Myra Melford
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Myra Melford
Myra Melford (born January 5, 1957) is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for." Early life and education Melford was born in Evanston, Illinois and was raised in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. At 3, she started playing the piano on her own, climbing onto the piano bench and improvising. She began taking lessons when she was in kindergarten. She developed a strong relationship with her teacher, Erwin Helfer, a classically trained boogie-woogie player. Helfer introduced her to classical composers such as Bach before moving on to contemporary composers, such as Bartók, and later taught her to play the blues. Melford attended blues festivals, and because of her relationship with Helfer, she was often invited backstage, where s ...
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Helsinki
Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The Helsinki urban area, city's urban area has a population of , making it by far the List of urban areas in Finland by population, most populous urban area in Finland as well as the country's most important center for politics, education, finance, culture, and research; while Tampere in the Pirkanmaa region, located to the north from Helsinki, is the second largest urban area in Finland. Helsinki is located north of Tallinn, Estonia, east of Stockholm, Sweden, and west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It has History of Helsinki, close historical ties with these three cities. Together with the cities of Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen (and surrounding commuter towns, including the eastern ...
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Evergreen State College
The Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts college in Olympia, Washington. Founded in 1967, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a pre-determined path of study. Full-time students can enroll in interdisciplinary academic programs, in addition to stand-alone classes. Programs typically offer students the opportunity to study several disciplines in a coordinated manner. Faculty write substantive narrative evaluations of students' work in place of issuing grades. Evergreen's main campus, which includes its own saltwater beach, spans 1,000 acres of forest close to the southern end of the Puget Sound. Evergreen also has a satellite campus in nearby Tacoma. The school offers a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Bachelor of Science, Master of Environmental Studies, Master in Teaching, Master of Public Administration, and Master of Public Administration in Tribal Governanc ...
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Leroy Jenkins (jazz Musician)
Leroy Jenkins (March 11, 1932 – February 24, 2007) was an American composer and violinist/violist. Early life Jenkins was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States. As a youth, he lived with his sister, his mother, two aunts, his grandmother, and, on occasions, a boarder, in a three-bedroom apartment. Jenkins was immersed in music from an early age, and recalled listening to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and singers such as Billy Eckstine and Louis Jordan. When Jenkins was around eight years old, one of his aunts brought home a boyfriend who played the violin. After hearing him play a difficult Hungarian dance, Jenkins begged his mother for a violin, and was given a red, half-size Montgomery Ward violin that cost twenty-five dollars. He began taking lessons, and was soon heard at St. Luke's Baptist Church, where he was frequently accompanied on piano by Ruth Jones, later known as Dinah Washington. Jenkins eventually joined the church choir and orchestra, and performed on the ...
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Marty Ehrlich
Marty Ehrlich (born May 31, 1955) is a multi-instrumentalist (saxophones, clarinets, flutes) and is considered one of the leading figures in avant-garde jazz. Biography Though born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the portion of Ehrlich's youth spent in St. Louis, Missouri, was particularly important. As a high school student at University City High School in nearby University City, the teenager came into contact with the influential Black Artists' Group (BAG, 1968–72) which was modelled after the AACM in Chicago. Later, during formal studies at the New England Conservatory, Ehrlich developed a particularly close relationship with pianist Jaki Byard. It was here that he was most deeply schooled in traditional jazz forms, as well as Western European classical music. During these formative years, Ehrlich was exposed to the cultural, political and musical workings of radical African-American art, and was mentored by such legends as Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake. Often associated wit ...
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Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, and was a key early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He received great acclaim for his 1969 double- LP record ''For Alto'', the first full-length album of solo saxophone music. A prolific composer with a vast body of cross-genre work, the MacArthur Fellow and NEA Jazz Master has released hundreds of recordings and compositions. During six years signed to Arista Records, the diversity of his output encompassed work with many members of the AACM, including duets with co-founder and first president Muhal Richard Abrams; collaborations with electronic musician Richard Teitelbaum; a saxophone quartet with Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and Hamiet Bluiett; compositions for four orchestras; and t ...
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Oliver Lake
Oliver Lake (born September 14, 1942) is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet, and visual artist. He is known mainly for alto saxophone, but he also performs on soprano and flute. During the 1960s, Lake worked with the Black Artists Group in St. Louis. In 1977, he founded the World Saxophone Quartet with David Murray, Julius Hemphill, and Hamiet Bluiett. He worked in the group Trio 3 with Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille. He has appeared on more than 80 albums as a bandleader, co-leader, and side musician. He is the father of drummer Gene Lake. Lake has been a resident of Montclair, New Jersey."The State of Jazz: Meet 40 More Jersey Greats"
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Gary Peacock
Gary George Peacock (May 12, 1935September 4, 2020) was an American jazz double bassist. He recorded a dozen albums under his own name, and also performed and recorded with major jazz figures such as avant garde saxophonist Albert Ayler, pianists Bill Evans, Paul Bley and Marilyn Crispell, and as a part of Keith Jarrett’s “Standards Trio” with drummer Jack DeJohnette. The trio existed for over thirty years, and recorded over twenty albums together. DeJohnette once stated that he admired Peacock's "sound, choice of notes, and, above all, the buoyancy of his playing." Marilyn Crispell called Peacock a "sensitive musician with a great harmonic sense." Early life Peacock was born in Burley, Idaho, on May 12, 1935; his father worked as a business consultant for grocery stores, and his mother was a homemaker. He grew up in Yakima, Washington, where he attended Yakima Senior High School, now called A.C. Davis High School. His earliest musical experiences involved playing piano, ...
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Art Lande
Art Lande is an American musician who was born in New York City, United States, on 5 February 1947. Born in New York, Lande began piano at age 4. He attended Williams College and moved to San Francisco in 1969. In 1973 he recorded '' Red Lanta,'' an album of duets with Norwegian musician Jan Garbarek. With Mark Isham on trumpet, he started the Rubisa Patrol group in 1976. They performed in the Bay Area and toured extensively in Europe by van. This group made two records for ECM: '' Rubisa Patrol'' (1976), ''Desert Marauders'' (1977), and one for 1750 Arch Records, '' The Story of Ba-Ku'' (1978). In the early 1980s Lande taught at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. He moved to Switzerland, where he taught at a jazz school in St. Gallen. In 1987 he moved to Boulder, Colorado to teach at Naropa University. Lande has written many compositions, but is also known for his unusual and distinctive interpretations of popular and jazz standards. He has made several solo piano reco ...
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Cornish College Of The Arts
Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art college in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1914. History Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of piano. Cornish would go on to serve as the school's director for its first 25 years, until 1939. The Cornish School of Music began its operations in rented space in the Boothe (or BoothMildred AndrewsCornish School HistoryLink Essay 596, December 26, 1998, updated on June 28, 2006. Retrieved 2010-05-25.) Building on Broadway and Pine Street. As Cornish developed the idea of her school, she initially turned to the Montessori-based pedagogical method of Evelyn Fletcher-Copp, but turned at last to the progressive musical pedagogy of Calvin Brainerd Cady, who had worked as musical director with John Dewey as the latter set up his seminal progressive educational project, what is now the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Conceived by Cor ...
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The Shape Of Jazz To Come
''The Shape of Jazz to Come'' is the third album by jazz musician Ornette Coleman. Released on Atlantic Records in 1959, it was his debut on the label and his first album featuring the working quartet including himself, trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Billy Higgins. The recording session for the album took place on May 22, 1959, at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California.Kaplan, Fred M. "Ch. 22 – The Shape of Jazz to Come." 1959: The Year Everything Changed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. 198–211. Print. Although Coleman initially wished for the album to be titled ''Focus on Sanity'' after the LP's fourth track, Atlantic producer Nesuhi Ertegun suggested the final title, feeling that it would give consumers "an idea about the uniqueness of the LP." In 2012, the Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry. The album was included in the ''Rolling Stone'' list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. AllMusic called it one ...
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Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation''. His pioneering performances often abandoned the chordal and harmony-based structure found in bebop, instead emphasizing a jarring and avant-garde approach to improvisation. AllMusic called him "one of the most important (and controversial) innovators of the jazz avant-garde". Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Coleman began his musical career playing in local R&B and bebop groups, and eventually formed his own group in Los Angeles featuring members such as Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. In 1959, he released the controversial album ''The Shape of Jazz to Come'' and began a long residency at the Five Spot jazz club in New York City. His 1960 album ''Free Jazz'' would profoundly influence the di ...
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Air Above Mountains
''Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within)'' is a live album by Cecil Taylor performing a solo piano concert recorded at the Moosham Castle in Langau, Austria on August 20, 1976. Reception The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow states "Except for some brief moments, his music is quite intense, percussive, crowded and overflowing with passion. Taylor's longtime fans will find much to marvel at while newcomers to his music are advised instead to check out his earlier (and less dissonant) sessions from the 1950s first". In a brief tribute to ''Air Above Mountains'' in the Chicago Tribune, journalist Jack Fuller wrote: "To breathe Cecil Taylor's rarified piano atmosphere, you have to have been acclimated. Straight jazz won't do it. Contemporary European art music is closer, thin on conventional harmonic structure and without recognizable melodic line. When you have learned to live in this thin but bracing abstract atmosphere, Taylor's improvisations are as magnificent as a mountaintop: hard ...
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