Rachel Z
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Rachel Z
Rachel Carmel Hakim ( née Nicolazzo), better known as Rachel Z, is a jazz and rock pianist and keyboardist. She has recorded 10 solo albums as a jazz musician. Her musical style, especially her improvisation, has been described as adjacent to Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner". Career In 1988, she co-wrote the Grammy Award-winning and certified Gold Record "Tokyo Blue" with saxophonist Najee. From 1988 to 1996, she played keyboards and piano with fusion band Steps Ahead. In 1995, she worked with Wayne Shorter on his album '' High Life'', which won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 1997. While signed to Columbia Records by Dr. George Butler, she released ''Trust the Universe'' which featured a straight-ahead jazz A-side with Charnett Moffett and Al Foster and an electric jazz B-side with Lenny White and Victor Bailey. In 199, she recorded her next solo CD, ''Room of One's Own – A Tribute to Women Artists.'' It won four stars in DownBeat and extensive cr ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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Née
A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth register may by that fact alone become the person's legal name. The assumption in the Western world is often that the name from birth (or perhaps from baptism or '' brit milah'') will persist to adulthood in the normal course of affairs—either throughout life or until marriage. Some possible changes concern middle names, diminutive forms, changes relating to parental status (due to one's parents' divorce or adoption by different parents). Matters are very different in some cultures in which a birth name is for childhood only, rather than for life. Maiden and married names The French and English-adopted terms née and né (; , ) denote an original surname at birth. The term ''née'', having feminine grammatical gender, can be used ...
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Stanley Clarke
Stanley Clarke (born June 30, 1951) is an American bassist, film composer and founding member of Return to Forever, one of the first jazz fusion bands. Clarke gave the bass guitar a prominence it lacked in jazz-related music. He is the first jazz-fusion bassist to headline tours, sell out shows worldwide and have recordings reach gold status. Clarke is a 5-time Grammy winner, with 15 nominations, 3 as a solo artist, 1 with the Stanley Clarke Band, and 1 with Return to Forever. Clarke was selected to become a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship. A Stanley Clarke electric bass is permanently on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Music career Early years Clarke was born on June 30, 1951 in Philadelphia. His mother sang opera around the house, belonged to a church choir, and encouraged him to study music. He started on accordion, then tried violin. But he felt awkward holding such a ...
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DownBeat
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois. It is named after the " downbeat" in music, also called "beat one", or the first beat of a musical measure. ''DownBeat'' publishes results of annual surveys of both its readers and critics in a variety of categories. The ''DownBeat'' Jazz Hall of Fame includes winners from both the readers' and critics' poll. The results of the readers' poll are published in the December issue, those of the critics' poll in the August issue. Popular features of ''DownBeat'' magazine include its "Reviews" section where jazz critics, using a '1-Star to 5-Star' maximum rating system, rate the latest musical recordings, vintage recordings, and books; articles on individual musicians and music forms; and its famous "Blindfold Test" column, in ...
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Victor Bailey (musician)
Victor Bailey (March 27, 1960 – November 11, 2016) was an American bass guitar player. He was the bassist for Weather Report during their final years from 1982 to 1986, and launched a solo career in 1988. As a musician, Bailey was known for his signature scat-bass solos. Biography Born in Philadelphia, on 27 March 1960, Victor Randall Bailey was raised by a highly musical family. His father, Morris Bailey Jr., was an active musician and composer, while his uncle, Donald "Duck" Bailey, was a jazz drummer, who played on numerous Blue Note records (e.g., Jimmy Smith Trio, Hampton Hawes, Carmen McRae, Dizzy Gillespie). As a child, Bailey played the drums, but ultimately switched to bass guitar after the bassist in his neighborhood band walked out of a band practice. Because young Victor took an immediate liking to the instrument, his father encouraged him to become a bass player. Beginning in 1978, at the age of 18, Bailey attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston after being ...
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Lenny White
Leonard "Lenny" White III (born December 19, 1949) is an American jazz fusion drummer who was a member of the band Return to Forever led by Chick Corea in the 1970s. White has been called "one of the founding fathers of jazz fusion". He has won three Grammy awards, two nominations and one Latin Grammy. Early life and education Born in Queens, New York City, White became interested in music at a young age. As a self taught drummer he started off his career playing with groups at the New York jazz scene. While he was living at home, his father would take him to gigs. Early on he played clubs in Queens New York such as the Aphrodisiac, Slugs, and The Gold Lounge. It was at The Gold Lounge where he had his first gig with saxophonist Jackie McLean. During the late 1960s he began performing with Mclean around Queens. Through this, White was recommended to play on Miles Davis' landmark 1969 LP '' Bitches Brew'' and feature on Freddie Hubbard's 1970 LP ''Red Clay.'' Within 1972 White joi ...
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Al Foster
Aloysius Tyrone Foster (born January 18, 1943) is an American jazz drummer. Foster's professional career began in the mid-60s, when he played and recorded with hard bop and swing musicians including Blue Mitchell and Illinois Jacquet. Foster played jazz fusion with Miles Davis during the 70s and was one of the few people to have contact with Davis during his retirement from 1975–1980. During Davis's retirement, Foster continued to play and record acoustic jazz with Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, McCoy Tyner, Horace Silver, and other band leaders. Foster played on Miles Davis's 1981 comeback album ''The Man with the Horn'', and was the only musician to play in Davis's band both before, and after, his retirement. After leaving Davis's band in the mid-80s, Foster toured and recorded with Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, and many other band leaders, primarily working in acoustic jazz settings. Foster has also released several solo albums under his own name, starting wit ...
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Charnett Moffett
Charnett Moffett (June 10, 1967 – April 11, 2022) was an American jazz bassist. Moffett began playing bass in the family band, touring the Far East in 1975 at the age of eight. In the mid-1980s, he played with Wynton Marsalis and Branford Marsalis. In 1987 he recorded his debut album ''Netman'' for Blue Note Records. He worked with Art Blakey, Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, Dizzy Gillespie, Ellis Marsalis, Sonny Sharrock, Stanley Jordan, Wallace Roney, Arturo Sandoval, Courtney Pine, David Sanborn, David Sánchez, Dianne Reeves, Frank Lowe, Harry Connick, Jr., Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Kenny Garrett, Kenny Kirkland, Kevin Eubanks, Lew Soloff, Manhattan Jazz Quintet, Melody Gardot, Mulgrew Miller and Tony Williams. Early life and career Charnett Moffett attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City and later studied at Mannes College of Music and the Juilliard School of Music. In 1983, he played on saxophonist ...
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Straight-ahead Jazz
Straight-ahead jazz is a genre of jazz that developed in the 1960s, with roots in the prior two decades. It omits the rock music and free jazz influences that began to appear in jazz during this period, instead preferring acoustic instruments, conventional piano comping, walking bass patterns, and swing- and bop-based drum rhythms. Musical style A study conducted by Anthony Belfiglio at the University of Texas, Austin analyzed the music of Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly, Wynton Marsalis, and Marcus Roberts in order to determine key features of straight-ahead jazz that distinguish it from other genres. Belfiglio concluded that the walking bass, a 4/4 bass pattern in which a bassist plays one note to each beat, synchronized with a ride-based drum pattern was a defining component of straight-ahead jazz. Background Often called "America's classical music," the subgenres of mainstream jazz have been less "subject to the whims of fashion," according to Scott DeVeaux, than other g ...
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George Butler (record Producer)
George Butler (September 2, 1931 – April 9, 2008) was a prominent American jazz record producer, executive and A&R man. He worked for a number of well-known jazz record labels from the 1960s to the 1990s including Blue Note Records, Columbia Records and United Artists Records. He signed and launched the careers of a number of now famous artists including Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr. and Nnenna Freelon. Biography Butler was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and studied at Howard University before going on to earn a master's degree in music education from Columbia University. In the early 1960s, he began working as an A&R executive for United Artists Records, where a few years later he was instrumental in establishing its Solid State Records jazz subsidiary.Jason Ankeny"Dr. George Butler" AllMusic. He took over the running of subsidiary label, Blue Note, in 1972, helping to increase interest in the jazz format with numerous jazz-soul crossover projects aimed at a more ...
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Grammy Award For Best Contemporary Jazz Album
The Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album was an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for works (songs or albums) containing quality contemporary jazz performances. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by The Recording Academy to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position". Originally called the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance, the award was first presented to the Manhattan Transfer in 1992. From 1993 to 1994 the category was known as Best Contemporary Jazz Performance (Instrumental), from 1995 to 2000 the name changed to Best Contemporary Jazz Performance, and since 2001 the name of the category has been Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Until 2001, both albums and singles were eligible for this award. According to th ...
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High Life (Wayne Shorter Album)
''High Life'' is an album by jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter that was released on Verve Records in 1995. This album won the Grammy Award in 1996 for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance. Some of the musicians include keyboardist Rachel Z, guitarist David Gilmore, bassist Marcus Miller, percussionists Lenny Castro and Airto and drummer Will Calhoun of Living Colour. Overview The album was the first album Wayne Shorter had recorded as a leader for seven years. It was also his recording debut for Verve Records. ''High Life'' was something of a departure from the jazz-fusion albums that Shorter had recorded in the late 1980s after leaving Weather Report. The compositions were generally seen to be more complex than his previous efforts and the use of synthesized instruments was seen to be more subtle. Shorter wrote, composed, and arranged all of the compositions featured on it. A thirty-piece orchestral ensemble was used in addition to the electronic instruments. The album was pro ...
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