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Piano Jazz
''Piano Jazz'' is a weekly one-hour radio show produced and distributed by National Public Radio (NPR). It began on June 4, 1978, and was hosted by jazz pianist Marian McPartland (1918–2013) until 2011. It is the longest-running cultural program on NPR. The show generally features a single guest (though small groups and duos are also featured at times), and usually consists of about an equal mixture of discussion and playing, often duets with McPartland. Initially the guests were limited to jazz pianists, but the format was later expanded to include performers on other instruments as well as other genres (though the performances remain focused on jazz tunes). The show provides an inside look at the relationships of jazz musicians, since McPartland often had long friendships with many of her guests. ''Piano Jazz'' won a Peabody Award in 1983. The show is an exclusive production of South Carolina public radio on WLTR and is offered nationally by NPR. A number of shows have bee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramsey Lewis
Ramsey Emmanuel Lewis Jr. (May 27, 1935 – September 12, 2022) was an American jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and radio personality. Lewis recorded over 80 albums and received five RIAA certification, gold records and three Grammy Awards in his career. His album ''The In Crowd (Ramsey Lewis album), The In Crowd'' earned Lewis critical praise and the 1965 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance. His best known singles include "The 'In' Crowd (song), The In Crowd", "Wade in the Water", and "Sun Goddess (song), Sun Goddess". Until 2009, he was the host of the ''Ramsey Lewis Morning Show'' on the Chicago radio station WNUA. Lewis was also active in musical education in Chicago. He founded the Ramsey Lewis Foundation, established the Ravinia's Jazz Mentor Program, and served on the board of trustees for the Merit School of Music and The Chicago High School for the Arts. Life and career Ramsey Lewis was born on May 27, 1935, in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les McCann
Leslie Coleman McCann (born September 23, 1935) is an American jazz pianist and vocalist.Feather, Leonard, and Ira Gitler (2007), ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz'', p. 448. Oxford University Press. Early life Les McCann was born in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. He grew up in a musical family of four, a brother and three sisters with most of McCann's family singing in church choirs. His father was a fan of jazz music and his mother was known to hum opera around the house. As a youth, he played the tuba and drums and performed in his school's marching band. As a pianist McCann, was largely self-taught. He explained he only received piano lessons for a few weeks as a six-year-old before his teacher died. Career During his service in the U.S. Navy, McCann won a singing contest which led to an appearance on ''The Ed Sullivan Show''. After leaving the Navy, McCann moved to California and played in his own trio. He declined an offer to work in Cannonball Adderley's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jay McShann
James Columbus "Jay" McShann (January 12, 1916 – December 7, 2006) was an American jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and bandleader. He led bands in Kansas City, Missouri, that included Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson (trumpeter), Bernard Anderson, Walter Brown (singer), Walter Brown, and Ben Webster. Early life and education McShann was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Muskogee, Oklahoma, and was nicknamed Hootie. During his youth he taught himself how to play the piano through observing his sister's piano lessons and trying to practicing tunes he heard off the radio. He was also heavily influenced by late-night broadcasts of pianist Earl Hines from Chicago's Grand Terrace Cafe: "When 'Fatha' (''Hines'') went off the air, I went to bed". He began working as a professional musician in 1931 at the age of 15, performing around Tulsa, Oklahoma, and neighboring Arkansas. Career 1936–44 McShann moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1936, and set up his own big band which variously fea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eubie Blake
James Hubert "Eubie" Blake (February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983) was an American pianist and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote ''Shuffle Along'', one of the first Broadway musicals written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical ''Eubie!'' showcased his works. Early years Blake was born at 319 Forrest Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Of the many children born to former slaves Emily "Emma" Johnstone and John Sumner Blake, he was the only one to survive childhood. John Sumner Blake was a stevedore on the Baltimore Docks. Blake claimed in later life to have been born in 1883, but records published beginning in 2003— U.S. Census, military, and Social Security records and Blake's passport application and passport—uniformly give his b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hazel Scott
Hazel Dorothy Scott (June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981) was a Trinidad-born American jazz and classical pianist and singer. She was an outspoken critic of racial discrimination and segregation. She used her influence to improve the representation of Black Americans in film. Born in Port of Spain, Scott moved to New York City with her mother at the age of four. Scott was a child musical prodigy, receiving scholarships to study at the Juilliard School when she was eight. In her teens, she performed at Café Society while still at school. She also performed on the radio. She was active as a jazz singer throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In 1950, she became the first black American to host her own TV show, ''The Hazel Scott Show''. Her career in America faltered after she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950 during the era of McCarthyism. Scott subsequently moved to Paris in 1957 and began performing in Europe, not returning to the United States until 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Carroll
Barbara Carroll (born Barbara Carole Coppersmith; January 25, 1925 – February 12, 2017) was an American jazz pianist and vocalist. Early life and career Carroll was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began her classical training in piano at age eight, but by high school decided to become a jazz pianist. She attended the New England Conservatory of Music for a year, but left it as it conflicted with working for bands. In 1947 Leonard Feather dubbed her "the first girl ever to play bebop piano." In the following year her trio, which featured Chuck Wayne on guitar and Clyde Lombardi on bass, worked briefly with Benny Goodman. Later Charlie Byrd replaced Wayne and Joe Shulman replaced Lombardi. After Byrd's departure, Carroll decided to have it be a drums, bass, and piano trio. In the 1950s Carroll and her trio worked on ''Me and Juliet'' by Rodgers and Hammerstein. The decade saw her career ebb due to changing musical tastes and personal concerns. Later career In 1972 she r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Peterson
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian virtuoso jazz pianist and composer. Considered one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, Peterson released more than 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, and received numerous other awards and honours. He played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, simply "O.P." by his friends, and informally in the jazz community as "the King of inside swing". Biography Early years Peterson was born in Montreal, Quebec, to immigrants from the West Indies (Saint Kitts and Nevis and the British Virgin Islands); His mother, Kathleen, was a domestic worker and his father, Daniel, worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railway and was an amateur musician who taught himself to play the organ, trumpet and piano. Peterson grew up in the neighbourh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ellis Larkins
Ellis Larkins (May 15, 1923 – September 30, 2002) was an American jazz pianist born in Baltimore, Maryland, known for his two recordings with Ella Fitzgerald: the albums ''Ella Sings Gershwin'' (1950) and '' Songs in a Mellow Mood'' (1954). He was also the pianist on the first solo sides by singer Chris Connor on her album ''Chris'' (1954). Larkins was the first African American to attend the Peabody Conservatory of Music, an institute in Baltimore. He began his professional playing career in New York City after moving there to attend the Juilliard School. While still at Juilliard, Larkins performed jazz piano with guitarist Billy Moore at Café Society Uptown and over the next ten years in his own groups, or in support of, clarinetist Edmond Hall and singers Helen Humes and Mildred Bailey. He recorded with Coleman Hawkins, and Dicky Wells in the 1940s. In the 1950s, he recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Braff, and Beverly Kenney. His 1960s work included recordings or performan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bobby Short
Robert Waltrip Short (September 15, 1924 – March 21, 2005) was an American cabaret singer and pianist, who interpreted songs by popular composers from the first half of the 20th century such as Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Richard A. Whiting, Vernon Duke, Noël Coward and George and Ira Gershwin. Short also championed African-American composers of the same period such as Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Andy Razaf, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, presenting their work not in a polemical way, but as simply the obvious equal of that of their white contemporaries. Short's dedication to his great love – what he called the "Great American Song" – left him equally adept at performing the witty lyrics of Bessie Smith's "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)" or Gershwin and Duke's "I Can't Get Started". Short stated his favorite songwriters were Ellington, Arlen and Kern, and he was instrumental in spearheading the construction of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Taylor
Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. A jazz activist, Taylor sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America, an organisation he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians who survived Hurricane Katrina. Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz." Biography Early life and career Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, Unit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grace Kelly (musician)
Grace Kelly (born Grace Chung; May 15, 1992) is an American musician, songwriter, and arranger. Kelly has produced and released recordings of her own, scored soundtracks, and tours with her band. She was named one of ''Glamour'' magazine's Top 10 College Women in 2011; and she has been featured on CNN.com and on the NPR radio shows ''Piano Jazz'' with both Marian McPartland and Jon Weber, as well as on WBGO's ''JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater''. Working professionally since she was a preteen, Kelly was dubbed a prodigy in the jazz world. In 2014, Kelly worked with the producer Stewart Levine on her EP, ''Working for the Dreamers'', which was released in September of that year. She was featured in the December 2015 issue of '' Vanity Fair'' as a significant millennial in the jazz world. Kelly was named "Rising Star – Alto Saxophone" in '' DownBeat''s 2016 Critics Poll. Her ''Trying to Figure It Out'' (2016 PAZZ) release was voted the number-two Jazz Album of the Year in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taylor Eigsti
Taylor Eigsti (born September 24, 1984) is an American jazz pianist and composer. Eigsti's trio features bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Eric Harland. He is also a member of Eric Harland Voyager, Kendrick Scott Oracle, and Gretchen Parlato's group. Considered to be a child prodigy, since age 15 Eigsti has been a faculty member at the Stanford Jazz Workshop at Stanford University and has won a Grammy for his solo work. Early life Eigsti was born to Nancy and Steve Eigsti on September 24, 1984 and grew up in Menlo Park, California. When he was three, his 17-year-old sister, Shannon, died of cancer. Her death made a lasting impression and continued to influence Eigsti's musical development. Eigsti's study of piano began at age four when he was inspired by his older sister, Shannon."Taylor Eigsti - Pianist , Composer , Artist , Two-time Grammy Nominee". Taylor Eigsti. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. . He graduated salutatorian of his high school class at Woodside Priory School, where he re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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