Through the Flames''. History In the 1950s, the group was among the first in the U.S. to produce the work of influential European playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht (''In The Jungle of Cities'' in New York, 1960) and Jean Cocteau, as well as modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. One of their first major productions was Pablo Picasso's '' Desire Caught By the Tail''; other early productions were ''Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
