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Louis Armstrong Award
The Louis Armstrong Award, or sometimes the King Bee Award, is the "top senior jazz award" or highest level interscholastic award given to students at high schools in the United States. It is given in recognition of "outstanding musical achievement and an incredible dedication to the program". There is only one recipient per high school per year, unless there is a tie. History Louis Armstrong was an American jazz musician and singer. Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Lucille Armstrong, his wife in later years, described his love for people. "Louis's greatest personality traits were humility and generosity. He just loved people, and he always tried to understand them too. He was compassionate, generous, and understanding with everyone. He was loved, not only for his style, but as a person as well." The Louis Armstrong award was inaugurated in 19 ...
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Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several eras in the history of jazz. Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in the . In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at "cutting contests", and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson. Henderson persuaded Armstrong to come to New York City, where he became a featured and musically influential band soloist ...
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Nick Offerman
Nicholas David Offerman (born June 26, 1970) is an American actor, writer, comedian, producer, and carpenter. He is best known for his role as Ron Swanson in the NBC sitcom ''Parks and Recreation'', for which he received the Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy and was twice nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Offerman is also known for his role in ''The Founder'', in which he portrays Richard McDonald, one of the brothers who developed the fast-food chain McDonald's. His first major television role following the end of ''Parks and Recreation'' was as Karl Weathers in the second season of the FX black comedy crime drama series '' Fargo'', for which he received a nomination for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Movie/Miniseries. Since 2018, Offerman has co-hosted the NBC reality competition series, '' Making It'', with Amy Poehler; he and Poehler hav ...
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Dave Weckl
Dave Weckl (born January 8, 1960 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American jazz fusion drummer and the leader of the Dave Weckl Band. He was inducted into the ''Modern Drummer'' Hall of Fame in 2000. Biography Weckl started playing his first set of drums at age 8 in his spare room along to records. He later played in the living room, sometimes with his father on piano. Weckl studied at the University of Bridgeport. Starting out on the New York fusion scene in the early 1980s, Weckl soon began working with artists such as Paul Simon, George Benson, Michel Camilo, Robert Plant, and Anthony Jackson. He was with the Chick Corea Elektric Band from 1985 to 1991. During this time he performed on many albums and also appeared with Corea's Akoustic Band. He said he "augmented his work with Corea by continuing his session work and appearing often with the GRP All-Star Big Band". Weckl has released a series of instructional videotapes. His first recording as leader was in 1990 – '' M ...
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Steve Vai
Steven Siro Vai (; born June 6, 1960) is an American guitarist, composer, songwriter, and producer. A three-time Grammy Award winner and fifteen-time nominee, Vai started his music career in 1978 at the age of eighteen as a transcriptionist for Frank Zappa, and played in Zappa's band from 1980 to 1983. He embarked on a solo career in 1983 and has released eight solo albums to date. He has recorded and toured with Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake, as well as recording with artists such as Public Image Ltd, Mary J. Blige, Spinal Tap, Alice Cooper, Motörhead, and Polyphia. Additionally, Vai has toured with live-only acts G3, Zappa Plays Zappa, and the Experience Hendrix tour, as well as headlining international tours. Vai has been described as a "highly individualistic player" and part of a generation of "heavy rock and metal virtuosi who came to the fore in the 1980s". He released his first solo album ''Flex-Able'' in 1984, while his most successful release, ''Passi ...
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Mark Smucker
Mark Timothy Smucker"Seniors"
''Colonial Echo''. 1992. Volume 94. College of William & Mary. p. 387.
(born December 30, 1969)"Mark Timothy Smucker"
''Ohio Residents''. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
is an American businessman who has been the president and CEO of The J.M. Smucker Company since May 2016. He is the fifth-generation member of the Smucker family to lead the business, a now publicly traded Fortune 500 company encompassing coffee, packaged food, and pet food, headquartered in Orrville, Ohio. Prior to his appointment as CEO, he ha ...
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Joe Don Rooney
Joe Don Rooney (born September 13, 1975 in Baxter Springs, KS) is an American musician. From 1999 to 2021, he was the lead guitarist and high octave harmony singer in the American country pop trio Rascal Flatts. In addition to the Electric guitar, Rooney plays the acoustic and bass guitars, as well as mandolin & banjo. His influences include guitarists Chet Atkins, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Personal life Joe Don Rooney's first band formed in 1992 under the name Uncle Thumbtack. In addition to Rooney playing lead guitar and singing backup harmony, this band included bass guitarist Gregory Fitzgibbon, acoustic guitarist Erin Fitzgibbon, drummer Colin Frayser, and rhythm guitarist Jason. Like future bandmate Jay DeMarcus, he also played in Chely Wright's band before Rascal Flatts. Rooney frequently jammed with family member musicians Justin Speer, Tracy Conder, and Jeramy Essary (to whom he later dedicated " I'm Movin' On"). Rooney married former beauty queen Tiffany Fallo ...
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Michael Eric Robinson
Michael Eric Robinson (born March 11, 1956) is an American composer associated with both contemporary classical music and computer music. His work is influenced by jazz, Indian classical music and European musical traditions. Life Born in New York, New York, in 1956, Robinson was raised in Long Island, NY, earning the Louis Armstrong award in 1974. Robinson studied at SUNY Potsdam (with a BM in Composition from the Crane School of Music) followed by graduate study at CalArts. Private studies included jazz improvisation with Lee Konitz, Paul Jeffrey, Ken McIntyre and Indian classical music with Harihar Rao and Pandit Jasraj - as well as composition studies with John Cage, Morton Feldman, David Lewin, Charles Dodge and Steve Reich. Additional education included summer programs at Tanglewood with Leonard Altman, Gunther Schuller, Jacob Druckman, John Chowning, Ralph Shapey and Leonard Bernstein. As a composer and musicologist, Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard ...
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John Petrucci
John Peter Petrucci (born July 12, 1967) is an American guitarist, best known as a founding member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater. He produced or co-produced (often with former member Mike Portnoy before he departed the band in 2010) all of Dream Theater's albums from '' Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory'' (1999) to ''A View from the Top of the World'' (2021), and has been the sole producer of the band's albums released since ''A Dramatic Turn of Events'' (2011). Petrucci has also released two solo albums: ''Suspended Animation'' (2005) and ''Terminal Velocity'' (2020). Early life and influences John Peter Petrucci was born on July 12, 1967, in Kings Park, New York, to an Italian American family. He picked up the guitar at around the age of eight because his older sister was allowed to go to bed later in order to practice the organ. However, he decided to quit the guitar when his attempts to stay up late were unsuccessful. He picked up the guitar again at the ag ...
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Trey Parker
Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III (born October 19, 1969) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, and composer. He is known for co-creating ''South Park'' (since 1997) and ''The Book of Mormon'' (2011) with his creative partner Matt Stone. Parker was interested in film and music as a child and at high school and attended the University of Colorado Boulder, where he met Stone. The two collaborated on various short films. They also co-wrote and co-starred in the feature-length musical ''Cannibal! The Musical'' (1993). Parker and Stone moved to Los Angeles and wrote their second film, ''Orgazmo'' (1997). Before the premiere of the film, ''South Park'' premiered on Comedy Central in August 1997. The duo possess full creative control of the show, and have produced music and video games based on it. A film based on the series, '' South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut'' (1999), received good reviews from both critics and fans. Parker went on to write, produce, direct, and star in the s ...
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John Myung
John Ro Myung (; born January 24, 1967) is an American bassist and a founding member of the progressive metal group Dream Theater. Background and personal life Born in Chicago to South Korean parents, Myung grew up with John Petrucci on Kings Park, New York, Long Island. After taking violin lessons from the age of five, he started playing bass guitar at fifteen. After graduating from high school, he and Petrucci enrolled at the Berklee College of Music, where they met Mike Portnoy. The trio became the nucleus of Dream Theater, which became Myung's primary professional focus. Style Myung mainly uses a two or three finger picking style in his playing. He sometimes uses slapping and popping on some songs, such as "The Dark Eternal Night", and also uses tapping and harmonics in his bass playing. Myung's use of harmonics is frequently accompanied by a chorus effect, as in the opening of "Lifting Shadows off a Dream". The songs "These Walls" and "The Dark Eternal Night" feature ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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Pat Metheny
Patrick Bruce Metheny ( ; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer. He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works, and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, latin jazz, and jazz fusion. Metheny has three gold albums and 20 Grammy Awards and is the only person to win Grammys in 10 categories. He is the younger brother of jazz flugelhornist Mike Metheny. Biography Early years and education Metheny was born in Lee's Summit, Missouri. His father Dave played trumpet, his mother Lois sang, and his maternal grandfather Delmar was a professional trumpeter. Metheny's first instrument was trumpet, which he was taught by his brother, Mike. His brother, father, and grandfather played trios together at home. His parents were fans of Glenn Miller and swing music. They took Metheny to concerts to hear Clark Terry and Doc Severinsen, but they had little respect for guitar. ...
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