Larry Willis
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Larry Willis
Lawrence Elliott Willis (December 20, 1942 – September 29, 2019) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He performed in a wide range of styles, including jazz fusion, Afro-Cuban jazz, bebop, and avant-garde jazz, avant-garde. Willis was born in New York City. After his first year studying music theory at the Manhattan School of Music he began performing regularly with Jackie McLean. After he graduated he made his first jazz recording, McLean's ''Right Now! (Jackie McLean album), Right Now!'' in January 1965, which featured two of Willis' compositions. His first recording of any type, however, was as a singer with the Music and Arts Chorale Ensemble, performing an opera by Aaron Copland under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. He decided to concentrate on jazz because of the difficulties African-American musicians had in finding work in concert music. Throughout his career he performed with a wide range of musicians, including several years as keyboardist for Blood, Sweat ...
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Exposé (Paul Murphy And Larry Willis Album)
''Exposé'' is an album by drummer Paul Murphy (musician), Paul Murphy and pianist Larry Willis. It was released by Murphy Records in 2008. Reception In a review for ''All About Jazz'', Lyn Horton wrote: "An improvisation this clean can only arise through expertise, confidence and vision. Murphy and Willis do not intend to throw the listener out of the park, rather have come together to deliver a message that glistens... The ease with which they construct more than take apart lends nothing but forward motion to the music... On the whole, the ride through this recording is headstrong, without deviation and is breathtakingly lyrical in several captivating instances... The music is irrevocably consistent, melodically large and often comes across as being played by a quartet rather than by a duo... A complete and fulfilling sound burns through every moment of musical time when Willis and Murphy interact instrumentally. One sure-fired stroke after another." In a separate ''All About Ja ...
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Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard (Manhattan), Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and 96th Street (Manhattan), East 96th Street. Originally a Netherlands, Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish American, Jewish and Italian American, Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to ...
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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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Don Redman
Donald Matthew Redman (July 29, 1900 – November 30, 1964) was an American jazz musician, music arrangement, arranger, bandleader, and composer. Biography Redman was born in Piedmont, West Virginia, Piedmont, Mineral County, West Virginia, United States. His father was a music teacher, his mother was a singer. Beginning by playing the trumpet at the age of three, Redman joined his first band at the age of six and by the age of 12 was proficient on all wind instruments ranging from trumpet to oboe as well as piano. He studied at Storer College in Harper's Ferry and at the Boston Conservatory, then joined Billy Page's Broadway Syncopaters in New York City. He was the uncle of saxophonist Dewey Redman, and thus great-uncle of saxophonist Joshua Redman and trumpeter Carlos Redman. Career In 1923, Redman joined the Fletcher Henderson orchestra, mostly playing clarinet and saxophones. He began writing arrangements, and Redman did much to formulate the sound that was to become Swing ...
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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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Child Of The Sun
Child of the Sun is a collection of buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright on the campus of the Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. The twelve original buildings were constructed between 1941 and 1958. Another of Wright's designs, a Usonian house originally intended for faculty housing, was completed in 2013, and is now part of the Sharp Family Tourism and Education Center. On March 2, 2012, it was designated a National Historic Landmark. The buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and together form the largest collection of buildings by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Design Frank Lloyd Wright was retained by Florida Southern President Ludd M. Spivey in 1938 to develop a master plan for the expansion and growth of the college's campus. Wright was given the opportunity to the plan the campus using ideas about organic integration with the environment that the architect had been developing for some years. As basic design blocks for the cam ...
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Florida Southern College
Florida Southern College (Florida Southern, Southern or FSC) is a private college in Lakeland, Florida. In 2019, the student population at FSC consisted of 3,073 students along with 130 full-time faculty members. The college offers 50 undergraduate majors and pre-professional programs, graduate programs in nursing, business, and education as well as post-graduate programs in nursing, education, and physical therapy. Florida Southern is the home of the world's largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. For its 2011 and 2012 rankings, ''The Princeton Review'' selected Florida Southern's campus as the most beautiful in the country. Florida Southern has won 30 national titles in NCAA Division II competition in several sports, men's golf (13 titles), baseball (9), women's golf (4), men's basketball (2), softball (1) and women's lacrosse (1). The college's official mascot is Mocsie the water moccasin, but they are also referenced by their nickname, the Mocs. Th ...
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Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". Wright was the pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture and also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his vision for urban planning in the United States. He also designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums, and other commercial projects. Wright-designed inter ...
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Paul Murphy (musician)
Paul F. Murphy (born January 25, 1949) is a percussionist, bandleader and composer. He is best known for having led a variety of small jazz ensembles, and for his long tenure in groups led by saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. Career Murphy began playing drums at a very early age, and made the acquaintance of Gene Krupa at age six. He went on to study with Krupa, Louis Bellson, and Joseph Levitt, the principal percussionist of the National Symphony Orchestra and director of the Peabody Conservatory. At age sixteen, Murphy began playing in the Washington, D.C. area with Duke Ellington's bassist Billy Taylor, who exposed him to the music of pianist Cecil Taylor. At Billy Taylor's advice, Murphy moved to San Francisco, where he established himself as a bandleader.Fragman, Dominic"Paul F. Murphy: Playing Universally" '' All About Jazz'', 28 April 2010. Retrieved on 29 February 2020. While there, he met and befriended Cecil Taylor and Jimmy Lyons. At the suggestion of Lyons, he then mo ...
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African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Slavery in the United States, enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West Africa, West/Central Africa, Central African with some European descent; some also have Native Americans in th ...
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Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history". Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, sixteen Grammy Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors, Kennedy Center Honor. As a composer he wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway theatre, Broadway musical ''West Side Story'', which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (West Side Story (1961 ...
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Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets ''Appalachian Spring'', ''Billy the Kid'' and ''Rodeo'', his ''Fanfare for the Common Man'' and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores. After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark, Copland ...
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