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James E. Pugh
James Edward Pugh (born November 12, 1950) is an American trombonist and composer. He was a trombonist with Woody Herman (1972–1976) and briefly with Chick Corea before concentrating on session work. Early life Pugh was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, on November 12, 1950. Pugh began playing the trombone around the age of ten. He attended the Eastman School of Music from 1968 to 1972, where he played in an ensemble under Chuck Mangione. Later life and career Pugh toured and recorded with the Woody Herman Band for four years from 1972, and briefly performed with Chick Corea in 1977. He then concentrated on studio session work for jazz and popular musicians. In 1984, he was co-leader for the album ''The Pugh–Taylor Project''. He also composed for and played on the album ''X Over Trombone''. Discography Solo * 1981: ''Crystal Eyes'' (Pewter) * 1984: ''The Pugh /Taylor Project'' ( DMP) * 2001: ''Pugh Mosso'' * 2002: ''E'nJ "Legend and Lion"'' with Eijiro Nakagawa Japanese rele ...
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Butler, Pennsylvania
Butler is a city and the county seat of Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located north of Pittsburgh and is part of the Greater Pittsburgh region. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 13,502. History Butler was named for Maj. Gen. Richard Butler,''An Historical Gazetteer of Butler County, Pennsylvania'', p. 118 who fell at the Battle of the Wabash, also known as St. Clair's Defeat, in western Ohio in 1791. In 1803, John and Samuel Cunningham became the first settlers in the village of Butler. After settling in Butler, the two brothers laid out the community by drawing up plots of land for more incoming settlers. By 1817, the community was incorporated into a borough. The first settlers were of Irish or Scottish descent and were driving westward from Connecticut. In 1802, the German immigrants began arriving, with Detmar Basse settling in Jackson Township in 1802 and founding Zelienople the following year. After George Rapp arrived in 1805 and f ...
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Harry Connick, Jr
Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr. (born September 11, 1967) is an American singer, pianist, composer, actor, and television host. He has sold over 28million albums worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 16million in certified sales. He has had seven top20 US albums, and ten number-one US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in US jazz chart history. Connick's best-selling album in the United States is his Christmas album ''When My Heart Finds Christmas'' (1993). His highest-charting album is his release '' Only You'' (2004), which reached No.5 in the US and No.6 in Britain. He has won three Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards. He played Leo Markus, the husband of Grace Adler (played by Debra Messing) on the NBC sitcom ''Will & Grace'' from 2002 to 2006. Connick began his acting career as a tail gunner in the World War II film '' Memphis Belle'' ...
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Jay Leonhart
Jay Leonhart (born December 6, 1940) is a double bassist, singer, and songwriter who has worked in jazz and popular music. He has performed with Judy Garland, Bucky Pizzarelli, Carly Simon, Frank Sinatra, and Sting. Leonhart is noted for his clever songwriting, often laced with dry humor. His compositions have been recorded by Blossom Dearie, Lee Konitz, and Gary Burton. His poetry is published both in, and outside of, the venue of song. Career Leonhart grew up in a musical family. His parents and six siblings were all musically inclined. Everyone played the piano. By the age of seven, he and his older brother Bill were playing banjo, guitar, mandolin, and bass. They played country music and jazz. In their early teens, they were on TV in Baltimore and toured the country performing on banjo. When Leonhart was fourteen he started playing double bass in the Pier Five Dixieland Jazz Band in Baltimore. After studying at the Peabody Institute (1946–1950), he attended the Berklee C ...
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Gunther Schuller
Gunther Alexander Schuller (November 22, 1925June 21, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician. Biography and works Early years Schuller was born in Queens, New York City, the son of German parents Elsie (Bernartz) and Arthur E. Schuller, a violinist with the New York Philharmonic. He studied at the Saint Thomas Choir School and became an accomplished French horn player and flute player. At age 15, he was already playing horn professionally with the American Ballet Theatre (1943) followed by an appointment as principal hornist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1943–45), and then the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, where he stayed until 1959. During his youth, he attended the Precollege Division at the Manhattan School of Music, later going on to teach at the school. But, already a high school dropout because he wanted to play professionally, Schuller never obtained a degree from any in ...
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Joe Lovano
Joseph Salvatore Lovano (born December 29, 1952)"Joe Lovano." ''Contemporary Musicians''. Vol. 13. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 1994. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, May 5, 2017. is an American jazz saxophonist, alto clarinetist, flautist, and drummer. He has earned a Grammy Award and several mentions on ''Down Beat'' magazine's critics' and readers' polls. His wife, with whom he records and performs, is singer Judi Silvano. Lovano was a longtime member of drummer Paul Motian‘s trio with guitarist Bill Frisell. Biography Early life Lovano was born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, to Sicilian-American parents; his father was the tenor saxophonist Tony ("Big T") Lovano. His father's family came from Alcara Li Fusi in Sicily, and his mother's family came from Cesarò, also in Sicily. In Cleveland, Lovano's father exposed him to jazz throughout his early life, teaching him the standards, as well as how to lead a gig, pace a set, and be versatile enough to ...
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Joe Roccisano
Joseph Lucian Roccisano (October 15, 1939 in Springfield, Massachusetts – November 9, 1997) was an American jazz saxophonist and arranger. Career Roccisano received his bachelor's degree in music education from SUNY-Potsdam in 1963. In 1964 he played in the Tommy Dorsey orchestra under Sam Donahue, then moved to Los Angeles, where he played with Don Ellis (1966–68), Ray Charles (1967-68), Louie Bellson, Lew Tabackin, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Terry Gibbs, Don Menza, Bill Holman, and Don Rader. He assembled the 15-piece ensemble Rocbop in 1976 and played in the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut in 1981. He later formed his own big band, the Joe Roccisano Orchestra, which released two albums during the 1990s. The musicians joining him in this band included Bill Charlap, Bud Burridge, Jack Stuckey, Franck Amsallem, James E. Pugh, John Basile, Ken Hitchcock, Lou Marini, Matt Finders, Robert Millikan, Scott Lee, Terry Clarke, Tim Ries, Tom Harrell, Scott Robinson, and Greg Gisbert. Roccisano was ...
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Leave Your Mind Behind
''Leave Your Mind Behind'' is an album by the Joe Roccisano Orchestra which was released on Orrin Keepnews' Landmark label in 1995.Jazzlists: Landmark 1500 series discography
accessed February 5, 2019


Reception

The review by Alex Henderson stated "Joe Roccisano was never a huge name in the jazz world, nor was he ever an innovator. He was, however, a hard-swinging saxman who had no problem leading a big band. One of Roccisano's big-band recordings came in 1994 when he did all of the arranging and conducting on ''Leave Your Mind Behind''. There aren't a lot of surprises on this hard bop CD, and the charts are pretty conventional. Still, it's enjoyable and honest. ... the albu ...
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Kathleen Battle
Kathleen Deanna Battle (born August 13, 1948) is an American operatic soprano known for her distinctive vocal range and tone. Born in Portsmouth, Ohio, Battle initially became known for her work within the concert repertoire through performances with major orchestras during the early and mid-1970s. She made her opera debut in 1975. Battle expanded her repertoire into lyric soprano and coloratura soprano roles during the 1980s and early 1990s, until her eventual dismissal from the Metropolitan Opera in 1994. She later has focused on recording and the concert stage. After a 22-year absence from the Met, Battle performed a concert of spirituals at the Metropolitan Opera House in November 2016. Life and career Early years and musical education Battle was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, US, the youngest of seven children. Her father was a steelworker, and her mother was an active participant in the gospel music of the family's African Methodist Episcopal church. Battle attended Portsmouth ...
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Honey And Rue
''Honey and Rue'' is a song cycle composed by Oscar and Grammy award winner André Previn and premiered by Kathleen Battle, with words from poems by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. It is scored for a solo soprano and small orchestra and is influenced by the rhythms of jazz, blues and American spirituals. The ''New York Times'' termed the composition "a model of understated luxury, rich and plastic without the need of ornament". History According to ''The Critical Companion to Toni Morrison'', Kathleen Battle had been moved by Morrison's novel ''The Bluest Eye'', and asked Previn and Morrison to create a song cycle for her. The cycle was ultimately commissioned by Carnegie Hall. The lyrics, according to the ''Chicago Tribune'', "move across a specifically black, urban, female landscape of experience". It was premiered in 1992, sung by Battle in the Carnegie Hall, but most notably remembered as the Boston Symphony's Tanglewood Festival opener, conducted by Seiji Ozawa. This was the f ...
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David "Fathead" Newman
David "Fathead" Newman (February 24, 1933 – January 20, 2009) was an American jazz and rhythm-and-blues saxophonist, who made numerous recordings as a session musician and leader, but is best known for his work as a sideman on seminal 1950s and early 1960s recordings by Ray Charles. The AllMusic Guide to Jazz wrote that "there have not been many saxophonists and flutists more naturally soulful than David 'Fathead' Newman." Newman was a leading exponent of the "Texas Tenor" saxophone style, a big-toned, bluesy approach popularized by jazz tenor players from that state. Early life Newman was born in Corsicana, Texas, United States, on February 24, 1933, but grew up in Dallas, where he studied first the piano and then the saxophone. According to one account, he got his nickname "Fathead" in school when "an outraged music instructor used it as an epithet after catching Mr. Newman playing a Sousa march from memory rather than from reading the sheet music, which rested upside down ...
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André Previn
André George Previn (; born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved success, and the latter two were part of his life until the end. In movies, he arranged and composed music. In jazz, he was a celebrated trio pianist, a piano-accompanist to singers of standards, and pianist-interpreter of songs from the "Great American Songbook". In classical music, he also performed as a pianist but gained television fame as a conductor, and during his last thirty years created his legacy as a composer of art music. Before the age of twenty, Previn began arranging and composing for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He would go on to be involved in the music of more than fifty films and would win four Academy Awards. He won ten Grammy Awards, for recordings in all three areas of his career, and then one more, for lifetime achieve ...
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What Headphones?
''What Headphones?'' is a 1993 album by André Previn. Reception The album was reviewed by Richard S. Ginell at Allmusic who wrote that it was Previn's "best album since his return to jazz at the close of the 1980s, and also the most surprising and unpredictable one of his entire jazz life". Ginell highlighted the title track, which he wrote was "almost avant-garde in its erudite looniness". Ginell praised Previn's playing as possessing "greater streaks of wit and a cannier use of space than ever before". Track listing #"What Headphones?" (André Previn) – 6:09 #"You Are My All" (Myrna Summers) – 5:27 #"Take the 'A' Train" (Billy Strayhorn) – 4:50 #"Outside the Cafe" (A. Previn) – 3:10 #"All Is Well" ( Al Hobbs) – 4:42 #" A Portrait of Bert Williams" (Duke Ellington) – 4:13 #"Warm Valley" (Ellington, Bob Russell) – 5:30 #"Holy Spirit in Me" ( Jay Terrell) – 3:20 #"I'm Beginning to See the Light" (Ellington, Don George, Johnny Hodges, Harry James) – 5:18 #" You ...
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