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Opafire
Opafire was a jazz fusion group from San Francisco, California. Their debut album ''Opafire'' (RCA, 1991) sold close to half a million units worldwide. Opafire was created in 1990 by composer, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer Zachary Norman E. In 1990, Opafire signed a contract with RCA Records after Steve Feinstein, a program director in San Francisco began playing the group's music. When RCA/BMG released the debut album ''Opafire'', it gained international success and heavy rotation radio airplay. The Opafire songs, "Wajumbe", "Kalimbahari", and "Walk Like Rain" reached the No. 2, No. 11, and No. 26 spots on the Gavin Report "New Adult Contemporary Most Radio Plays" chart and Top Ten spots in ''R&R'' magazine, as well as reaching charts in Germany, Italy, Japan, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Taiwan. In 1991 Opafire toured with Miles Davis, Spyro Gyra, and the Yellow Jackets as part of the JVC Jazz Festival Tour, perf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novus Records
Novus Records (later Arista Novus and RCA Novus) was an American jazz record label run by Steve Backer. Backer worked at Impulse! Records until 1974, when Clive Davis, founder of Arista Records, asked him to oversee the jazz division at Arista. Backer left Arista in the early 1980s, worked for Windham Hill Records, and then went to RCA to run Novus. Novus's roster included Muhal Richard Abrams, Warren Bernhardt, Steve Coleman, Larry Coryell, Oliver Lake, Steve Lacy, James Moody, Hilton Ruiz, and Henry Threadgill. Beginning in 1989, Backer signed Marcus Roberts, Roy Hargrove, Danilo Pérez, Antonio Hart, and Christopher Hollyday. The label closed in the mid-1990s. The catalogue is now managed by Sony Masterworks through its Masterworks Jazz imprint. Discography 3000-N (RCA) series *3000: Muhal Richard Abrams – ''Lifea Blinec'' *3001: Warren Bernhardt – ''Solo Piano'' *3002: Air – ''Open Air Suit'' *3003: Oliver Lake – ''Life Dance of Is'' *3004: Baird Hersey – ''L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Higher Octave
Higher Octave Music is a sub-label imprint of Narada Productions. Since 2013, it is part of Universal Music Group's Capitol Music Group, which is located in Los Angeles. History Higher Octave was acquired by Virgin Records on behalf of EMI in 1997. In 2004, Higher Octave's offices in Malibu, California, were closed and the label was folded into Narada Productions at a reduced level of staffing and activity while retaining its imprint as a sub-label of Narada. Two years later, Higher Octave moved to New York along with Narada and all of its related sub-labels to become part of EMI's merging all of its adult-focused music into The Blue Note Label Group. High Octave has had several sub-labels, such as OmTown and CyberOctave. Roster * 3rd Force * Acoustic Alchemy * Adiemus * Jon Anderson * William Aura * B-Tribe * Buckethead * Craig Chaquico * Cusco * Four80East * Robin Frederick * Himekami * Brian Hughes * Ottmar Liebert * Jim McCarty * Moroccan Spirit * Mythos * Les Nubians * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz Fusion
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll. Jazz fusion arrangements vary in complexity. Some employ groove-based vamps fixed to a single key or a single chord with a simple, repeated melody. Others use elaborate chord progressions, unconventional time signatures, or melodies with counter-melodies. These arrangements, whether simple or complex, typically include improvised sections that can vary in length, much like in other forms of jazz. As with jazz, jazz fusion can employ brass and woodwind instruments such as trumpet and saxophone, but other instruments often substitute for these. A jazz fusion band is less likely to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smooth Jazz
Smooth jazz is a genre of commercially-oriented crossover jazz and easy listening music that became dominant in the mid 1970s to the early 1990s. History Smooth jazz is a commercially oriented, crossover jazz which came to prominence in the 1980s, displacing the more venturesome jazz fusion from which it emerged. It avoids the improvisational "risk-taking" of jazz fusion, emphasizing melodic form and much of the music was initially "a combination of jazz with easy-listening pop music and lightweight R&B". During the mid-1970s in the United States it was known as "smooth radio", and was not termed "smooth jazz" until the 1980s. Notable artists The mid- to late-1970s included songs “Breezin'" as performed by another smooth jazz pioneer, guitarist George Benson in 1976, the instrumental composition " Feels So Good" by flugelhorn player Chuck Mangione, in 1978, " What You Won't Do for Love" by Bobby Caldwell along with his debut album was released the same year, jazz fusion gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RCA Records
RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Arista Records, and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, classical, rock, hip hop, afrobeat, electronic, R&B, blues, jazz, and country. Its name is derived from the initials of its defunct parent company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). RCA Records was fully acquired by Bertelsmann in 1987, making it a part of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) and became a part of Sony BMG Music Entertainment after the 2004 merger of BMG and Sony; it was acquired by the latter in 2008, after the dissolution of Sony/BMG and the restructuring of Sony Music. RCA Records is the corporate successor of the Victor Talking Machine Company, founded in 1901, making it the second-oldest record label in American his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bryan Mantia
Bryan Kei Mantia (born February 4, 1963), known professionally as Brain, is an American rock drummer. He has played with bands such as Primus, Guns N' Roses, Praxis, and Godflesh, and with other performers such as Tom Waits, Serj Tankian, Bill Laswell, Bootsy Collins, and Buckethead. He has also done session work for numerous artists and bands. History Mantia was born February 4, 1963, in the South Bay city of Cupertino, California, to an Italian American father and a Japanese American mother. As a teenager, Mantia became interested in such artists as James Brown, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix, acts that featured groove-heavy sounds. When he was 16 years old, he started playing drums. Because of his 'obsessive' study of the drum book ''Portraits in Rhythm'', Mantia was given the nickname "Brain" by members of his high school concert band. Mantia attended the Percussion Institute of Technology in Hollywood, California, during the mid-1980s to further hone his craft. Dur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz Fusion
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll. Jazz fusion arrangements vary in complexity. Some employ groove-based vamps fixed to a single key or a single chord with a simple, repeated melody. Others use elaborate chord progressions, unconventional time signatures, or melodies with counter-melodies. These arrangements, whether simple or complex, typically include improvised sections that can vary in length, much like in other forms of jazz. As with jazz, jazz fusion can employ brass and woodwind instruments such as trumpet and saxophone, but other instruments often substitute for these. A jazz fusion band is less likely to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spyro Gyra
Spyro Gyra is an American jazz fusion band that was formed in Buffalo, New York, in 1974. The band's music combines jazz, R&B, funk, and pop music. The band's name comes from ''Spirogyra'', a genus of green algae which founder Jay Beckenstein had learned about in college. History Early years Saxophonist Jay Beckenstein and keyboardist Jeremy Wall formed a band with jazz and rock musicians who were playing in the Buffalo bar and club circuit. In 1974, when a bar owner asked for the band's name, Beckenstein said, "spirogyra", a type of algae he had learned about in school. The bar owner wrote the name incorrectly, "Spyro Gyra", but it stuck. The founding members of the band were Beckenstein, Wall, bassist Jim Kurzdorfer, drummer Tom Walsh, and keyboardist Tom Schuman. In 1977, they released '' Spyro Gyra'' independently before making a deal with Amherst Records, which re-released the album with a different cover. It included "Shaker Song," which reached No. 90 on Billboard's H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertelsmann Music Group
Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008. Although it was established in 1987, the music company was formed as RCA/Ariola International in 1985 as a joint venture to combine the music label activities of RCA's RCA Records division and Bertelsmann's Ariola Records and its associated labels which include Arista Records. It consisted of the BMG Music Publishing company, the world's third largest music publisher and the world's largest independent music publisher, and (since August 2004) the 50% share of the joint venture with Sony Music, which established the German American Sony BMG from 2004 to 2008. Acquisition In March 1998, BMG sold its video game publisher BMG Interactive to Take-Two Interactive, with Bertelsmann taking a 16 percent stake in Take-Two. BMG Interactive published the ''Grand Theft Auto'' video game series. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
