Mel Lewis And Friends
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Mel Lewis And Friends
''Mel Lewis and Friends'' is an album by drummer/bandleader Mel Lewis recorded in 1976 and released by the Horizon label the following year.Jazzlists: A&M Horizon discography
accessed December 4, 2019


Reception

awarded the album 4 stars with the review by Scott Yanow stating "A rare small group date led by drummer Mel Lewis ... the music still communicates quite well. Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard is in top form during five selections; tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker and Gregory Herbert (mostly on alto) get in their licks; pianist Hank Jones and bassist Ron Carter are typically flawless, and trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater makes a guest appearance ... Excellent music". ...
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Mel Lewis
Melvin Sokoloff (May 10, 1929 – February 2, 1990), known professionally as Mel Lewis, was an American jazz drummer, session musician, professor, and author. He received fourteen Grammy Award nominations. Biography Early years Lewis was born in Buffalo, New York, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents Samuel and Mildred Sokoloff. He started playing professionally as a teen, eventually joining Stan Kenton in 1954. His musical career brought him to Los Angeles in 1957 and New York City in 1963.''All Music Guide to Jazz''. Yanow, Scott (1996). Miller Freeman Books. Career In 1966 in New York, he teamed up with Thad Jones to lead the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. The group started as informal jam sessions with the top studio and jazz musicians of the city, but eventually began performing regularly on Monday nights at the famed venue, the Village Vanguard. In 1979, the band won a Grammy for their album '' Live in Munich''. Like all of the musicians in the band, it was only a ...
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Charlie Parker
Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. Parker was an extremely brilliant virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Primarily a player of the alto saxophone, Parker's tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career on the road with Jay McShann. This, and the shortened form "Bird", continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise". Parker was an icon for the hipster ...
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Horizon Records Albums
The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether it intersects the relevant body's surface or not. The ''true horizon'' is a theoretical line, which can only be observed to any degree of accuracy when it lies along a relatively smooth surface such as that of Earth's oceans. At many locations, this line is obscured by terrain, and on Earth it can also be obscured by life forms such as trees and/or human constructs such as buildings. The resulting intersection of such obstructions with the sky is called the ''visible horizon''. On Earth, when looking at a sea from a shore, the part of the sea closest to the horizon is called the offing. Pronounced, "Hor-I-zon". The true horizon surrounds the observer and it is typically assumed to be a circle, drawn on the surface of a perfectly spherica ...
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Ron Carter
Ronald Levin Carter (born May 4, 1937) is an American jazz double bassist. His appearances on 2,221 recording sessions make him the most-recorded jazz bassist in history. He has won three Grammy awards, and is also a cellist who has recorded numerous times on that instrument. Some of his studio albums as a leader include: ''Blues Farm'' (1973), '' All Blues'' (1973), '' Spanish Blue'' (1974), ''Anything Goes'' (1975), '' Yellow & Green'' (1976), ''Pastels'' (1976), ''Piccolo'' (1977), '' Third Plane'' (1977), ''Peg Leg'' (1978), '' A Song for You'' (1978), ''Etudes'' (1982), ''The Golden Striker'' (2003), ''Dear Miles'' (2006), and ''Ron Carter's Great Big Band'' (2011). Early life Carter was born in Ferndale, Michigan. He started to play cello at the age of 10, and switched to bass while in high school. He earned a B.A. in music from the Eastman School of Music (1959) and a master's degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music (1961). Carter's first jobs as a jazz music ...
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Hank Jones
Henry Jones Jr. (July 31, 1918 – May 16, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer. Critics and musicians described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable. In 1989, The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13, 2009, the University of Hartford presented Jones with an honorary Doctorate of Music for his musical accomplishments. Jones recorded more than 60 albums under his own name, and countless others as a sideman, including Cannonball Adderley's celebrated album '' Somethin' Else''. On May 19, 1962, he played piano as actress Marilyn Monroe sang her famous "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" song to then U.S. president John F. Kennedy. Biography Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Henry "Hank" Jones moved to Pontiac, Michiga ...
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Michael Brecker
Michael Leonard Brecker (March 29, 1949 – January 13, 2007) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. He was awarded 15 Grammy Awards as both performer and composer. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2004, and was inducted into the ''DownBeat'' Jazz Hall of Fame in 2007. Biography Early life and career Michael Brecker was born in Philadelphia and raised in Cheltenham Township, a local suburb. He was raised in a Jewish—and artistic—family: his father, Bob (Bobby), was a lawyer who played jazz piano and his mother, Sylvia, was a portrait artist. Michael Brecker was exposed to jazz at an early age by his father. He grew up as part of the generation of jazz musicians who saw rock music not as the enemy but as a viable musical option. Brecker began studying clarinet at age 6, then moved to alto saxophone in eighth grade, settling on the tenor saxophone as his primary instrument in his sophomore year. He graduated from Chelte ...
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Gregory Herbert
Gregory Herbert (May 19, 1947 – January 31, 1978) was an American jazz saxophonist and flautist. Herbert started on alto saxophone at age 12. In 1964 he did a short stint in the Duke Ellington Orchestra, then studied at Temple University from 1965 to 1971. While a student he recorded with Pat Martino in 1968. From 1971 to 1975 he toured with Woody Herman, then played with Harold Danko in 1975 and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra from 1975 to 1977. Afterwards, he played briefly with Chuck Israels and Blood, Sweat and Tears. Additionally, Herbert appeared on Chet Baker's ''Once Upon a Summertime'' in 1977 along with Harold Danko, Ron Carter and Mel Lewis.Gregory Herbert Biography and History
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Cecil Bridgewater
Cecil Bridgewater (born October 10, 1942) is an American jazz trumpeter. Biography Bridgewater was born in Urbana, Illinois and studied at the University of Illinois. He and brother Ron formed the Bridgewater Brothers Band in 1969, and in the 1970s he was married to Dee Dee Bridgewater. In 1970 he played with Horace Silver, and following this with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis from 1970 to 1976. Also in the 1970s he played with Max Roach, starting a decades-long association. Elsewhere he has played with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Randy Weston, Charles McPherson (musician), Charles McPherson, Joe Henderson, Roy Brooks, Abdullah Ibrahim and Sam Rivers (jazz musician), Sam Rivers. Bridgewater's first disc as a leader appeared in 1993. Bridgewater has also composed works premiered by the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra and Meet the Composer. Cecil Bridgewater has become a great supporter of The Jazz Foundation of America in their mission to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly ...
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Freddie Hubbard
Frederick Dewayne Hubbard (April 7, 1938 – December 29, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter. He played bebop, hard bop, and post-bop styles from the early 1960s onwards. His unmistakable and influential tone contributed to new perspectives for modern jazz and bebop. Career beginnings Hubbard started playing the mellophone and trumpet in his school band at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. Trumpeter Lee Katzman, former sideman with Stan Kenton, recommended that he begin studying at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music (now the Jordan College of the Arts at Butler University) with Max Woodbury, the principal trumpeter of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. In his teens, Hubbard worked locally with brothers Wes and Monk Montgomery, and worked with bassist Larry Ridley and saxophonist James Spaulding. In 1958, at the age of 20, he moved to New York and began playing with some of the best jazz players of the era, including Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollin ...
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Moose The Mooche
"Moose the Mooche" is a bebop composition written by Charlie Parker in 1946. It was written shortly after his friend and longtime musical companion Dizzy Gillespie left him in Los Angeles to return to New York City. Parker had been a long time heroin addict and some historians suggest that the song was named after the drug dealer, Emry "Moose the Mooche" Byrd,Woideck, Carl (1998) ''Charlie Parker: His Music & Life'', pp.124-125. University of Michigan Press, 1998
at Google Books. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
who sold him drugs for several years before being arrested. Parker recorded it in Los Angeles for Dial Records (1946), Di ...
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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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A Child Is Born (jazz Standard)
"A Child Is Born" is a jazz instrumental that was later recorded with lyrics added. It was written in 1969 by the jazz trumpeter Thad Jones with lyrics added independently by Alec Wilder after hearing the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra perform the instrumental. The instrumental and the song have been recorded by a number of musicians including Tony Bennett, Stanley Turrentine and Bill Evans (also released on '' Christmas with Sinatra & Friends''), Richard Davis, Kenny Burrell, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Hank Jones and Helen Merrill.Classic American Popular Song: The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000 David Jenness, Donald Velsey - 2014 - 1136797459 Even finer is A Child Is Born (1969), music written by jazz musician Thad Jones. It is Wilder's best independent lyric, fitting Iones's exquisite melody perfectly; it's a pity the song is heard most often as an instrumental (Figure 4.11). The crucial notes are the ones, all low in pitch, that start successive long phrases: here D, later E-flat, D, ...
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