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M-Base
The term "M-Base" is used in several ways. In the 1980s, a loose collective of young African American musicians including Steve Coleman, Graham Haynes, Cassandra Wilson, Geri Allen, Robin Eubanks, and Greg Osby emerged in Brooklyn with a new sound and specific ideas about creative expression. Using a term coined by Steve Coleman, they called these ideas "M-Base-concept" (short for "macro-basic array of structured extemporization") and critics have used this term to categorize this scene's music as a jazz style. But Coleman stressed "M-Base" doesn't denote a musical style but a way of thinking about creating music. As famous musicians did in the past, he also refuses the word "jazz" as a label for his music and the music tradition represented by musicians like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, etc. However, the musicians of the M-Base movement, which also included dancers and poets, strived for common creative musical languages, so their early recordings show many sim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson (born December 4, 1955) is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. She is one of the most successful female Jazz singers and has been described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack ho hasexpanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country, and folk music into her work. She has won numerous awards, including two Grammys, and was named "America's Best Singer" by Time magazine in 2001. Early life and career Cassandra Wilson is the third and youngest child of Herman Fowlkes, Jr., a guitarist, bassist, and music teacher; and Mary McDaniel, an elementary school teacher who earned her PhD in education. Her ancestry includes Fon, Yoruba, Irish and Welsh. Between her mother's love for Motown and her father's dedication to jazz, Wilson's parents sparked her early interest in music. Leland, John. GOING HOME WITH: Cassandra Wilson; Jazz Diva Follows Sound of Her Roots'' ''The New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Coleman
Steve Coleman (born September 20, 1956) is an American saxophonist, composer, bandleader and music theorist. In 2014, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. Early life Steve Coleman was born and grew up in South Side, Chicago. He started playing alto saxophone at the age of 14. Coleman attended Illinois Wesleyan University for two years,. followed by a transfer to Roosevelt University (Chicago Musical College). Coleman moved to New York in 1978 and worked in big bands such as the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, Slide Hampton's big band, Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea Orchestra, and briefly in Cecil Taylor's big band.Steve Coleman in: Fred JungMy Conversation with Steve Coleman July, 1999, M-base.com Shortly thereafter, Coleman began working as a sideman with David Murray, Doug Hammond, Dave Holland, Michael Brecker and Abbey Lincoln. For the first four years in New York Coleman spent a good deal of time playing in the streets and in tiny clubs with a band that he put together wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greg Osby
Greg Osby (born August 3, 1960) is an American saxophonist and composer. Biography Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Osby studied at Howard University, then at the Berklee College of Music. He moved to New York City in 1982, where he played with Jaki Byard, Jim Hall, Muhal Richard Abrams, Andrew Hill, Jack DeJohnette, Dizzy Gillespie, and Herbie Hancock. In 1985, he joined DeJohnette's group Special Edition. With Geri Allen, Steve Coleman, Gary Thomas, and Cassandra Wilson, he was a founding member of the M-Base Collective. Osby began recording albums under his own name for JMT Records in the mid-1980s, then signed with Blue Note in 1989. In 2007, he formed his own label, Inner Circle Music. He gave exposure to young pianist Jason Moran, who appeared on most of Osby's 1990s albums, including ''Further Ado'', ''Zero'', '' Banned in New York'' and ''Symbols of Light'', a double quartet featuring the addition of a string quartet to the band. He has also played with Phil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geri Allen
Geri Antoinette Allen (June 12, 1957 – June 27, 2017) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. In addition to her career as a performer and bandleader, Allen was also an associate professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh and the director of the university's Jazz Studies program. Early life and education Allen was born in Pontiac, Michigan, on June 12, 1957, and grew up in Detroit. "Her father, Mount Allen Jr, was a school principal, her mother, Barbara, a government administrator in the defence industry." Allen was educated in Detroit Public Schools. She started playing the piano at the age of seven, and settled on becoming a jazz pianist in her early teens. Allen graduated from Howard University's jazz studies program in 1979. She then continued her studies: with pianist Kenny Barron in New York; and at the University of Pittsburgh, where she completed a master's degree in ethnomusicology in 1982. After this, she returned to New York. Later life and ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robin Eubanks
Robin Eubanks (born October 25, 1955) is an American jazz and jazz fusion slide trombonist, the brother of guitarist Kevin Eubanks and trumpeter Duane Eubanks. His uncles are jazz pianist Ray Bryant and bassist Tommy Bryant. His mother, Vera Eubanks, was famed pianist Kenny Barron's first piano teacher. Biography Robin Eubanks was born on October 25, 1955, in Philadelphia. After graduating cum laude from the University of the Arts, he moved to New York City where he first appeared on the jazz scene in the early 1980s. He played with Slide Hampton, Sun Ra, and Stevie Wonder. Eubanks also the musical director with the jazz drummer Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He also was a member of jazz drummer Elvin Jones Jazz Machine. He was a contributor on fellow jazz trombonist Steve Turre's 2003 release ''One4J: Paying Homage to J.J. Johnson''. Eubanks has also released several albums as a bandleader. He played for 15 years in double bassist Dave Holland's quintet, sextet, octet a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agharta (album)
''Agharta'' is a 1975 live double album by American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. By the time he recorded the album, Davis was 48 years old and had alienated many in the jazz community while attracting younger rock audiences with his radical electric fusion music. After experimenting with different line-ups, he established a stable live band in 1973 and toured constantly for the next two years, despite physical pain from worsening health and emotional instability brought on by substance abuse. During a three-week tour of Japan in 1975, the trumpeter performed two concerts at the Festival Hall in Osaka on February 1; the afternoon show produced ''Agharta'' and the evening show was released as '' Pangaea'' the following year. Davis led a septet at the concert; saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, and guitarist Pete Cosey were given space to improvise against a dense backdrop of riffs, electronic effects, cross-beats, and funk groove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Haynes
Graham Haynes (born September 16, 1960 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American cornetist, trumpeter and composer. The son of jazz drummer Roy Haynes, Graham is known for his work in nu jazz, fusing jazz with elements of hip hop and electronic music. Career With aspirations to push jazz beyond its traditional boundaries, Graham Haynes' first foray into electronic music came in 1979 upon meeting alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. Together, they formed a band called Five Elements, which launched an influential group of improvisers called ''M-Base Collective''. After the formation of his own ensemble – Graham Haynes and No Image – and the subsequent release of an album (''What Time It Be?),'' Haynes would spend the balance of the 1980s studying a wide range of African, Arabic and South Asian Music. After a move to France in 1990, Haynes incorporated these far-off influences into his next two releases – ''Nocturne Parisian'' and ''Griot's Footsteps''. Haynes returned to New York City ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reggie Lucas
Reginald Grant Lucas (February 25, 1953 – May 19, 2018)Reggie Lucas Obituary legacy.com accessdate July 20, 2018 was an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer. Lucas is perhaps best known for producing the majority of 1983 self-titled debut album, and for playing rhythm guitar with the electric band during the first half of the 1970s. Early life Lucas was born on February 25, 195 ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its own right. Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed in the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and modern classical musics. Exponents of free improvised music include saxophonists Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann, and John Zorn, composer Pauline Oliveros, drummer Christian Lillinger, trombonist George E. Lewis, guitarists Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith and the improvising groups Spontaneous Music Ensemble, The Music Improvisation Company, Iskra 1903, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and AMM. Characteristics In an atonal context, free improvisation refers to where the focus shifts from harmony to other dimensions of music: timbre, melodic intervals, rhy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz Journalists Association
The Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) is an international organization of all types of media professionals who document, promulgate, or appreciate jazz. As of 2016, it has approximately 250 members, including professional journalists, students, industry associates and supporting institutions, primarily in North America but also on other continents. The mission of the association is "to promote high standards and respect for our works, to create a professional network, and to increase general interest in jazz". It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. The president of the association (as of 2016) is jazz writer Howard Mandel. The organization was founded after writers and broadcasters involved in jazz convened in 1987 in Chicago. Since then the JJA has held meetings and panel discussions, frequently coinciding with major jazz festivals around North America, and online activities including its eyeJAZZ video training webinars. It established a website, www.Jazzhouse.org, in 1996, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vijay Iyer
Vijay Iyer (born October 26, 1971) is an American composer, pianist, bandleader, producer and writer based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway". Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. He was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the ''DownBeat'' magazine international critics' polls in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2018. In 2014, he received a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he was jointly appointed in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies. Early life and education Born in Albany and raised in Fairport, New York (a suburb of Rochester), He is the son of Indian immigrants to the United States. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pi Recordings
Pi Recordings is a jazz record label founded by Seth Rosner in 2001. He was soon joined as partner by Yulun Wang. Pi specializes in avant-garde jazz. Its first two albums were by Henry Threadgill. Pi's roster includes Amir ElSaffar, Anthony Braxton, Corey Wilkes, James Blood Ulmer, Leroy Jenkins, Liberty Ellman, Marc Ribot, Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Steve Lehman, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, and Wadada Leo Smith. In its first twenty years, Pi released fewer than a hundred recordings. In 2021, ''DownBeat'' wrote that "Pi releases rigorous, pathbreaking music that stretches the boundaries of jazz while honoring its history." Discography Main series # '' Everybodys Mouth's a Book'' (2001) – Henry Threadgill # '' Up Popped the Two Lips'' (2001) – Henry Threadgill # ''Song for My Sister'' (2002) – Roscoe Mitchell & The Note Factory # '' The Year of the Elephant'' (2002) – Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet # '' Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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