Larry Ridley

Larry Ridley (born September 3, 1937) is an American jazz bassist and music educator.

Biography

Ridley was born and reared in Indianapolis, IN. He began performing professionally while still in high school in the 1950s. He studied at the Indiana University School of Music and later at the Lenox School of Jazz. Ridley has been involved in jazz education, heading the jazz program at Rutgers University.

Dr. David Baker, another Indianapolis native and notable jazz musician, was one of his prime mentors. Ridley was bassist for David Baker's Big band during his studies at Indiana University.

Ridley served as chairman of the Jazz Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and was the organization's National Coordinator of the "Jazz Artists in Schools" Program for five years (1978–1982). Ridley is a recipient of the MidAtlantic Arts Foundation’s “Living Legacy Jazz Award”, an 1998 inductee the International Association for Jazz Education Hall of Fame (IAJE), an inductee of the Downbeat Magazine Jazz Education Hall of Fame, a recipient of the Benny Golson Jazz Award from Howard University, and was honored by a Juneteenth 2006 Proclamation Award from the New York City Council. Ridley is currently the Executive Director of the African American Jazz Caucus, Inc., an affiliate of IAJE. He is also the IAJE Northeast Regional Coordinator. He continues to actively teach as Professor of Jazz Bass at the Manhattan School of Music. Ridley is currently serving as Jazz Artist in Residence at the Harlem based New York Public Library/Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He established an annual series there dedicated to presenting the compositions of jazz masters that are performed by Ridley and his Jazz Legacy Ensemble.

Ridley

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Larry

Larry is a masculine given name in English, derived from Lawrence, Laurence or Laraib. It can be a shortened form of those names.

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Sonny Rollins

Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist, widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards.

Early life

Rollins was born in New York City to parents from the United States Virgin Islands. The youngest of three siblings, he grew up in central Harlem and on Sugar Hill, Harlem, receiving his first alto saxophone at the age of seven or eight. He attended Edward W. Stitt Junior High School and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. He has said that a concert by Frank Sinatra at his high school, accompanied by a plea for racial harmony, changed his life. Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946. During his high school years, he played in a band with other future jazz legends Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor.