Neil Slater
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Neil Slater
Kenneth Neil Slater (born July 3 1931) is an American educator, composer, and pianist. In 2008, he retired as professor emeritus. He has composed over 80 works for jazz ensemble and has written for symphony, chamber groups, a cappella choir, opera, and musical theatre. Career Early years Slater was born in July 1931 in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Beginning at age six, he learned piano from a friend of his parents. In 1952 he graduated from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. Two years later he received a master's degree in composition from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Beginning in 1960, he took night classes for about two years at Teachers College, Columbia University, studying pedagogy, piano, and composition. From 1954 to 1956, Slater served in the U.S. Army, spending most of his time with the 97 Army Band at Fort Sill as a pianist but also playing French horn and valve trombone. He backed guest stars in shows produced by Daniel Melnick of the Mus ...
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One O'Clock Lab Band
One O'Clock Lab Band is an ensemble of the Jazz Studies division at the University of North Texas College of Music in Denton, Texas. Since the 1970s, the band's albums have received seven Grammy Award nominations, including two for ''Lab 2009''. Steve Wiest directed the band from 2008 to 2014. Jay Saunders became interim director in 2014. The One O'Clock Lab Band is the highest of nine lab bands at the college. Each band is named for its hour of rehearsal and each contains 19-pieces: five trumpets, five trombones, five saxophones, piano, guitar, double bass, and drums. The One O'Clock band evolved from an extracurricular stage band founded in 1927 into a curricular laboratory dance band in 1947 when North Texas began its jazz degree program. History Beginning in 1927, faculty member Floyd Graham began directing and emceeing Saturday night stage shows at North Texas State Teachers College, planning the programs and holding auditions every Saturday afternoon for prospective en ...
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National Association For Music Education
The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) is an organization of American music educators dedicated to advancing and preserving music education as part of the core curriculum of schools in the United States. Founded in 1907 as the Music Supervisors National Conference (MSNC), the organization was known from 1934 to 1998 as the Music Educators National Conference (origin of the MENC acronym). From 1998 to 2011 it was known as "MENC: The National Association for Music Education." On September 1, 2011, the organization changed its acronym from MENC to NAfME. On March 8, 2012, the organization's name legally became National Association for Music Education, using the acronym "NAfME". It has approximately 45,000 members, and NAfME's headquarters are located in Reston, Virginia. As of June 2020, Dr. Mackie V. Spradley is the current president of NAfME, and the executive director is Christopher B.L. Woodside. State affiliates NAfME functions regionally through more than ...
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Frank Strozier
Frank R. Strozier Jr. (born June 13, 1937) is a jazz alto saxophonist. Strozier was born in Memphis, Tennessee, where he learned to play piano. In 1954, he moved to Chicago, where he performed with Harold Mabern, George Coleman, and Booker Little (like Strozier, they were from Memphis). He recorded with the MJT + 3 from 1959 to 1960 and led sessions for Vee-Jay Records. After moving to New York, Strozier was briefly with the Miles Davis Quintet in 1963 (between the tenures of Hank Mobley and George Coleman) and also gigged with Roy Haynes. After moving to Los Angeles, he worked with Chet Baker, Shelly Manne, and the Don Ellis big band. Returning to New York in 1971, he worked with Keno Duke's Jazz Contemporaries, the New York Jazz Repertory Company, Horace Parlan, and Woody Shaw. Discography As leader * ''Fantastic Frank Strozier'' (Vee-Jay, 1960) * '' Long Night'' ( Jazzland, 1961) * ''March of the Siamese Children'' (Jazzland, 1962) * '' Remember Me'' ( SteepleChase, 1977) * ...
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Bobby Shew
Bobby Shew (born March 4, 1941) is an American jazz trumpet and flugelhorn player. Biography He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. After leaving college in 1960, Shew was drafted into the U.S. Army and played trumpet and toured with the NORAD joint forces band stationed in Colorado Springs. After leaving the Army, Shew joined Tommy Dorsey's band and then played with the Woody Herman and then the Buddy Rich big bands in the mid-to-late 1960s. He was a trumpeter in Tom Jones's band while in Las Vegas, and is featured on his 1971 live album ''Live at Caesar's Palace''. In 1972, Shew moved from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, where he did much studio work as well as play with some of the top big bands of the era through the end of the 1970s: Akiyoshi/Tabackin, Louis Bellson, Maynard Ferguson, and others. In addition to playing on several notable big band recordings starting in the 1960s, Shew recorded several albums as leader, starting with ''Debut'' in 1978. Shew has ...
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Joe Morello
Joseph Albert Morello (July 17, 1928 – March 12, 2011) was an American jazz drummer best known for serving as the drummer for pianist Dave Brubeck, as part of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, from 1957 to 1972, including during the quartet's "classic lineup" from 1958 to 1968, which also included alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and bassist Eugene Wright. Morello's facility for playing unusual time signatures and rhythms enabled that group to record a series of albums that explored unusual time signatures. The most notable of these was the first in the series, the 1959 album '' Time Out'', which contained the hit songs "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo à la Turk". In fact, "Take Five", the album's biggest hit (and the first jazz single to sell more than one million copies) was specifically written by Desmond as a way to showcase Morello's ability to play in time. Besides playing with Brubeck, Morello also served as an accompanist for other musicians, including Marian McPartland, Tal Farlow a ...
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Clark Terry
Clark Virgil Terry Jr. (December 14, 1920 – February 21, 2015) was an American swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, and a composer and educator. He played with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948–51), Duke Ellington (1951–59), Quincy Jones (1960), and Oscar Peterson (1964–96). He was with The Tonight Show Band on ''The Tonight Show'' from 1962 to 1972. His career in jazz spanned more than 70 years, during which he became one of the most recorded jazz musicians, appearing on over 900 recordings. Terry also mentored Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny, Dianne Reeves, and Terri Lyne Carrington.Terry, C. ''Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry'', University of California Press (2011). Early life Terry was born to Clark Virgil Terry Sr. and Mary Terry in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 14, 1920. Yanow, Scott Clark Terry biographyat Allmusic. He attended Vashon High School and began his professional care ...
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Slide Hampton
Locksley Wellington Hampton (April 21, 1932 – November 18, 2021) was an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger. As his nickname implies, Hampton's main instrument was slide trombone, but he also occasionally played tuba and flugelhorn. Biography Early life and career Locksley Wellington Hampton was born on April 21, 1932, in Jeannette, Pennsylvania. Laura and Clarke "Deacon" Hampton raised 12 children, taught them how to play musical instruments and set out with them as a family band. The family first came to Indianapolis in 1938. The Hamptons were a very musical family in which mother, father, eight brothers, and four sisters, all played instruments. His sisters included Dawn Hampton and Virtue Hampton Whitted. Slide Hampton is one of the few left-handed trombone players. As a child, Hampton was given the trombone set up to play left-handed, or backwards; and as no one ever dissuaded him, he continued to play this way. At the age of 12, Slide played in his family's ...
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Stan Kenton
Stanley Newcomb Kenton (December 15, 1911 – August 25, 1979) was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward-looking. Kenton was also a pioneer in the field of jazz education, creating the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp in 1959 at Indiana University.Sparke, Michael. ''Stan Kenton: This is an Orchestra.'' UNT Press (2010). . Early life Stan Kenton was born on December 15, 1911, in Wichita, Kansas; he had two sisters (Beulah and Erma Mae) born three and eight years after him. His parents, Floyd and Stella Kenton, moved the family to Colorado, and in 1924, to the Greater Los Angeles Area, settling in suburban Bell, California. Kenton attended Bell High School; his high-school yearbook picture has the prophetic notation "Old Man Jazz". Kenton started learning pian ...
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Chet Baker
Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker Jr. (December 23, 1929 – May 13, 1988) was an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist. He is known for major innovations in cool jazz that led him to be nicknamed the "Prince of Cool". Baker earned much attention and critical praise through the 1950s, particularly for albums featuring his vocals: ''Chet Baker Sings'' (1954) and '' It Could Happen to You'' (1958). Jazz historian Dave Gelly described the promise of Baker's early career as "James Dean, Sinatra, and Bix, rolled into one". His well-publicized drug habit also drove his notoriety and fame. Baker was in and out of jail frequently before enjoying a career resurgence in the late 1970s and 1980s. Biography Early years Baker was born and raised in a musical household in Yale, Oklahoma on 23 December 1929. His father, Chesney Baker Sr., was a professional guitarist, and his mother, Vera Moser, was a pianist who worked in a perfume factory. His maternal grandmother was Norwegian. Baker said that o ...
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Gerry Mulligan
Gerald Joseph Mulligan (April 6, 1927 – January 20, 1996), also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz—Mulligan was also a significant arranger, working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. His pianoless quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the best cool jazz groups. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments. Several of his compositions, such as "Walkin' Shoes" and "Five Brothers", have become standards. Biography Early life and career Gerry Mulligan was born in Queens Village, Queens, New York, United States, the son of George and Louise Mulligan. His father was a Wilmington, Delaware native of Irish descent; his mother a Philadelphia native of half-Irish and half-German desce ...
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Bill Watrous
William Russell Watrous III (June 8, 1939 – July 2, 2018) was an American jazz trombonist. He is perhaps best known for his rendition of Sammy Nestico's arrangement of the Johnny Mandel ballad "A Time for Love", which he recorded on a 1993 album of the same name. A self-described "bop-oriented" player, he was well known among trombonists as a master technician and for his mellifluous sound. Biography He was born in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. Watrous' father, also a trombonist, introduced him to the instrument at an early age. While serving in the U.S. Navy, Watrous studied with jazz pianist and composer Herbie Nichols. His first professional performances were in Billy Butterfield's band. Watrous' career blossomed in the 1960s. He played and recorded with many prominent jazz musicians, including Count Basie, Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Quincy Jones, Johnny Richards, and trombonist Kai Winding. He also played with well-known vocalists Frank Sinatra, Ray Char ...
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Randy Jones (drummer)
Randall Hodges Jones (January 23, 1944 – June 13, 2016) was a British-born American jazz drummer. Biography Born in Slough, Buckinghamshire, (now Berkshire), Jones was a versatile musician capable of driving a big band, but could also play quite well with smaller units. He started playing professionally when he was 16, touring Germany with an English rock and roll group. In between, he backed up rock and pop artists in television variety shows, while performing on stage or recording in studio. In 1969, Jones worked with Maynard Ferguson, when Ferguson signed with CBS Records in England and formed a brawny horns and rhythm ensemble with British musicians that performed the then popular jazz/rock fusion style. During the six years that Jones spent with Ferguson, he performed on the classic album series '' M.F. Horn'' (1970), ''M.F. Horn Two'' (1972), ''M.F. Horn 3'' (1973), and '' M.F. Horn 4&5: Live At Jimmy's''.
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