Jaki (John) Byard (June 15, 1922 in Worcester, Massachusetts – February 11, 1999 in New York City) was an American jazz pianist and composer who also played trumpet and saxophone, among several other instruments. He was noteworthy for his eclectic style, incorporating everything from ragtime and stride to free jazz. In describing his contribution to the Phil Woods album Musique du Bois, National Public Radio described him as "one of the most compelling and versatile pianists in jazz".

Byard began playing professionally at the age of 15. After serving in World War II he toured with Earl Bostic in the late 1940s, and, by now based in Boston, made his recording debut with Charlie Mariano in 1951. Later, he was a member of the bands of Herb Pomeroy (1952-55, recording in 1957) and Maynard Ferguson (1959-62).

Moving to New York, Byard recorded extensively with Charles Mingus in the periods 1962 to 1964 and 1970, touring Europe with him in 1964. He also made important recordings as a sideman with Eric Dolphy, Booker Ervin and Sam Rivers. As a leader, he recorded a string of albums for the Prestige label during the 1960s. He fronted an occasional big band, the Apollo Stompers. He taught at the New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, Hartt School of Music and the New School for Social Research.

Byard was shot dead in 1999. The circumstances surrounding his death have not been determined.

Discography

As leader

Blues for Smoke, solo piano, 1960

Here's Jaki, with Ron Carter and Roy Haynes, 1961

Hi-Fly, with Ron Carter and Pete La Roca, 1962

Out Front!, with Booker Ervin, Ron Carter and Roy Haynes, 1964

The Jaki Byard Quartet Live!, 1965

Freedom Together!, with Richard Davis and Junior Parker, 1966

Sunshine Of My Soul, with Elvin Jones and David Izenzon, 1967

Jaki Byard With Strings, 1968

The Jaki Byard Experience, with Roland Kirk, Richard Davis und Alan Dawson, 1968

Solo Piano, 1969

Duet!, 1972 (MPS Records)

Family Man, 1978

On The Spot!, with Jimmy Owens, Paul Chambers, Billy Higgins and Alan Dawson, 1999

The Last From Lennie's, with Joe Farrell, George Tucker and Alan Dawson, 2003

As sideman

With Eric Dolphy

''Far Cry (1960)

With Booker Ervin

''The Freedom Book (1963)

With Roland Kirk

Rip Rig & Panic (1965)

With Charles Mingus

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963)

Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963)

Astral Weeks (1964)

With Sam Rivers

Fuchsia Swing Song (1964)

References

Category:1922 births Category:1999 deaths Category:people from Worcester, Massachusetts Category:American jazz pianists Category:Bebop pianists Category:Mainstream jazz pianists Category:Murdered entertainers Category:Post-bop pianists Category:Progressive big band musicians Category:Stride pianists Category:Third Stream pianists Category:New England Conservatory faculty Category:Muse Records artists Category:MPS Records artists Category:Prestige Records artists

Name	Nino Rota
Background	non_performing_personnel
Birth name	Giovanni Rota Rinaldi
Born	December 03, 1911Milan, Lombardy, Italy
Died	April 10, 1979Rome, Italy

Nino Rota (December 3, 1911, Milan – April 10, 1979, Rome) was an Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, receiving for the latter the Academy Award for Best original Score in 1974.

During his long career Rota was an extraordinarily prolific composer, especially of music for the cinema. He wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international productions from the 1930s until his death in 1979—an average of three scores each year over a 46 year period, and in his most productive period from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s he wrote as many as ten scores every year, and sometimes more, with a remarkable thirteen film scores to his credit in 1954. Alongside this great body of film work, he composed ten operas, five ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, the best known being his string concerto. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zeffirelli and Eduardo de Filippo as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.

Biography

Born into a musical family in Milan, Rota was a renowned child prodigy—his first oratorio, L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista, was written at age 11 and performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923; his three-act lyrical comedy after Hans Christian Andersen, Il Principe Porcaro, was composed when he was just 13 and published in 1926. He studied at the Milan conservatory there under Giacomo Orefice.

Encouraged by Arturo Toscanini, Rota moved to the United States where he lived from 1930 to 1932. He won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, where he was taught conducting by Fritz Reiner and had Rosario Scalero as an instructor in composition..

In his entry on Rota in the 1988 edition of The Concise Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Composers and Musicians, music scholar Nicholas Slonimsky described Rota as "brilliant" and stated that his musical style:

:"... demonstrates a great facility and even felicity, with occasional daring excursions into dodecaphony. However his most durable compositions are related to his music for the cinema; he composed the sound tracks of a great number of films of the Italian director Federico Fellini covering the period from 1950 to 1979.".

The relationship between Fellini and Rota was so strong that even at Fellini's funeral Giulietta Masina, Fellini's wife, asked to the trumpeter Mauro Maur to play the Improvviso dell'Angelo of Rota in the Basilic S. Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome .

Rota's score for Fellini's 8½ (1963) is often cited as one of the factors which makes the film cohesive. His score for Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (1965) included a collaboration with Eugene Walter on the song, "Go Milk the Moon" (cut from the final version of the film), and they teamed again for the song "What Is a Youth?", part of Rota's score for Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. In all, Rota wrote scores to more than 150 films.

Rota wrote numerous concerti and other orchestral works as well as piano, chamber and choral music, much of which has been recorded and released on CD. After his death from heart failure in 1979, Rota's music was the subject of Hal Willner's 1981 tribute album Amarcord Nino Rota, which featured several at the time relatively unknown but now famous jazz musicians. Gus Van Sant used some of Rota's music in his 2007 film Paranoid Park and director Michael Winterbottom used several Rota selections in the 2005 film Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. Danny Elfman frequently cites Nino Rota as a major influence. Director Mario Monicelli filmed a documentary Un amico magico: il maestro Nino Rota which featured interviews with Franco Zeffirelli and Riccardo Muti (a student under Rota at Bari Conservatory), and was followed by a German documentary Nino Rota - Un maestro della musica. Both explored film and concert sides of the composer.

Operas

His 1955 opera Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Italian Straw Hat), an adaptation of the play by Eugène Labiche was presented by the Santa Fe Opera in 1977. In 2005 his opera Aladino e la lampada magica (Aladdin and the Magical Lamp), with Cosmin Ifrim in the title role, was performed in German translation at the Vienna State Opera and released on DVD.

Written for a radio production by RAI in 1950, his short opera, I due timidi (The Two Timid Ones), was presented by the Santa Fe Opera as part of their pre-season "One-Hour Opera" program in May/June 2008.

Quotes

Federico Fellini recalls his first chance meeting with Rota: :"Outside Cinecittà, I noticed a funny little man waiting in the wrong place for the tram. He seemed happily oblivious of everything. I felt compelled ... to wait with him.... I was certain that the tram would stop in its regular place and we would have to run for it, and he was equally certain it would stop where he was standing ... To my surprise, the tram did stop right in front of us."

A critic conversing with Nino Rota at the age of eleven just prior to a performance of his oratorio, The Childhood of St. John the Baptist, in 1923: :Critic: "Do you like playing?" :Rota: "Whenever I can ... Is it hard to write for a newspaper?" :Critic: "It's not easy to do a good article" :Rota: "Have you come from Brussels specially to hear my oratorio?" :Critic: "I certainly have, my little friend." :Rota: "That’s really funny. I won’t be conducting it tonight. Yesterday the double bass snubbed me"

On his friendship with Igor Stravinsky: :"Stravinsky was fun; his mind struck sparks. Age was no barrier - ours became a true friendship, despite distance and meeting ever more rarely."

Nino Rota reflecting on the unhappiness of others: :"When I’m creating at the piano, I tend to feel happy; but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy amid the unhappiness of others? I'd do everything I could to give everyone a moment of happiness. That's what's at the heart of my music."

Federico Fellini on Nino Rota: :"He was someone who had a rare quality belonging to the world of intuition. Just like children, simple men, sensitive people, innocent people, he would suddenly say dazzling things. As soon as he arrived, stress disappeared, everything turned into a festive atmosphere; the movie entered a joyful, serene, fantastic period, a new life."

Film scores

1930s

1933:

*Treno popolare, directed by Raffaello Matarazzo

1940s

1942:

*Giorno di nozze, directed by Raffaello Matarazzo

1943:

*Il birichino di papà, directed by Raffaello Matarazzo

1944:

*Zazà, directed by Renato Castellani

*La donna della montagna (The Mountain Woman), directed by Renato Castellani

1945:

*La freccia nel fianco (The Arrow), directed by Alberto Lattuada and, not accredited, Mario Costa

*Lo sbaglio di essere vivo (My Widow and I), directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia

*Le miserie del signor Travet (His Young Wife), directed by Mario Soldati

1946:

*Vanità, directed by Giorgio Pàstina

*Un americano in vacanza (A Yank in Rome), directed by Luigi Zampa

*Albergo Luna, camera 34, directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia

*Mio figlio professore (Professor My Son), directed by Renato Castellani

*Roma città libera, also known as Roma città libera (La notte porta consiglio) (Rome: Free City), directed by Marcello Pagliero

1947:

*Il delitto di Giovanni Episcopo (Flesh Will Surrender), directed by Alberto Lattuada

*Daniele Cortis (Elena), directed by Mario Soldati

*Come persi la guerra (How I Lost the War), directed by Carlo Borghesio

*Vivere in pace (To Live in Peace), directed by Luigi Zampa

1948:

*Totò al giro d'Italia, directed by Mario Mattoli

*Proibito rubare (Guagilo) (Hey Boy) (No Stealing), directed by Luigi Comencini

*Molti sogni per le strade (The Street Has Many Dreams) (Woman Trouble), directed by Mario Camerini

*Sotto il sole di Roma (Under the Sun of Rome), directed by Renato Castellani

*Fuga in Francia (Flight Into France), directed by Mario Soldati

*È primavera... (It's Forever Springtime) (Springtime in Italy), directed by Renato Castellani

*Senza pietà (Without Pity), directed by Alberto Lattuada

*Arrivederci, papà!, directed by Camillo Mastrocinque

*Amanti senza amore (Prelude to Madness), directed by Gianni Franciolini

*Anni difficili (Difficult Years) (The Little Man), directed by Luigi Zampa

*L'eroe della strada, directed by Carlo Borghesio

1949:

*Quel bandito sono io, directed by Mario Soldati

*The Glass Mountain (La montagna di cristallo), directed by Edoardo Anton and Henry Cass

*Come scopersi l'America, directed by Carlo Borghesio

*Obsession, also known as The Hidden Room, directed by Edward Dmytryk

*I pirati di Capri (Pirates of Capri) (Captain Sirocco) (The Masked Pirate''), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and Giuseppe Maria Scotese

*Campane a martello (Children of Chance), directed by Luigi Zampa

1950s

1950:

*Vita da cani (A Dog's Life) (It's a Dog's Life), directed by Mario Monicelli and Steno

*Peppino e Violetta (Never Take No for an Answer), directed by Maurice Cloche

*Napoli milionaria (Side Street Story), directed by Eduardo De Filippo

*È più facile che un cammello... (His Last Twelve Hours) (Pour l'amour du ciel) (Twelve Hours to Live), directed by Luigi Zampa

*È arrivato il cavaliere, directed by Mario Monicelli and Steno

*Due mogli sono troppe (Honeymoon Deferred), directed by Mario Camerini

*Donne e briganti (Of Love and Bandits) (The King's Guerrillas), directed by Mario Soldati

1951:

*Valley of Eagles, also known as Valley of the Eagles, directed by Terence Young

*Totò e i re di Roma (Toto and the King of Rome), directed by Mario Monicelli and Steno

*Peppino e Violetta (The Small Miracle) (Never Take No for an Answer), directed by Maurice Cloche and Ralph Smart

*Il Monello della strada (Street Urchin), directed by Carlo Borghesio

*Le meravigliose avventure di Guerrin Meschino (Wonderful Adventures of Guerrin Mescino), directed by Pietro Francisci

*Filumena Marturano, directed by Eduardo De Filippo

*Era lui... sì! sì! (It's Him!... Yes! Yes!), directed by Marino Girolami, Marcello Marchesi and Vittorio Metz

*Anna, directed by Alberto Lattuada

1952

*I tre corsari (The Three Pirates) (Three Corsairs), directed by Mario Soldati

*La mano dello straniero (The Stranger's Hand), directed by Mario Soldati

*Something Money Can't Buy, directed by Pat Jackson

*I sette dell'orsa maggiore (Hell Raiders of the Deep) (Human Torpedoes) (Panique à Gibraltar), directed by Duilio Coletti

*La regina di Saba (The Queen of Sheba), directed by Pietro Francisci

*Noi due soli (We Two Alone), directed by Marino Girolami

*Marito e moglie (Husband and Wife), directed by Eduardo De Filippo

*Jolanda la figlia del corsaro nero (Jolanda, the Daughter of the Black Corsair) (Yolanda), directed by Mario Soldati

*Gli angeli del quartiere (Angels of the District), directed by Carlo Borghesio

*Un ladro in paradiso, directed by Domenico Paolella

*Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik), directed by Federico Fellini

*Venetian Bird (El Alaméin) (The Assassin), directed by Ralph Thomas

1953:

*Star of India (Stella dell'India), directed by Arthur Lubin

*Scampolo 53, directed by Giorgio Bianchi

*Riscatto also known as Riscatto - tu sei il mio giudice, directed by Marino Girolami

*La domenica della buona gente (Good Folk's Sunday), directed by Anton Giulio Majano

*Fanciulle di lusso (Des gosses de riches) (Finishing School) (Luxury Girls), directed by Bernard Vorhaus

*Le boulanger de Valorgue (Me li mangio vivi) (The Wild Oat), directed by Henri Verneuil

*I vitelloni (Les inutiles) (Les vitelloni) (Spivs) (The Young and the Passionate) (Vitelloni), directed by Federico Fellini

*Anni facili (Easy Years), directed by Luigi Zampa

*Musoduro also known as Amore selvaggio (Marco la Bagarre) (The Hunt), directed by Giuseppe Bennati

*L'ennemi public no 1 (Il nemico pubblico numero uno) (L'ennemi public numéro un) (Public Enemy Number One) (The Most Wanted Man) (The Most Wanted Man in the World), directed by Henri Verneuil

1954:

*Via Padova 46 also known as Lo scocciatore and Via Padova 46 - Lo scocciatore, directed by Giorgio Bianchi

*Vergine moderna (Modern Virgin), directed by Marcello Pagliero

*La nave delle donne maledette (Ship of Lost Women) (The Ship of Condemned Women), directed by Raffaello Matarazzo

*La grande speranza (Submarine Attack) (The Great Hope) (Torpedo Zone), directed by Duilio Coletti

*Le due orfanelle (Les deux orphelines) (The Two Orphans), directed by Giacomo Gentilomo

*Divisione Folgore (Folgore Division), directed by Duilio Coletti

*Garibaldina, episode of Cento d'amore (100 Years of Love), directed by Lionello De Felice

*Pendolin, episode of Cento d'amore (100 Years of Love), directed by Lionello De Felice

*Appassionatamente, directed by Giacomo Gentilomo

*L'amante di Paride (Loves of Three Queens) (The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships), directed by Marc Allégret and Edgar G. Ulmer

*La strada (The Road), directed by Federico Fellini

*Mambo, directed by Robert Rossen

*Proibito (Du sang dans le soleil) (Forbidden), directed by Mario Monicelli

1955:

*Io piaccio also known as La via del successo con le donne, directed by Giorgio Bianchi

*Accadde al penitenziario, directed by Giorgio Bianchi

*Un eroe dei nostri tempi (A Hero of Our Times), directed by Mario Monicelli

*Bella non piangere!, directed by David Carbonari and Duilio Coletti

*Il bidone (The Swindle) (The Swindlers), directed by Federico Fellini

*Amici per la pelle (Amis pour la vie) (Friends for Life) (Inolvidable amistad) (The Woman in the Painting), directed by Franco Rossi

*La bella di Roma (The Belle of Rome), directed by Luigi Comencini

1956:

*War and Peace (Guerra e pace), directed by King Vidor

*Londra chiama Polo Nord (London Calling North Pole) (The House of Intrigue), directed by Duilio Coletti

*Città di notte (City at Night), directed by Leopoldo Trieste

1957:

*Il medico e lo stregone (Doctor and the Healer) (Le médecin et le sorcier), directed by Mario Monicelli

*Italia piccola, directed by Mario Soldati

*Il momento più bello (Le moment le plus beau) (The Most Wonderful Moment) (Wasted Lives), directed by Luciano Emmer

*Le notti bianche (Nuits blanches) (White Nights), directed by Luchino Visconti

*Le notti di Cabiria (Cabiria) (Nights of Cabiria) (Les nuits de Cabiria), directed by Federico Fellini

1958:

*Giovani mariti (Les jeunes maris) (Young Husbands), directed by Mauro Bolognini

*Fortunella, directed by Eduardo De Filippo

*This Angry Age (Barrage contre le Pacifique) (La diga sul Pacifico) (The Sea Wall), directed by René Clément

*El Alamein (Deserto di gloria), directed by Guido Malatesta

*Gli italiani sono matti (Los italianos están locos) (The Italians They Are Crazy), directed by Duilio Coletti and Luis María Delgado

*La legge è legge (La loi c'est la loi) (The Law Is the Law), directed by Christian-Jaque

1959:

*La grande guerra (La grande guerre) (The Great War), directed by Mario Monicelli

*Un ettaro di cielo (Piece of the Sky), directed by Aglauco Casadio

1960s

1960:

*Plein soleil (Purple Noon) (Blazing Sun) (Delitto in pieno sole) (Full Sun) (Lust for Evil), based on the novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, directed by René Clément

*La dolce vita (La dolce vita) (La douceur de vivre) (The Sweet Life), directed by Federico Fellini

*Sotto dieci bandiere (Under Ten Flags), directed by Duilio Coletti

*Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers) (Rocco et ses frères), directed by Luchino Visconti

1961:

*Fantasmi a Roma (Ghosts of Rome) (Phantom Lovers), directed by Antonio Pietrangeli

*Il brigante (The Brigand), directed by Renato Castellani

1962:

*Mafioso, directed by Alberto Lattuada

*The Best of Enemies (I due nemici), directed by Guy Hamilton

*The Reluctant Saint (Cronache di un convento) (Joseph Desa), directed by Edward Dmytryk

*Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio (The Temptation of Dr. Antonio), episode of Boccaccio '70 (Boccace 70), directed by Federico Fellini

*Il lavoro (The Job), episode of Boccaccio '70 (Boccace 70), directed by Luchino Visconti

*L'isola di Arturo (Arturo's Island), directed by Damiano Damiani

1963:

*Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) (Le guépard), directed by Luchino Visconti

*8 ½ (Federico Fellini's 8½) (Huit et demi), directed by Federico Fellini

*Il maestro di Vigevano (The Teacher from Vigevano), directed by Elio Petri

1964:

*Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca (Gian Burrasca's Diary), TV series in 8 episodes of 60', directed by Lina Wertmüller

*A Midsummer Night's Dream, film TV, directed by Joan Kemp-Welch

1965:

*L'ora di punta, episode of Oggi, domani, dopodomani (Aujourd'hui, demain et après-demain) (Kiss the Other Sheik) (The Man, the Woman and the Money), directed by Eduardo De Filippo

*Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) (Juliette des esprits), directed by Federico Fellini

1966:

*Spara forte, più forte, non capisco (Shoot Loud, Louder... I Don't Understand), directed by Eduardo De Filippo

1967:

*The Taming of the Shrew (La bisbetica domata), directed by Franco Zeffirelli

1968:

*Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) (Romeo e Giulietta), directed by Franco Zeffirelli

*Toby Dammit, episode of Histoires extraordinaires (Spirits of the Dead) (Tales of Mystery) (Tales of Mystery and Imagination) (Tre passi nel delirio) (Trois histoires extraordinaires d'Edgar Poe), directed by Federico Fellini

1969:

*Block-notes di un regista (Fellini: A Director's Notebook), film TV, directed by Federico Fellini

*Fellini Satyricon (Satyricon) (The Degenerates), directed by Federico Fellini

1970s

1970:

*Paranoia (A Quiet Place to Kill) (A Beautiful Place to Kill) (Un tranquilo lugar para matar) (Una droga llamada Helen), directed by Umberto Lenzi

*Waterloo (Ватерлоо), directed by Sergei Bondarchuk

1971:

*I clowns (Die Clowns) (Les clowns) (The Clowns), film for TV, directed by Federico Fellini

1972:

*Roma (Fellini Roma) (Fellini's Roma), directed by Federico Fellini

*The Godfather (Mario Puzo's The Godfather), directed by Francis Ford Coppola

1973:

*Hi wa shizumi, hi wa noboru (Sunset, Sunrise), directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara

*Amarcord (I Remember), directed by Federico Fellini

*Film d'amore e d'anarchia, ovvero stamattina alle 10 in Via dei Fiori nella nota casa di tolleranza also known as Film d'amore e d'anarchia (Love and Anarchy), directed by Lina Wertmuller

1974:

* (Mario Puzo's The Godfather: Part II), directed by Francis Ford Coppola

*The Abdication, directed by Anthony Harvey

1975:

*E il Casanova di Fellini?, TV documentary, directed by Gianfranco Angelucci and Liliane Betti

1976:

*Ragazzo di Borgata (Slow Boy), directed by Giulio Paradisi

*Caro Michele (Dear Michael), directed by Mario Monicelli

*Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (Casanova) (Fellini's Casanova), directed by Federico Fellini

*Alle origini della mafia (Origins of the Mafia), TV mini series in 5 episodes of 50 minutes, directed by Enzo Muzii

1977:

*Las alegres chicas de "El Molino", directed by José Antonio de la Loma

1978:

*Prova d'orchestra (Federico Fellini's Orchestra Rehearsal) (Orchesterprobe) (Orchestra Rehearsal), directed by Federico Fellini

*Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile), directed by John Guillermin

*Il teatro di Eduardo, directed by Eduardo De Filippo

* La dodicesima Notte, directed by Giorgio De Lullo

1979:

*Ten to Survive

*Hurricane (Forbidden Paradise), directed by Jan Troell

Concert works

Music for piano

Il Mago doppio-Suite per quattro mani (1919)

Tre pezzi (1920)

Preludio e Fuga per Pianoforte a 4 Mani (Storia del Mago Doppio) (1922)

Illumina Tu, O Fuoco (1924)

Io Cesserò il Mio Canto (1924)

Ascolta o Cuore June (1924)

Il Presàgio (1925)

La Figliola Del Re (Un Augello Gorgheggiava) (1925)

Ippolito gioca (1930)

Campane a Festa (1931)

Campane a Sera (1933)

Il Pastorello e altre Due Liriche Infantili (1935)

La Passione (poesia popolare) (1938)

Bagatella (1941)

Fantasia in sol (1945)

Fantasia in do (1946)

Azione teatrale scritta nel 1752 da Pietro Metastasio (1954)

15 Preludi (1964)

Sette Pezzi Difficili per Bambini (1971)

Cantico in Memoria di Alfredo Casella (1972)

Due Valzer sul nome di Bach (1975)

Chamber

Duets

Pezzo per Corno in Fa e Contrabasso (1931)

Sonata per ottoni e organo (1972)

Tre Pezzi per 2 flauti (1972–73)

For string and piano

Improvviso in re minore per violino e pianoforte (1947)

Improvviso per Violino e Pianoforte (Un diavolo sentimentale) (1969)

Intermezzo per viola e pianoforte (1945)

Sonata in sol per Viola e Pianoforte (1934–35, revised 1970)

Sonata per Viola e Pianoforte della Sonata in Re per Clarinetto e pianoforte (1945)

Sonata per violino e pianoforte(1936–37)

For wind and piano

Castel del Monte - Ballata per Corno e Pianoforte (1974)

Cinque Pezzi facili per flauto e pianoforte (1972)

Elegia Per Oboe E Pianoforte (1955)

Pezzo in re per clarinetto e pianoforte (Agosto) (1977)

Sonata in Re per Clarinetto e Pianoforte (1945)

Toccata per Fagotto e Pianoforte (1974)

For flute and harp

Cadenze per il Concerto K299 di Mozart per flauto e arpa (1962)

Sonata per flauto e arpa (1937)

Trios

Trio per clarinetto, violoncello e pianoforte (1973)

Trio per Flauto, Violino e Pianoforte (1958 settembre)

Quartettos

Invenzioni per quartetto d'archi(1932)

Quartetto per archi (1948–54)

Miscellaneous

Il Presepio: Quartetto d'archi con voce (1929)

Il Richiamo: Quintetto d'archi con voce (1923)

Minuetto (1931)

Nonetto, per flauto, oboe, clarinetto, fagotto, corno, violino, viola, cello e contrabasso (1959, 1974, 1977)

Piccola Offerta Musicale per flauto, oboe, clarinetto, corno e fagotto (1943)

Quintetto per flauto, oboe, viola, violoncello e arpa (1935)

Romanza (Aria) e Marcia (1968)

Sarabanda e Toccata per Arpa (1945)

Sonata per Organo (1965)

Vocal

Perché Si Spense la Lampada (Quando Tu Sollevi la Lampada al Cielo) (August 1923)

Vocalizzi per Soprano leggero e Pianoforte (1957)

Tre liriche infantili per canto (soprano, tenor) e pianoforte/Three children's lyrical poems for voice and piano (1935)

Le Prime Battute di 6 Canzoni e un Coro per "L'Isola Disabitata" (April 1932)

Mater fons amoris per Soprano (o tenore) solo, coro di donne e organo (1961)

Canto e Pianoforte/Voice and Piano (1972)

Ballata e Sonetto di Petrarca (1933)

Music for orchestra

Infanzia di S. Giovanni Battista oratorio per soli, coro e orchestra (1922)

Balli per piccola orchestra (1932–1934)

Sonata (Canzona) per orchestra da camera (1935)

Variazioni e fuga nei 12 toni sul nome di Bach per orchestra(1950)

Concerto in fa, Concerto Festivo per orchestra (1958–61)

Concerto per archi (1964–65, nuova revisione 1977)

Due Momenti (Divertimenti) (1970)

Fantasia sopra dodici note del Don Giovanni (1960)

Fuga per Quartetto d'Archi, Organo e Orchestra d'Archi (1923)

Guardando il Fujiyama (Pensiero per Hiroshima) (1976)

La Fiera di Bari (1963, 28-4)

La Strada (1966)

Le Molière imaginaire - Ballet Suite (1976–78)

Meditazione per coro e orchestra (1954)

Rabelaisiana. (1977)

Serenata per Orchestra in quattro tempi (1931–1932)

Sinfonia n.1 per orchestra (1935–1939)

Sinfonia n.2 in Fa per orchestra (1937–39)

Sinfonia n.3 in Do (1956–1957)

Sinfonia Sopra una Canzone d'Amore (1972)

Sonata per orchestra da camera (1937–1938)

Variazioni e fuga nei 12 toni sul nome di Bach per Orchestra (1950)

Variazioni sopra un tema gioviale per orchestra (1953)

Waltzes

Concertos for solo instrument and orchestra

Concerto per Arpa (1947)

Piano and orchestra

Cadenze per il Concerto n.4 in sol Hob.XVIII:4 di Joseph Haydn

Concerto in Do (1960)

Concerto soirée (1962)

Concerto in Mi Piccolo mondo antico (1973, 1978)

Strings and orchestra

Concerto per Violoncello n.0 (1925)

Divertimento Concertante per Contrabasso e Orchestra (1968–73)

Concerto per Violoncello n.1 (1972)

Concerto per Violoncello n.2 (1973)

Wind instrument and orchestra

Andante sostenuto per il Concerto per Corno K412 di Mozart (1959)

Concerto per Trombone (1966)

Ballata per Corno e orchestra "Castel del Monte" (1974)

Concerto per Fagotto (1974–77)

Opera

Il principe porcaro (1926)

Ariodante (1938–1941)

Torquemada (1943)

I due timidi (1950)

Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (premiere (1955))

Scuola di guida (1959)

La notte di un nevrastenico (1959)

Lo scoiattolo in gamba (1959)

Aladino e la lampada magica (1963–1965)

La visita meravigliosa (1965–1969)

Napoli milionaria (1973–1977)

Choral

Allegro concertante per Coro e Orchestra (1953)

Audi Judex Per Coro misto a 4 Voci a cappella (1964)

Canto di Gloria (1968)

Custodi nos Domine per Coro

Due Mottetti Vigilate et orate

Il Martirio di San Giovanni Battista/The Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist (1924)

Il Natale Degli Innocenti (1968–70)

Il Pane del Cielo (1967)

Il Pastorello e altre due liriche infantile (canto e pianoforte) (1935)

Il Presagio (1925)

Inno del Seminario La Quercia per Coro, una Voce e Pianoforte

L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista/The childhood of St. John the Baptist (1922–23)

L'isola disabitata (1931)

La Figliola Del Re (ex Un Augello Gorgheggiava) (1925)

La Vita di Maria (1969–1970)

Messa a 4 voci (senza Gloria) (1962)

Messa di Requiem (1923–1924)

Messa per Coro e Organo (Orchestra) (1960)

Messa, Mariae dicata per coro e organo (1961)

Mysterium Catholicum (1962)

Ninna Nanna (1922, 1923)

Psallite nato de Maria Virgine (1958)

Quando tu sollevi la lampada al cielo (1922)

Roma Capomunni (1970–1971)

Salmo IC (1943)

Salmo VI Domine (1943)

Salve Regina per Voce e Pianoforte (1958)

Sonetto di Petrarca (1933)

Three Canons For Women's Voices (1932)

Tota Pulchrases (1961)

Tu es Petrus in Sol Maggiore (1967)

Unum panem (1962)

Discography

CD

ARTS

Complete music for Viola/Violin and Piano

Viola & piano intermezzo, viola & piano sonata #1, viola & piano sonata #2, violin & piano sonata, Un diavolo sentimentale, Amanti senza amore

Sinfonia sopra una Canzone d’Amore/Concerto-Soirée for piano and orchestra

ASV

Chamber Music

Flute & harp sonata, clarinet, cello & piano trio, string quartet, quintetto, flute, violin & piano trio, Piccolo Offerta Musicale (Ex Novo Ensemble)

ATMA

La Strada, Harp Concerto, Trombone Concerto, Atma ACD 2 2294

La Strada Suite (coupled w/Kurt Weill's Sym No.2), ALCD2 1036

BMG

Alle Origini della Mafia

Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze

BIS

Kremerata Musica (Jun 97), CD-870

Piccola Offerta Musicale, sarabanda & toccata for harp, flute, violin & piano trio, Ippolito Gioca, Il Presepio, catilena, viola & piano intermezzo, Puccettino nella Giungla, nonetto

Symphonies No.1 & 2 (Aug 98), CD-970

Symphony 3 (etc.) (Aug 01), CD-1070

CAM

La Vita di Maria (1995 January 1), CAM 493062

Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (2004 April 30), CAM 493094

La Dolce Vita (2003 January 10), CAM 493095

Il Gattopardo (2005 January 28), CAM 493267

Accadde Al Penitenziario/Un Eroe Dei Nostri Tempi (1992 January 1), CAM 493295

Severino Gazzelloni Plays Nino Rota (1993 January 1), CAM 493397

Luis Bacalov Plays Nino Rota (1994 January 1), CAM 493398

8½ (2009 March 1), CAM 511316

Amarcord (2003 March 28), CAM 511317

Giulietta degli Spiriti (2003 May 5), CAM 511318

Il Bidone (2003 May 21), CAM 512127

Fellini & Rota (2006 February 3), CAM 515348

I Clowns (2006 December 12), CAM 515394

Prova d'orchestra (2008 September 23), CAM 515465

Rocco e i suoi fratelli (2009 June 17), CAM 515510

Chandos

Piano Concertos, CHAN 9681

The Film Music of Nino Rota (25 November 1999), CHAN 9771

Chamber Music (15 June 2000), CHAN 9832

Clarinet, cello & piano trio, viola & piano sonata #2, flute, violin & piano trio, violin & piano sonata

Cello Concertos 1 & 2 (21 May 2001), CHAN 9892

Concertos (11 March 2002), CHAN 9954

Harp concerto, bassoon concerto, Castel del Monte, trombone concerto

Suite from 'La Strada'/Sinfonia sopra una canzone d'amore/Waltzes from 'Il Gattopardo' (16 June 2003), CHAN 10090

Symphonies Nos 1 & 2 (1 June 2009), CHAN 10546

DRG

The Taming of the Shrew

Shoot Loud, Louder... I Don't Understand

Death on the Nile

Dynamic

Chamber Music

Nonetto, quintetto, canzona, Petite Offrande Musicale (I Solisti Dauni)

Chamber Music for Flute

3 duets for flute & oboe, 5 pieces for flute & piano, flute, violin & piano trio, flute & harp sonata, quintetto

Works for Violin/Viola and Piano

Un diavolo sentimentale, violin & piano sonata, viola & piano intermezzo, viola & piano sonata #1, viola & piano sonata #2

EL/Cherry Red

Fellini Masterpieces

La Strada, Le Notti Di Cabiria

LSD Roma

Toby Dammit (from Spirits Of the Dead), Roma, Shoot Loud, Louder!, Love & Anarchy

EMI

Film Music

War & Peace, Il Gattopardo, La Strada (ballet), Waterloo

2 Concerti per Pianoforte

Hannibal

Amarcord Nino Rota

Kicco Classics

Giovanna canta Nino Rota

La Bottega Discantica

La Notte di un Nevrastenico/Nonetto

La Visita Meravilgiosa

Lo Scoiattolo in Gamba/Cristallo di Rocca

Mysterium

1962 recording of Mysterium Catholicum, formerly released on Claves

Mana Music

Bravo Nino Rota

Amarcord, La Strada, Juliet of the Spirits, La Dolce Vita, I Vitelloni, 8½ (The Umbrellas)

MCA

The Godfather

The Godfather Part II

Milan

Chansons pour Fellini

Neljazz

Tribute to Nino Rota

Performed by the Gap Band

Rainbow Classics

Chamber Music vol. 1

Organ sonata, clarinet & piano sonata, 5 pieces for flute & piano, bassoon & piano toccata, flute & harp sonata, brass & organ sonata (Venice Ensemble)

Rastascan

The Club Foot Orchestra Plays Nino Rota

RCA

Boccaccio '70

Cinema Italiano: Music of Ennio Morricone & Nino Rota

Henry Mancini performs selections from Morricone & Rota

Silva Screen

Romeo & Juliet

Original soundtrack conducted by Rota

Romeo & Juliet: Complete Film Score

Re-recording by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra

The Godfather Trilogy

Re-recording by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra

Sony

La Strada/Concerto per Archi/Il Gattopardo (May 2, 1995)

Music for Film (January 13, 1998)

The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, 8½, La Dolce Vita, Orchestra Rehearsal, Rocco and His Brothers, The Leopard

Stradivarius

Improvviso

Flute, violin & piano trio, flute & harp sonata, Un Diavolo Sentimentale, 3 duets for flute, 5 pieces for flute & piano, Allegro Veloce, violin & piano sonata, Rotafantasy 'Owls' flute/alto sax is him dedicated on cd 'All love' (June 2010) by composer Giovanni Tangorra. efve;rgve's

References

External links

http://www.schott-music.com/shop/persons/featured/16370/news/

Nino Rota official site

Category:1911 births Category:1979 deaths Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Italian film score composers Category:People from Milan Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in Italy Category:Curtis Institute of Music alumni

Name	Earl Hines
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Born	December 28, 1903 Duquesne, Pennsylvania
Died	April 23, 1983 Oakland, California
Instrument	Piano
Genre	Swing, Big band, solo piano
Occupation	Musician

Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983) was "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".

Biography

Early life

Earl Hines was born in Duquesne, Pennsylvania 12 miles out from the Pittsburgh city centre. His father played cornet and was leader of Pittsburgh's Eureka Brass Band, his stepmother a church organist. Hines intended to follow his father on cornet but "blowing" hurt him behind the ears - while the piano didn't. The young Hines took classical piano lessons - at eleven he was playing organ in his local Baptist church - but he also had a "good ear and a good memory" for popular tunes and could re-play songs and numbers he heard in theaters and park 'concerts': "I'd be playing songs from these shows months before the song copies came out. That astonished a lot of people and they'd ask where I heard these numbers and I'd tell them at the theatre where my parents had taken me." Later Hines was to say that he was playing piano around Pittsburgh "before the word 'jazz' was even invented".

Early career

At the age of 17, and with his father's approval, Hines moved away from home to take a job playing with Lois Deppe & his 'Symphonian Serenaders' in the "Liederhaus", a Pittsburgh nightclub. He got 2 meals a day and $15 a week. Deppe was a well-known baritone who sang both classical and popular numbers. Deppe used the young Hines as his accompanist for both and took Hines on his concert-trips to New York. Hines' first recordings were accompanying Deppe — four sides recorded with Gennett Records in 1923, shortly after recording was invented. Only two of these were issued, and only one, a Hines composition, "Congaine", "a keen snappy foxtrot", featured any solo work by Hines. Hines entered the studio again with Deppe a month later to record spirituals and popular songs.

In 1925, after much debate, Hines moved to Chicago, Illinois, then the world's "jazz" capital, home (at the time) to Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. He started in The Elite no 2 Club but soon joined Carroll Dickerson's band with whom he also toured on the Pantages Theatre Circuit to Los Angeles and back.

Then, in the poolroom at Chicago's Musicians' Union on State & 39th, Earl Hines met Louis Armstrong. Hines was 21, Armstrong 24. They played together at the Union piano. Armstrong was astounded by Hines's avant-garde "trumpet-style" piano-playing, often using dazzlingly fast octaves so that on none-too-perfect upright pianos (and with no amplification) "they could hear me out front" - as indeed they could. The Penguin Jazz Encyclopedia says:

... [Hines'] most dramatic departure from what other pianists were then playing was his approach to the underlying pulse: he would charge against the metre of the piece being played, accent off-beats, introduce sudden stops and brief silences. In other hands this might sound clumsy or all over the place but Hines could keep his bearings with uncanny resilience.

Armstrong and Hines became good friends, shared a car, and Armstrong joined Hines in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Sunset Cafe. In 1927, this became Louis Armstrong's band under the musical direction of Hines. Later that year, Armstrong revamped his Okeh Records recording-only band, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, and replaced his wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano with Hines. Armstrong and Hines then recorded what are often regarded as some of the most important jazz records ever made, most famously their 1928 trumpet and piano duet "Weatherbird". From The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD:

... with Earl Hines arriving on piano, Armstrong was already approaching the stature of a concerto soloist, a role he would play more or less throughout the next decade, which makes these final small-group sessions something like a reluctant farewell to jazz's first golden age. Since Hines is also magnificent on these discs (and their exuberance is a marvel on the duet showstopper "Weather Bird") the results seem like eavesdropping on great men speaking almost quietly among themselves. There is nothing in jazz finer or more moving than the playing on "West End Blues", "Tight Like This", "Beau Koo Jack" & "Muggles".

The Sunset Cafe closed in 1927. Hines, Armstrong and their drummer, Zutty Singleton, agreed they would be, “'The Unholy Three', stick together and not play for anyone unless the three of us were hired” but, trying to establish their own Warwick Hall Club as 'Louis Armstrong and his Stompers' [with Hines as musical director] and rented in Hines' name, they ran into difficulties. Hines went briefly to New York to return to find Armstrong and Singleton had re-joined their now-rival Carroll Dickerson’s band at the new The Savoy Ballroom – a fact which left Hines “warm”. Hines joined clarinetist Jimmy Noone at The Apex, an after-hours speakeasy, playing from midnight – 6am 7 nights a week. Hines recorded with Noone, again with Armstrong and late in 1928 recorded his first piano solos, 8 for QRS Records in New York then 7 for Okeh Records in Chicago, all except two his own compositions. He moved in with Kathryn Perry with whom he had recorded 'Sadie Green The Vamp of New Orleans' but Hines had also begun rehearsing his own big band. At 24 his big break was about to come.

Chicago years

On 28 December 1928 (so on his 25th birthday and 6 weeks before The Saint Valentine's Day massacre) the always-immaculate Hines opened at Chicago's Grand Terrace Cafe leading his own big band, the pinnacle of jazz ambition at the time. "All America was dancing" - and for the next 12 years and through the worst of the Great Depression and Prohibition Earl Hines was "The Orchestra" in The Grand Terrace. The Hines Orchestra [or 'Organization' as Hines preferred it - it had up to 28 musicians] did three shows a night in The Grand Terrace, four shows every Saturday and sometimes did Sundays. "Earl Hines and The Grand Terrace were to Chicago what Duke Ellington and The Cotton Club were to New York - but fierier." The Grand Terrace was controlled by Al Capone - so Hines became Capone's "Mr Piano Man" with the Grand Terrace upright piano soon replaced by a white $3,000 Bechstein grand.

From The Grand Terrace, Hines and his band broadcast on "open mikes" over many years, sometimes seven nights a week, coast-to-coast across America — Chicago being well placed to deal with the U.S. live-broadcasting time-zone problem. Earl Hines' became the most broadcast band in America. Among his listeners, was a young Jay McShann in Kansas City who said his "...real education came from Earl Hines. When 'Fatha' went off the air, I went to bed”. But Hines' most notable 'student' was Art Tatum from Toledo, Ohio, 6 years younger than Hines and now often regarded as the greatest pianist jazz has so far produced.

Hines liked to promote and accompany singers most notably, in the Grand Terrace days, Billy Eckstine:

... on tour, Hines and his star singer Billy Eckstine were treated like the rock stars of later years, being mobbed by the huge crowds that turned out to hear them.

Each summer, the whole band toured for three months, including through the South. "When we traveled by train through the South, they would send a porter back to our car to let us know when the dining room was cleared, and then we would all go in together. We couldn't eat when we wanted to. We had to eat when they were ready for us." Occasionally, Hines allowed other pianists to play as 'relief' piano player which better allowed Hines to conduct his whole 'Organization'. Jess Stacy was one, Nat "King" Cole and Teddy Wilson were others (though Cliff Smalls was his favorite). It was with Hines in The Grand Terrace that Charlie Parker got his first professional job until he was fired for his "time-keeping" — by which Hines meant Parker's inability to show up on time despite Parker resorting to sleeping under The Grand Terrace stage in his attempts to do so.

The Grand Terrace closed suddenly in December 1940 with the manager, Ed Fox, 'not to be found'. Hines took his band on the road. Some of his band members were drafted to fight in World War ll but Hines toured his band coast to coast across America taking time out to front the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1944 while Duke was ill. (Thirty years later, Hines's 20 solo "transformative versions" of his Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington recorded in the 1970s were described by Ben Ratliff in the New York Times as "as good an example of the jazz process as anything out there".)

It was during this time (and especially during the 1942–1945 recording ban) that members of the Hines' band's late-night jam-sessions laid the seeds for the upcoming 'revolution' in jazz, Bebop. Duke Ellington was later to say that "the seeds of bop were in Earl Hines's piano style". Composer Gunther Schuller said, "In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted fifth chords and all the modern harmonies and substitutions and Dizzy Gillespie runs in the trumpet section work. Two years later I read that that was 'bop' and the beginning of modern jazz ... but the band never made recordings".

In 1946 Hines received serious head injuries in a car crash near Houston which affected his eyesight but he continued to lead his big band for 2 more years. In 1947 he bought the El Grotto nightclub in Chicago - the showgirls were called The Grottoettes - but it soon foundered, Hines losing $30,000. In reality the big-band era was over - Hines had had his for 20 years.

Rediscovery

, Sandy DeSantis, Velma Middleton, Fraser MacPherson, Cozy Cole, Arvell Shaw, Earl Hines, Barney Bigard. At the Palomar Supper Club, Vancouver, B.C., March 17, 1951.]] At the start of 1948, Hines rejoined Armstrong (rather, he now came to feel, as a "sideman") in Armstrong's "small band", The All Stars (most of whom had been famous big-band leaders), and stayed, not entirely happily, through 1951. Next, as leader again, he took his own small combos around the States and Europe but, at the start of the jazz-lean 1960s and old enough now to retire and take up bowling, Hines settled "home" in Oakland, California, opened a tobacconist's, and came close to giving up the profession. [Armstrong, meanwhile, had had a heart attack in 1959 and perhaps "should have retired to ponder his scrapbook".]

Then, in 1964, thanks to Stanley Dance, Earl Hines' determined friend and unofficial manager, Hines was "suddenly rediscovered" following a series of 'recitals' at The Little Theatre in New York that Dance had cajoled him into. They were the first piano 'recitals' Hines - always thinking of himself as "just a band pianist" - had ever given. These 'recitals' caused a sensation. "What is there left to hear after you've heard Earl Hines?", asked the New York Times. Hines then won the 1966 "International Critics Poll" for Down Beat Magazine's "Hall of Fame". Down Beat also elected him the world's "No 1 Jazz Pianist" in 1966 (and were to do so again five further times). Jazz Journal awarded his LP's of the year first and second in their overall poll and first, second and third in their piano category. Jazz voted him "Jazzman of the Year", voted him their no. 1 and no. 2 in their piano recordings category and he was on Johnny Carson's and Mike Douglas' TV shows.

From then until he died twenty years later Hines recorded endlessly both solo and with jazz notables like Cat Anderson, Harold Ashby, Barney Bigard, Lawrence Brown, Dave Brubeck (they recorded duets in 1975), Jaki Byard (duets in 1972), Benny Carter, Buck Clayton, Cozy Cole, Wallace Davenport, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Vic Dickenson, Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington (duets in 1966), Ella Fitzgerald, Panama Francis, Bud Freeman, Stan Getz, Dizzie Gillespie, Paul Gonsalves, Stephane Grappelli, Sonny Greer, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, Peanuts Hucko, Helen Humes, Budd Johnson, Jonah Jones, Max Kaminsky, Gene Krupa, Ellis Larkins, Marian McPartland (duets in 1970), Gerry Mulligan, Ray Nance, Oscar Peterson (duets in 1968), Russell Procope, Pee Wee Russell, Jimmy Rushing, Stuff Smith, Rex Stewart, Maxine Sullivan, Buddy Tate, Jack Teagarden, Clark Terry, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Venuti, Earle Warren, Ben Webster, Teddy Wilson (duets in 1965 & 1970), Jimmy Witherspoon, Jimmy Woode and Lester Young. Possibly more surprising were Alvin Batiste, Art Blakey, Teresa Brewer, Richard Davis, Elvin Jones, Etta Jones, The Inkspots, Peggy Lee, Helen Merrill, Charles Mingus, Vi Redd, Betty Roché, Dinah Washington—and "Ditty Wah Ditty" with Ry Cooder. But his most acclaimed recordings of this period were his solo performances, "a whole orchestra by himself". Whitney Balliett wrote of his solo recordings and performances of this time:

... Hines will be sixty-seven this year and his style has become involuted, , and subtle to the point of elusiveness. It unfolds in orchestral layers and it demands intense listening. Despite the sheer mass of notes he now uses, his playing is never fatty. Hines may go along like this in a medium tempo blues. He will play the first two choruses softly and out of tempo, unreeling placid chords that safely hold the kernel of the melody. By the third chorus, he will have slid into a steady but implied beat and raised his volume. Then, using steady tenths in his left hand, he will stamp out a whole chorus of right-hand chords in between beats. He will vault into the upper register in the next chorus and wind through irregularly placed notes, while his left hand plays descending, on-the-beat, chords that pass through a forest of harmonic changes. (There are so many push-me, pull-you contrasts going on in such a chorus that it is impossible to grasp it one time through.) In the next chorus—bang!—up goes the volume again and Hines breaks into a crazy-legged double-time-and-a-half run that may make several sweeps up and down the keyboard and that are punctuated by offbeat single notes in the left hand. Then he will throw in several fast descending two-fingered glissandos, go abruptly into an arrhythmic swirl of chords and short, broken, runs and, as abruptly as he began it all, ease into an interlude of relaxed chords and poling single notes. But these choruses, which may be followed by eight or ten more before Hines has finished what he has to say, are irresistible in other ways. Each is a complete creation in itself, and yet each is lashed tightly to the next. Hines' sudden changes in dynamics, tempo, and texture are dramatic but not melodramatic; the ham lurking in the middle distance never gets any closer. And Hines is a perfervid pianist; he gives the impression that he has shut himself up completely within his instrument, that he is issuing chords and runs and glisses not merely through its keyboard and hammers and strings but directly from its soul.

Solo tributes to Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and Cole Porter were all put on record in the 1970s, sometimes on the 1904 12-legged Steinway (unique and famously ornate) given to him in 1969 by Scott Newhall, managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1974, so now in his seventies, Hines recorded sixteen LPs. "A spate of solo recording meant that, in his old age, Hines was being comprehensively documented at last, and he rose to the challenge with consistent inspirational force". Between his 1964 "come-back" and up to when he died, Hines recorded over 100 LPs all over the world. Within the industry, he became legendary for going into a studio and coming out an hour-and-a-half later with a famously-unplanned 'solo' LP behind him including discussion and coffee time - and ideally a brandy or two. Retakes were almost unheard of except when Hines wanted to try a tune again in some, often completely, "other way".

Pianist Lennie Tristano said, "Earl Hines is the ONLY one of us capable of creating real jazz and real swing when playing all alone." To Horace Silver, "He has a completely unique style. No one can get that sound, no other pianist". Erroll Garner said, "When you talk about greatness, you talk about Art Tatum and Earl Hines". To Count Basie, Hines was "The greatest piano player in the world".

From 1964 on Hines often toured Europe (especially France), toured South America in 1968 and added Asia, Australia, Japan and, in 1966, the Soviet Union to his list of State Department-funded destinations. (During his 6-week Soviet Union tour, the 10,000-seat Kiev Sports Palace was sold out. As a result, the Kremlin canceled his Moscow and Leningrad concerts ("Reds Change Hines Tour") as being "too culturally dangerous".)

Final years

Arguably still playing as well as he ever had, Hines displayed, too, endearing quirks (not to say grunts of which Glenn Gould would have surely been proud) in these performances. Sometimes he sang as he played, especially his own "They Didn't Believe I Could Do It—Neither Did I". In 1975, Hines made an hour-long "solo" film for British TV out-of-hours in Blues Alley, a Washington nightclub: the "New York Herald Tribune" described it as "The greatest jazz film ever made". In that film Hines said, '"The way I like to play is that ... I'm an explorer, if I might use that expression, I'm looking for something all the time ... almost like I'm trying to talk".

He played solo in The White House (twice) and played solo for The Pope—and played (and sang) his last show in San Francisco a few days before he died in Oakland, quite likely somewhat older than he had always maintained. As he had wished, his Steinway had a very much "All Star" Christie's auction for the benefit of gifted low-income music students, still bearing its silver plaque: "presented by jazz lovers from all over the world. this piano is the only one of its kind in the world and expresses the great genius of a man who has never played a melancholy note in his lifetime on a planet that has often succumbed to despair".

On his tombstone is the simple inscription: "piano man".

Selected discography

Up until 1948 - and therefore including Big Band era: [It would seem that Hines' first-ever recording was on 3 Oct 1923 @ Richmond, Indiana: 'Falling' with "Deppe's Serenaders": Tom Lord: 'The Jazz Discography']

Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines: inc.'Weatherbird','Muggles','Tight Like This','West End Blues' : Columbia 1928: reissued many times inc. as The Smithsonian Collection MLP 2012

Jimmie Noone & Earl Hines: "At the Apex Club": Decca 1928: reissued

Earl Hines Solo: 14 of his own compositions: QRS & OKeh: 1928/9: reissued many times[see below]

Earl Hines Collection: Piano Solos 1928-40: OKeh/Brunswick/Bluebird: Collectors Classics

That's a Plenty, Quadromania series 1928-1947 Membran 4 CDs 2006

Deep Forest, HEP ca. 1932-1933,

Earl Hines - South Side Swing 1934-1935: Decca

The Indispensable Earl Hines: Vols 1, 2, 3 & 4 [also 5 & 6 @ later dates] Jazz Tribune/BMG 1939-1945

Earl Hines & The Duke's Men: [with Ellington side-men] 1944: reissued Delmark 1994

Earl Hines & His Grand Terrace Orchestra: 'Piano Man' etc. 1939-1945: RCA Bluebird: reissued many times

Earl Fatha Hines and His Orchestra: 1945-1951, Limelight 15 766

[Big bands were particularly affected by the 1942-1944 American Federation of Musicians recording ban which also curtailed the recording of early bebop]

After 1948 - and therefore after Big Band era:

Louis Armstrong All Stars: Live in Zurich 18 October 1949: Montreux Jazz Label

Louis Armstrong & The All Stars: Decca 1950 & 1951: reissued

Earl Hines: Paris One Night Stand: Verve/Emarcy France 1957

The Real Earl Hines: [1st 'Rediscovery' concert @ Little Theatre NY 1964] Focus & Collectibles Jazz Classics: reissued

Earl Hines: The Legendary Little Theatre Concert [2nd 'Rediscovery' concert]: Muse 1964

Earl Hines: Blues in Thirds: solo: Black Lion 1965

Earl Hines: '65 Solo - The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions: Black & Blue 1965

Earl Hines: Fatha's Hands - Americans Swinging in Paris EMI 1965

Earl Hines: Hine's Tune: [live in France with Ben Webster, Don Byas, Roy Eldridge, Stuff Smith, Jimmy Woode & Kenny Clarke]: Wotre Music/Esoldun 1965: reissued

Once Upon a Time [with Ellington side-men]: Verve 1966

Jazz from a Swinging Era [with All-Star group in Paris]: Fontana 1967

Earl Hines: At Home: solo: [on his own Steinway]: Delmark 1969

Earl Hines: My Tribute to Louis: solo: Audiophile 1971 [recorded 2 weeks after Armstrong's death]

Earl Hines plays Duke Ellington: vols 1 & 2: solo: New World 1971-1975

Earl Hines: Hines plays Hines: The Australian Sessions: solo: Swaggie 1972

Earl Hines: Tour de Force & Tour de Force Encore: solo: Black Lion 1972

Earl Hines: Live at the New School: solo: Chiarascuro 1973

''Earl Hines: A Monday Date: reissues of Hines' 15 1928/1929 QRS & OKEH solo recordings: Milestone 1973

Earl Hines: The Quintessential Recording Session: solo: Chiaroscuro 1973 [remakes of his 8 1928 solo QRS piano recordings]

Earl Hines: The Quintessential Continued: solo: Chiaroscuro 1973 [remakes of his 7 1928/9 solo OKEH piano recordings]

''Earl Hines/Stephane Grappelli duets, "The Giants", London, July/1974, Black Lion Records

Earl 'Fatha' Hines: The Father of Modern Jazz Piano: solo [on Schiedmeyer grand] and with Budd Johnson, Bill Pemberton, Oliver Jackson: MF Productions 1977

Earl Hines: In New Orleans: solo: Chiarascuro 1977

An Evening With Earl Hines: with Tiny Grimes, Hank Young, Bert Dahlander and Marva Josie: Vogue VDJ-534, 1977

Earl 'Fatha' Hines plays Hits he Missed: [inc Monk, Zawinul, Silver]: Direct to Disc M & K RealTime 1978

[It would seem that Hines' last-ever recording was on 29 December 1981 @ São Paulo, Brazil: 'One o'clock Jump' with Eric Schneider and the 150 Band on 'Fatha's Birthday': Tom Lord: 'The Jazz Discography']

On anthologies:

The Complete Master Jazz Piano Series: 13 Hines solo numbers: MD4 140 [with Jay McShann, Teddy Wilson, Cliff Smalls etc.] 1969-1972

See also

Notes

References

Balliett, Whitney (1986/1996). "American Musicians ll: 72 Portraits in Jazz". Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford. ISBN 0-19-512116-3

Balliett, Whitney (2000). "Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000". Granta Books, London. ISBN 1-86207-465-8

Berliner, Paul F. (1994). "Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation". University of Chicago Press. Chocago & London ISBN 0-226-04381-9

Clarke, Donald (1989, 2005). Hines, Earl. MusicWeb Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Retrieved August 1, 2006.

Collier, James Lincoln (1983). Louis Armstrong: An American Genius. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-503727-8 (pbk)

Cook, Richard (2005). Jazz Encyclopedia - Hines entry. Pengiun Books, London. ISBN 9780141026466.

Dance, Stanley (1983). The World of Earl Hines. [Includes a 120-page interview with Hines plus many photos]. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80182-5

Dempsey, Peter (2001). Earl Hines. Naxos Jazz Legends. Retrieved July 23, 2006.

Epstein, Daniel Mark (1999). Nat 'King' Cole. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. New York. ISBN 0374219125

Feather, Leonard (1960). Encyclopedia of Jazz, The. Horizon Press. ISBN 0-8180-1203-X

Harrison, Max: Fox, Charles & Thacker, Eric (1984). "The Essential Jazz Records Vol 1". Da Capo Press ISBN 0-306-80326-7

Earl Hines. World Book encyclopedia. Retrieved July 23, 2006.

Earl "Fatha" Hines. The Red Hot Jazz Archive. Retrieved July 23, 2006.

Lester, James (1994). Too Marvelous for Words: The Life & Genius of Art Tatum. Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford. ISBN 0-19-508365-2

Nairn, Charlie (1975). Earl "Fatha" HInes: 1hr 'solo' documentary made in "Blues Alley" Jazz Club, Washington DC, for ATV, England, 1975: produced/directed by Charlie Nairn: original 16mm film plus 'out-takes' of additional tunes from that film archived in British Film Institute Library @ bfi.org.uk: copyright [2007] with Granada International @ granadamedia.com: see also www.jazzonfilm.com/documentaries

Palmer, Robert (1981). "Pop Jazz; Fatha Hines Stom[p]ing and Chomping on at 75", The New York Times, August 28, 1981. Retrieved from The New York Times July 30, 2006 ISBN 0 8050-7068-0

The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. Cook, Richard & Morton, Brian (2004). Seventh Edition. London & New York. ISBN 0-141-01416-4

Ratliff, Ben (2002). ''"The New York Times Essential Library: Jazz". Times Books. New York. ISBN 0-8050-7068-0

The Rough Guide to Jazz (2004). 3rd edition. Earl Hines, p. 262-263. Rough Guides. ISBN 1-84353-256-5

Schuller, Gunther (1991). The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945, pp 263–292. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507140-9

Simon, George T. (1974). The Big Bands. Macmillan.

Taylor, Jeffrey (2005) Earl "Fatha" Hines: Selected Piano Solos, 1928-41. Volume 15 in Music of the United States of America. Madison, Wisconsin: American Musicological Society/A-R Editions, 2005 . ISBN 0895795809

Taylor, Jeffrey (2002) “Earl Hines and ‘Rosetta.’” Current Musicology: Special Issue, A Commemorative Festschrift in Honor of Mark Tucker. 71-73 (Spring 2001-Spring 2002).

Taylor, Jeffrey (2002) "Life With Fatha." I.S.A.M. Newsletter 30 (Fall 2000).

Taylor, Jeffrey (1998) "Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, and 'Weather Bird.'" The Musical Quarterly 82 (Spring 1998).

External links

Category:Swing bandleaders Category:Swing pianists Category:African American musicians Category:American jazz pianists Category:Musicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Gennett recording artists Category:Okeh Records artists Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Decca Records artists Category:Red Baron Records artists Category:Xanadu Records artists Category:1903 births Category:1983 deaths Category:Dixieland pianists

Name	Charles Mingus
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Charles Mingus Jr.
Born	April 22, 1922 US Army Base in Nogales, Arizona
Died	January 05, 1979Cuernavaca, Mexico
Origin	Los Angeles, California
Instrument	Double bass, Piano, Cello, Trombone
Genre	Bebop, avant-garde jazz, post-bop, third stream
Occupation	Bassist, Composer, Bandleader
Years active	1943–1979
Label	Atlantic, Candid, Columbia, Debut, Impulse!, Mercury, United Artists
Url	MingusMingusMingus.com

Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.

Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music. Yet Mingus avoided categorization, forging his own brand of music that fused tradition with unique and unexplored realms of jazz.

Mingus focused on collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans Jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole. In creating his bands, Mingus looked not only at the skills of the available musicians, but also their personalities. Many musicians passed through his bands and later went on to impressive careers. He recruited talented and sometimes little-known artists whom he assembled into unconventional and revealing configurations. As a performer, he was a pioneer in double bass technique.

Nearly as well known as his ambitious music was Mingus' often fearsome temperament, which earned him the nickname "The Angry Man of Jazz." His refusal to compromise his musical integrity led to many on-stage eruptions, exhortations to musicians, and dismissals.

Because of his brilliant writing for mid-size ensembles—and his catering to and emphasizing the strengths of the musicians in his groups—Mingus is often considered the heir apparent to Duke Ellington, for whom he expressed unqualified admiration. Indeed, Dizzy Gillespie had once claimed Mingus reminded him "of a young Duke", citing their shared "organizational genius."

Although Mingus' music was once believed to be too difficult to play without Mingus' leadership, many musicians play Mingus compositions today, from those who play with the repertory bands Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty, and Mingus Orchestra, to the high school students who play the charts and compete in the Charles Mingus High School Competition.

In 1988, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts made possible the cataloging of Mingus compositions, which were then donated to the Music Division of the New York Public Library for public use. In 1993, The Library of Congress acquired Mingus's collected papers—including scores, sound recordings, correspondence and photos—in what they described as "the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jazz in the Library's history".

Biography

Early life and career

Charles Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona. He was raised largely in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California. His mother's paternal heritage was Chinese and English, while historical records indicate that his father was the illegitimate offspring of a black farmhand and his Swedish employer's white granddaughter.

His mother allowed only church-related music in their home, but Mingus developed an early love for jazz, especially the music of Duke Ellington. He studied trombone and later cello. Much of the cello technique he learned was applicable to double bass when he took up the instrument in high school. He studied five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with Lloyd Reese.

Beginning in his teen years, Mingus was writing quite advanced pieces; many are similar to Third Stream because they incorporate elements of classical music. A number of them were recorded in 1960 with conductor Gunther Schuller, and released as Pre-Bird, referring to Charlie "Bird" Parker; Mingus was one of many musicians whose perspectives on music were altered by Parker into "pre- and post-Bird" eras.

Mingus gained a reputation as something of a bass prodigy. His first major professional job was playing with former Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard. He toured with Louis Armstrong in 1943, and by early 1945 was recording in Los Angeles in a band led by Russell Jacquet and which also included Teddy Edwards, Maurice Simon, Bill Davis and Chico Hamilton, and in May that year, in Hollywood, again with Teddy Edwards, in a band led by Howard McGhee. He then played with Lionel Hampton's band in the late 1940s; Hampton performed and recorded several of Mingus's pieces. A popular trio of Mingus, Red Norvo and Tal Farlow in 1950 and 1951 received considerable acclaim, but Mingus' mixed origin caused problems with club owners and he left the group. Mingus was briefly a member of Ellington's band in 1953, as a substitute for bassist Wendell Marshall. Mingus's notorious temper led to him being one of the few musicians personally fired by Ellington (Bubber Miley and drummer Bobby Durham are among the others), after an on-stage fight between Mingus and Juan Tizol.

Also in the early 1950s, before attaining commercial recognition as a bandleader, Mingus played gigs with Charlie Parker, whose compositions and improvisations greatly inspired and influenced him. Mingus considered Parker the greatest genius and innovator in jazz history, but he had a love-hate relationship with Parker's legacy. Mingus blamed the Parker mythology for a derivative crop of pretenders to Parker's throne. He was also conflicted and sometimes disgusted by Parker's self-destructive habits and the romanticized lure of drug addiction they offered to other jazz musicians. In response to the many sax players who imitated Parker, Mingus titled a song, "If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats" (released on Mingus Dynasty as "Gunslinging Bird").

Based in New York

In 1952 Mingus co-founded Debut Records with Max Roach, in order to conduct his recording career as he saw fit; the name originated with a desire to document unrecorded young musicians. Despite this, the best-known recording the company issued was of the most prominent figures in bebop. On May 15, 1953, Mingus joined Dizzy Gillespie, Parker, Bud Powell, and Roach for a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, which is the last recorded documentation of the two lead instrumentalists playing together. After the event, Mingus chose to overdub his barely audible bass part back in New York; the original version was issued later. The two 10" albums of the Massey Hall concert (one featured the trio of Powell, Mingus and Roach) were among Debut Records' earliest releases. Mingus may have objected to the way the major record companies treated musicians, but Gillespie once commented that he did not receive any royalties "for years and years" for his Massey Hall appearance. The records though, are often regarded as among the finest live jazz recordings.

In 1955, Mingus was involved in a notorious incident while playing a club date billed as a "reunion" with Parker, Powell, and Roach. Powell, who suffered from alcoholism and mental illness (possibly exacerbated by a severe police beating and electroshock treatments), had to be helped from the stage, unable to play or speak coherently. As Powell's incapacitation became apparent, Parker stood in one spot at a microphone, chanting "Bud Powell...Bud Powell..." as if beseeching Powell's return. Allegedly, Parker continued this incantation for several minutes after Powell's departure, to his own amusement and Mingus' exasperation. Mingus took another microphone and announced to the crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, please don't associate me with any of this. This is not jazz. These are sick people." This was Parker's last public performance; about a week later he died after years of substance abuse.

Mingus often worked with a mid-sized ensemble (around 8–10 members) of rotating musicians known as the Jazz Workshop. Mingus broke new ground, constantly demanding that his musicians be able to explore and develop their perceptions on the spot. Those who joined the Workshop (or Sweatshops as they were colorfully dubbed by the musicians) included Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Booker Ervin, John Handy, Jimmy Knepper, Charles McPherson and Horace Parlan. Mingus shaped these musicians into a cohesive improvisational machine that in many ways anticipated free jazz. Some musicians dubbed the workshop a "university" for jazz.

Pithecanthropus Erectus among other creations

The decade which followed is generally regarded as Mingus's most productive and fertile period. Impressive new compositions and albums appeared at an astonishing rate: some thirty records in ten years, for a number of record labels (Atlantic Records, Candid, Columbia Records, Impulse! Records and others), a pace perhaps unmatched by any other musician except Ellington.

Mingus had already recorded around ten albums as a bandleader, but 1956 was a breakthrough year for him, with the release of Pithecanthropus Erectus, arguably his first major work as both a bandleader and composer. Like Ellington, Mingus wrote songs with specific musicians in mind, and his band for Erectus included adventurous, though distinctly blues-oriented musicians, piano player Mal Waldron, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean and the Sonny Rollins-influenced tenor of J. R. Monterose. The title song is a ten-minute tone poem, depicting the rise of man from his hominid roots (Pithecanthropus erectus) to an eventual downfall. A section of the piece was free improvisation, free of structure or theme.

Another album from this period, The Clown (1957 also on Atlantic Records), with an improvised story on the title track by humorist Jean Shepherd, was the first to feature drummer Dannie Richmond. Richmond would be his preferred drummer until Mingus's death in 1979. The two men formed one of the most impressive and versatile rhythm sections in jazz. Both were accomplished performers seeking to stretch the boundaries of their music while staying true to its roots. When joined by pianist Jaki Byard, they were dubbed "The Almighty Three".

Mingus Ah Um and other works

Mingus witnessed Ornette Coleman's legendary—and controversial—1960 appearances at New York City's Five Spot jazz club. Though he initially expressed rather mixed feelings for Coleman's innovative music: "...if the free-form guys could play the same tune twice, then I would say they were playing something...Most of the time they use their fingers on the saxophone and they don't even know what's going to come out. They're experimenting." Mingus was in fact a prime influence of the early free jazz era. He formed a quartet with Richmond, trumpeter Ted Curson and saxophonist Eric Dolphy. This ensemble featured the same instruments as Coleman's quartet, and is often regarded as Mingus rising to the challenging new standard established by Coleman. Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus was the quartet's only album.

Only one misstep occurred in this era: 1962's Town Hall Concert. An ambitious program, it was unfortunately plagued with troubles from its inception. Mingus's vision, now known as Epitaph, was finally realized by conductor Gunther Schuller in a concert in 1989, 10 years after Mingus's death.

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and the other Impulse! albums

In 1963, Mingus released The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, a sprawling, multi-section masterpiece, described as "one of the greatest achievements in orchestration by any composer in jazz history." The album was also unique in that Mingus asked his psychotherapist to provide notes for the record.

1963 also saw the release of an unaccompanied album Mingus Plays Piano. A few pieces were entirely improvised and drew on classical music as much as jazz, preceding Keith Jarrett's landmark The Köln Concert in those respects by some twelve years.

In 1964 Mingus put together one of his best-known groups, a sextet including Dannie Richmond, Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Johnny Coles, and tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan. The group was recorded frequently during its short existence; Coles fell ill during a European tour. On June 28, 1964 Dolphy died while in Berlin. 1964 was also the year that Mingus met his future wife, Sue Graham Ungaro. The couple were married in 1966 by Allen Ginsberg. Facing financial hardship, Mingus was evicted from his New York home in 1966.

Changes

Mingus's pace slowed somewhat in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1974 he formed a quintet with Richmond, pianist Don Pullen, trumpeter Jack Walrath and saxophonist George Adams. They recorded two well-received albums, Changes One and Changes Two. Mingus also played with Charles McPherson in many of his groups during this time. Cumbia and Jazz Fusion in 1976 sought to blend Colombian music (the "Cumbia" of the title) with more traditional jazz forms. In 1971, Mingus taught for a semester at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York as the Slee Professor of Music.

Later career and death

By the mid-1970s, Mingus was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a wastage of the musculature. His once formidable bass technique suffered, until he could no longer play the instrument. He continued composing, however, and supervised a number of recordings before his death.

He did not complete his final project of an album named after him with singer Joni Mitchell, which included lyrics added by Mitchell to Mingus compositions, including "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", among Mitchell originals and short, spoken word duets and home recordings of Mitchell and Mingus. The album featured the talents of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and another influential bassist and composer, Jaco Pastorius. Mingus died aged 56 in Cuernavaca, Mexico where he had traveled for treatment and convalescence. His ashes were scattered in the Ganges River.

Legacy

The Mingus Big Band

The music of Charles Mingus is currently being performed and reinterpreted by the Mingus Big Band, which, starting October 2008, plays every Monday at Jazz Standard in New York City, and often tours the rest of the U.S. and Europe. Elvis Costello has written lyrics for a few Mingus pieces. He had once sung lyrics for one piece, "Invisible Lady", being backed by the Mingus Big Band on the album, Tonight at Noon: Three of Four Shades of Love.

In addition to the Mingus Big Band, there is the Mingus Orchestra and the Mingus Dynasty, each of which are managed by Jazz Workshop, Inc., and run by Mingus's widow Sue Graham Mingus.

Epitaph

Epitaph is considered to be one of Charles Mingus' masterpieces. The composition is 4,235 measures long, requires two hours to perform, and is one of the longest jazz pieces ever written. Epitaph was only completely discovered during the cataloging process after his death by musicologist Andrew Homzy. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the score and instrumental parts were copied, and the piece itself was premiered by a 30-piece orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller. This concert was produced by Mingus's widow, Sue Graham Mingus, at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, ten years after his death. It was performed again at several concerts in 2007. The performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall is available on NPR. The complete score was published in 2008 by Hal Leonard.

Autobiography

Written throughout the 1960s, Mingus's sprawling, exaggerated, quasi-autobiography, Beneath the Underdog: His World as composed by Mingus., was published in 1971. Written in a "stream of consciousness" style, it covered several aspects of Mingus's life that had previously been off-record.

In addition to his musical and intellectual proliferation, Mingus goes into great detail about his perhaps overstated sexual exploits. He claims to have had over 31 affairs over the course of his life (including 26 prostitutes in one sitting). This does not include any of his five wives (he claims to have been married to two of them simultaneously). In addition, he asserts that he held a brief career as a pimp. This has never been confirmed.

Mingus's autobiography also serves as an insight into his psyche, as well as his attitudes about race and society. Autobiographic accounts of abuse at the hands of his father from an early age, being bullied as a child, his removal from a white musician's union, and grappling with disapproval while married to white women and other examples of the hardship and prejudice.

Cover versions

Considering the number of compositions that Charles Mingus has written, his works have not been recorded as often as comparable jazz composers. About the only Mingus tribute album recorded in his lifetime was baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams's album, Pepper Adams Plays Charlie Mingus in 1963. Of all his works, his elegant elegy for Lester Young, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" (from Mingus Ah Um) has probably had the most recordings.

Besides recordings from the expected jazz artists, the song has also been recorded by musicians as disparate as Jeff Beck, Andy Summers, Eugene Chadbourne, and Bert Jansch and John Renbourn with and without Pentangle. Joni Mitchell sang a version with lyrics that she wrote for the song. Elvis Costello has recorded "Hora Decubitus" (from Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus) on My Flame Burns Blue (2006). "Better Git It in Your Soul" was covered by Davey Graham on his album "Folk, Blues, and Beyond." Trumpeter Ron Miles performs a version of "Pithecanthropus Erectus" on his EP "Witness." New York Ska Jazz Ensemble has done a cover of Mingus' "Haitian Fight Song", as have Pentangle and others. Hal Willner's 1992 tribute album Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus (Columbia Records) contains idiosyncratic renditions of Mingus's works involving numerous popular musicians including Chuck D, Keith Richards, Henry Rollins and Dr. John. The Italian band Quintorigo recorded an entire album devoted to Mingus' music, titled Play Mingus.

Gunther Schuller's edition of Mingus' "Epitaph" which premiered at Lincoln Center in 1989 was subsequently released on Columbia/Sony Records.

One of the ultimate tributes to Mingus came on September 29, 1969 at a festival honoring him. Duke Ellington performed The Clown at the festival. Duke himself did Jean Shepherd's naration. As of this date, this recording has not been issued.

Personality and temper

As respected as Mingus was for his musical talents, he was sometimes feared for his occasional violent onstage temper, which was at times directed at members of his band, and other times aimed at the audience. He was physically large, prone to obesity (especially in his later years), and was by all accounts often intimidating and frightening when expressing anger or displeasure. Mingus was prone to clinical depression. He tended to have brief periods of extreme creative activity, intermixed with fairly long periods of greatly decreased output.

When confronted with a nightclub audience talking and clinking ice in their glasses while he performed, Mingus stopped his band and loudly chastised the audience, stating "Isaac Stern doesn't have to put up with this shit." He once played a prank on a similar group of nightclub chatterers by silencing his band for several seconds, allowing the loud audience members to be clearly heard, then continuing as the rest of the audience snickered at the oblivious "soloists". Mingus reportedly destroyed a $20,000 bass in response to audience heckling at New York's Five Spot.

Guitarist and singer Jackie Paris was a first-hand witness to Mingus's irascibility. Paris recalls his time in the Jazz Workshop: "He chased everybody off the stand except [drummer] Paul Motian and me... The three of us just wailed on the blues for about an hour and a half before he called the other cats back."

On October 12, 1962, Mingus punched Jimmy Knepper in the mouth while the two men were working together at Mingus's apartment on a score for his upcoming concert at New York Town Hall and Knepper refused to take on more work. The blow from Mingus broke off a crowned tooth and its underlying stub. According to Knepper, this ruined his embouchure and resulted in the permanent loss of the top octave of his range on the trombone - a significant handicap for any professional trombonist. This attack temporarily ended their working relationship and Knepper was unable to perform at the concert. Charged with assault, Mingus appeared in court in January, 1963 and was given a suspended sentence. Knepper would again work with Mingus in 1977 and played extensively with the Mingus Dynasty, formed after Mingus' death in 1979.

Mingus was evicted from his apartment at 5 Great Jones Street in New York City for nonpayment of rent, captured in the film Mingus: 1968, by Thomas Reichman, which also features Mingus performing in clubs and in the apartment, shooting a shotgun, composing at the piano, and discussing love, art, and politics and the music school he had hoped to create.

Awards and honors

1971 Guggenheim Fellowship (Music Composition)

1971: Inducted in the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

1988: The National Endowment for the Arts provided grants for a Mingus nonprofit called "Let My Children Hear Music" which cataloged all of Mingus' works. The microfilms of these works were given to the Music Division of the New York Public Library where they are currently available for study.

1995: The United States Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor.

1997: Was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

1999: The album Mingus Dynasty (1959) was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

2005: Inducted in the Jazz at Lincoln Center, Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame.

Discography

As bandleader

Baron Mingus - West Coast 1945–49 (1949, Uptown)

Strings and Keys (duo with Spaulding Givens) (1951, Debut)

The Young Rebel (1952, Swingtime)

The Charles Mingus Duo and Trio (1953, Fantasy)

Charles Mingus Octet (1953, Debut)

The Moods of Mingus (1954, Savoy)

Jazzical Moods (1954, Bethlehem), later reissued as The Jazz Experiments of Charles Mingus

Mingus at the Bohemia (1955, Debut)

The Charles Mingus Quintet & Max Roach (1955, Debut)

Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956, Atlantic)

The Clown (1957, Atlantic)

Mingus Three (1957, Jubilee)

East Coasting (1957, Bethlehem)

A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry (1957, Bethlehem)

Blues & Roots (1959, Atlantic)

Mingus Ah Um (1959, Columbia)

Mingus Dynasty (1959, Columbia)

(1959, United Artists)

Pre-Bird (aka Mingus Revisited) (1960, Mercury)

Mingus at Antibes (1960, Atlantic)

Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (1960, Candid)

Reincarnation of a Lovebird (1960, Candid)

Tonight at Noon (1961, Atlantic)

Vital Savage Horizons (1962, Alto)

Tempo di Jazz (1962, Tempo di Jazz)

Town Hall Concert (1962, Blue Note)

Oh Yeah (1962, Atlantic)

Tijuana Moods (1962, RCA)

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963, Impulse!)

Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963, Impulse!; sometimes referred to as Five Mingus)

Mingus Plays Piano (1963, Impulse!)

Soul Fusion (1963, Pickwick live)

Revenge! (live 1964 performance with Eric Dolphy, 32 Jazz; previously issued by Prestige as The Great Paris Concert)

Town Hall Concert (1964, Fantasy)

Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vol. 1 (1964, Ulysse Musique)

Charles Mingus Live In Oslo 1964 Featuring Eric Dolphy (1964, Jazz Up)

Charles Mingus Sextet Live In Stockholm 1964 (1964, Royal Jazz)

Charles Mingus Sextet Live In Europe (1964, Unique Jazz)

The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (1964, America)

Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy Cornell 1964 (2007, Blue Note)

Mingus In Europe (1964, Enja)

Mingus In Stuttgart, April 28, 1964 Concert (1964, Unique Jazz)

(1964, Fantasy)

Mingus At Monterey (1964, Mingus JWS)

Music Written For Monterey 1965. Not Heard... Played In Its Entirety At UCLA, Vol. 1&2 (1965, Mingus JWS)

Charles Mingus - Cecil Taylor (1966, Ozone)

Statements (1969, Joker)

Paris TNP (1970, Ulysse Musique)

Charles Mingus Sextet In Berlin (1970, Beppo)

Charles Mingus (1971, Columbia)

Charles Mingus and Friends In Concert (1972, Columbia)

Charles Mingus Quintet Featuring Dexter Gordon (1972, White Label)

Let My Children Hear Music (1972, Columbia)

Passions of a Man (1973, Atlantic)

Mingus at Carnegie Hall (1974, Atlantic)

Changes One (1974, Atlantic)

Changes Two (1974, Atlantic)

Mingus Moves (1974, Atlantic)

Village Vanguard 1975 (1975, Blue Mark Music)

The Music Of Charles Mingus (1977, Bayside)

Stormy & Funky Blues (1977)

Cumbia & Jazz Fusion (1977, Atlantic)

Three or Four Shades of Blues (1977)

His Final Work (1977)

Something Like a Bird (1979, Atlantic) (Mingus does not play on this session)

Me, Myself An Eye (1979, Atlantic) (Mingus does not play on this session)

Epitaph (1990, Columbia) (Mingus does not play on this session)

Mingus Mysterious Blues (1990, Candid) (Mingus does not play on this session)

As a sideman

Robbins' Nest (with Illinois Jacquet) (1945, Toho)

Mellow Mama (with Dinah Washington) (1945, Delmark)

Hot Piano (with Wilbert Baranco) (1946, Tops)

Ivie Anderson and Her All Stars (with Ivie Anderson) (1946, Storyville)

Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra 1948 (with Lionel Hampton) (1948, Weka)

Lionel Hampton in Concert (with Lionel Hampton) (1948, Cicala Jazz)

The Red Norvo Trio (with Red Norvo) (1951, Savoy)

Move (with Red Norvo) (1951, Savoy)

Miles Davis at Birdland 1951 (with Miles Davis) (1951, Beppo)

Jazz in Storyville (with Billy Taylor) (1951, Roost)

The George Wallington Trios Featuring Charles Mingus, Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach (1952, Prestige)

Spring Broadcasts 1953 (with Bud Powell) (1953, ESP)

Inner Fires (with Bud Powell) (1953, Electra/Musician)

Jazz at Massey Hall (aka. The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever) (with Charlie Parker) (1953, Debut)

Introducing Paul Bley (with Paul Bley) (1953, Debut)

Explorations (with Teo Macero) (1953, Debut)

The New Oscar Pettiford Sextet (with Oscar Pettiford) (1953, Debut)

Ada Moore (with Ada Moore) (1954, Debut)

Mad Bebop (with J.J. Johnson) (1954, Savoy)

The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson Volume 2 (with J.J. Johnson) (1954, Blue Note)

Evolution (with Teddy Charles) (1955, Prestige)

Relaxed Piano Moods (with Hazel Scott) (1955, Debut)

The John Mehegan Trio/Quartet (with John Mehegan) (1955, Savoy)

Very Truly Yours (with Jimmy Scott) (1955, Savoy)

The Fabulous Thad Jones (with Thad Jones) (1955, Debut)

New Piano Expressions (with John Dennis) (1955, Debut)

Easy Jazz (with Ralph Sharon) (1955, London)

Blue Moods (with Miles Davis) (1955, Prestige)

The Word from Bird (with Teddy Charles) (1956, Atlantic)

New Faces (with Jimmy Knepper) (1957, Debut)

Money Jungle (with Duke Ellington and Max Roach) (1962, Blue Note)

Filmography

1959, Mingus contributed most of the music for John Cassavetes's gritty New York City film, Shadows.

1961, Mingus appeared as a bassist and actor in the British film All Night Long.

1968, Thomas Reichman directed the documentary Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968.

1991, Ray Davies produced a documentary entitled Weird Nightmare. It contains footage of Mingus and interviews with artists making Hal Willner's tribute album of the same name, including Elvis Costello, Charlie Watts, Keith Richards, and Vernon Reid.

Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog is a 78 minute long documentary film on Charles Mingus directed by Don McGlynn and released in 1998.

References

Further reading

External links

Official website

What Is a Jazz Composer—Liner notes from Let My Children Hear Music by Charles Mingus.

Charles Mingus by Nat Hentoff

MINGUS!—sonic.net

Charles Mingus multimedia directory - Kerouac Alley

Charles Mingus: Requiem for the Underdog by Alan Goldsher

Mingus Music

Category:1922 births Category:1979 deaths Category:African American musicians Category:American jazz bandleaders Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz double-bassists Category:American jazz pianists Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:Avant-garde jazz double-bassists Category:Bebop double-bassists Category:Candid Records artists Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Deaths from motor neurone disease Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Musicians from Arizona Category:People from Cuernavaca Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:People from Nogales, Arizona Category:Post-bop double-bassists Category:Progressive big band bandleaders Category:Savoy Records artists Category:Third Stream musicians Category:University at Buffalo faculty

Name	Ron Carter
Landscape	yes
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Born	May 04, 1937
Origin	Ferndale, Michigan, U.S.
Instrument	Double bassCello, Piccolo bass
Genre	Orchestral jazzMainstream jazzThird Stream
Occupation	ProfessorClinicianJazz musician
Years active	1960–present

Ron Carter (born May 4, 1937) is an American jazz double-bassist. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on that instrument.

Biography

Carter was born in Ferndale, Michigan. He started to play cello at the age of 10, but when his family moved to Detroit, he ran into difficulties regarding the racial stereotyping of classical musicians and instead moved to bass. He attended the historic Cass Technical High School in Detroit, and, later, the Eastman School of Music, where he played in its Philharmonic Orchestra. He gained his bachelor's degree at Eastman in 1959, and in 1961 a master's degree in double bass performance from the Manhattan School of Music.

His first jobs as a jazz musician were with Jaki Byard and Chico Hamilton. His first records were made with Eric Dolphy (another former member of Hamilton's group) and Don Ellis, in 1960. His own first date as leader, Where?, with Dolphy and Mal Waldron and a date also with Dolphy called Out There with George Duvivier and Roy Haynes and Carter on cello; its advanced harmonics and concepts for 1961 were reminiscent of the then current third stream movement. Carter came to fame via the second great Miles Davis quintet in the early 1960s, which also included Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams.

Carter joined Davis's group in 1963, appearing on the album Seven Steps to Heaven and the follow-up E.S.P., the latter being the first album to feature only the full quintet. It also featured three of Carter's compositions (the only time he contributed compositions to Davis's group). He stayed with Davis's regular group until 1968 (when he was replaced by Dave Holland), and participated in a couple of studio sessions with Davis in 1969 and 1970. Although he played electric bass occasionally during this period, he has subsequently eschewed that instrument entirely, and now plays only acoustic bass. Carter was close to Davis and even revealed to an interviewer in 1966 that the famous trumpeter's favorite color was fuchsia.

Carter also performed on some of Hancock, Williams and Shorter's recordings during the sixties for Blue Note Records. He was a sideman on many Blue Note recordings of the era, playing with Sam Rivers, Freddie Hubbard, Duke Pearson, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, Horace Silver and others.

After leaving Davis, Carter was for several years a mainstay of CTI Records, making albums under his own name and also appearing on many of the label's records with a diverse range of other musicians. Notable musical partnerships in the 70's and 80's included Joe Henderson, Houston Person, Hank Jones, and Cedar Walton. During the 1970s he was a member of the New York Jazz Quartet.

He appears on the alternative hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest's influential album The Low End Theory on a track called "Verses from the Abstract". He also appears as a member of the jazz combo The Classical Jazz Quartet.

In 1994, Carter appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album, . The album, meant to raise awareness and funds in support of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the African American community, was heralded as "Album of the Year" by Time Magazine. In 2001, Carter collaborated with Black Star and John Patton to record "Money Jungle" for the Red Hot Organizatin's compilation album, Red Hot + Indigo, a tribute to Duke Ellington.

Carter was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Music Department of The City College of New York, having taught there for twenty years, and received an honorary Doctorate from the Berklee College of Music, in Spring 2004. He joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in New York City in 2008 teaching bass in the school's Jazz Studies program.

Ron Carter sits on the Advisory Committee of the Board of Directors of The Jazz Foundation of America as well as the Honorary Founder's Committee. Ron has worked with the Jazz Foundation since its inception to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians including musicians that survived Hurricane Katrina.

Discography

As leader

1961: Where? (Prestige Records) with Eric Dolphy, Charlie Persip, Mal Waldron, George Duvivier

1966: Out Front (Prestige)

1969: Uptown Conversation (Embryo Records)

1973: All Blues (CTI Records)

1973: Blues Farm

1974: Spanish Blue

1975: Anything Goes

1976: Yellow & Green

1976: Pastels

1977: Piccolo

1977: Third Plane (Milestone) trio with Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams

1978: 1+3 (JVC) trio live with Hank Jones or Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams

1978: Peg Leg (Milestone)

1978: Standard Bearers

1979: Parade

1980: New York Slick (Milestone)

1980: Patrao

1990: Carnaval

1991: Meets Bach (Blue Note)

1992: Friends (Blue Note)

1994: Jazz, My Romance (Blue Note)

1995: Mr. Bow Tie (Blue Note)

1995: Brandenburg Concerto (Blue Note)

1997: The Bass and I

1998: So What (Blue Note) trio with Kenny Barron and Lewis Nash

1999: Orfeu (Blue Note)

2001: When Skies Are Grey (Blue Note)

2002: Stardust (Blue Note)

2003: The Golden Striker (Blue Note)

2003: Eight Plus

2003: Ron Carter Plays Bach

2006: Live at The Village Vanguard

2007: Dear Miles

2008: Jazz and Bossa

As sideman

With Tadd Dameron

The Magic Touch (1962)

With Miles Davis

Quiet Nights (1962)

Four & More

My Funny Valentine

Live at the Plugged Nickel

Miles Smiles

ESP

Miles in the Sky

Seven Steps to Heaven

Sorcerer

Filles de Kilimanjaro

Water Babies

Nefertiti

With Herbie Hancock

Empyrean Isles

Maiden Voyage

Speak Like a Child

VSOP

Quartet (1981)

With David "Fathead" Newman

Mr. Gentle Mr. Cool : A Tribute To Duke Ellington (1994, Kokopelli Records)

With Horace Silver

Silver 'n Brass (1975)

Silver 'n Wood (1976)

Silver 'n Voices (1976)

Silver 'n Percussion (1977)

Silver 'n Strings Play the Music of the Spheres (1978)

The Hardbop Grandpop (1996)

A Prescription for the Blues (1997)

With Charles Tolliver

Paper Man (1969) - Black Lion Records

With McCoy Tyner

The Real McCoy

Expansions

Trident

Counterpoints

Fly with the Wind

Supertrios

Extensions

With others

Alice Coltrane - Ptah, The El Daoud (1970)

Bobby Timmons - In Person (1961)

Toshiko Akiyoshi - Toshiko at Top of the Gate (1968)

George Benson - Giblet Gravy (1968)

Bob Brookmeyer - Bob Brookmeyer and Friends (1962)

Donald Byrd - Electric Byrd (1970), Kofi (1969-70)

Stan Getz - Voices (1967)

Billy Cobham - Spectrum (1973)

Harry Connick, Jr. - Harry Connick Jr. (1987)

Eric Dolphy - Out There (1960), Far Cry (1960)

Lou Donaldson - Lush Life (1967), Sophisticated Lou (1973)

Roberta Flack - First Take (1970), Quiet Fire (1971), Killing Me Softly (1973)

Bill Frisell - Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian (2006)

Hermeto Pascoal - Hermeto (1971)

Johnny Frigo - Live from Studio A in New York City (1988)

Jim Hall - Concierto (1975), Live at Village West (1984), Telephone (1985), Alone Together (1986)

Gene Harris - Gene Harris of the Three Sounds (1972)

Coleman Hawkins - Night Hawk (1961) with Eddie Davis and Tommy Flanagan

Joe Henderson - Power to the People, The State Of The Tenor: Live At The Village Vanguard

Freddie Hubbard - Red Clay (1970), First Light (1971)

Andrew Hill - Grass Roots (1968), Lift Every Voice (1969), Passing Ships (1969)

Bobby Hutcherson - Components (1965)

Duke Pearson - Sweet Honey Bee (1966)

Milt Jackson - Sunflower (1972)

Quincy Jones - Gula Matari (1970)

Helen Merrill - Duets (1987)

Wes Montgomery - So Much Guitar (1961), Tequila, California Dreaming

Oliver Nelson - Sound Pieces

New York Jazz Quartet - In Concert in Japan (1975)

Austin Peralta - Maiden Voyage (2006)

Sam Rivers - Fuchsia Swing Song (1964), Contours (1965)

Gil Scott-Heron - Pieces of a Man (1972)

Marlena Shaw - From the Depths of My Soul (1973)

Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil (1964), The All Seeing Eye (1965)

Grace Slick-Manhole (1973)

Livingston Taylor-"Pajamas" from the album In Harmony (1980)

A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory (1991)

Eli Degibri - Israeli Song (2010)

Giorgio - Party Of The Century (2010)

Filmography

2003: Ron Carter & Art Farmer: Live at Sweet Basil with Cedar Walton and Billy Higgins 2002: Herbie Hancock Trio: Hurricane! with Ron Carter and Billy Cobham

References

External links

Ron Carter Official Website

Interview with Ron Carter

2006 Interview with Ron Carter

Interview with Ron Carter (2007)

Ron Carter at All About Jazz

Bassist Ron Carter, an Interview With Editor Jake Kot

Ron Carter's dedicated page on the Party Of The Century project

Video interview with Ron Carter at allaboutjazz.com

Category:African American musicians Category:American jazz double-bassists Category:City College of New York faculty Category:Eastman School of Music alumni Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Hard bop double-bassists Category:Mainstream jazz double-bassists Category:Manhattan School of Music alumni Category:Miles Davis Category:Musicians from Detroit, Michigan Category:New York Jazz Quartet members Category:Orchestral jazz double-bassists Category:People from Oakland County, Michigan Category:Post-bop double-bassists Category:Third Stream double-bassists Category:1937 births Category:Living people Category:Blue Note Records artists Category:Verve Records artists Category:Prestige Records artists Category:Milestone Records artists

Hal Willner (born 1957, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American music producer working in recording, films, TV and live events. He is best known for assembling tribute albums and events featuring a wide variety of artists and musical styles (jazz, classical, rock, Tin Pan Alley). His first tribute album was Amarcord Nino Rota in 1981.

In the 1970s he worked under record producer Joel Dorn. He was music supervisor of Saturday Night Live from 1981–1990, occasionally returning in subsequent years. He was also a producer of the TV program Sunday Night hosted by David Sanborn.

Willner has produced albums for Marianne Faithfull, Lou Reed, Bill Frisell, William S. Burroughs, Gavin Friday, Lucinda Williams, Laurie Anderson and Allen Ginsberg, among others. He produced a live tribute concert to Tim Buckley, that ultimately launched the career of Tim's son Jeff. He has released one album under his own name: Whoops, I'm an Indian, which featured audio samples from 78 rpm records from the early-mid 20th century.

In January 2010 Willner produced the pirate-themed concert event Rogue's Gallery for the 2009 Sydney Festival. The mulitnational cast included Marianne Faithfull, Todd Rundgren (who had contributed to Willner's Thelonious Monk tribute album), Tim Robbins, Gavin Friday, Peter Garrett, Baby Gramps, David Thomas, Sarah Blasko, Katy Steele, Peaches, Glenn Richards, Liam Finn, Camille O’Sullivan, Kami Thompson and Marry Waterson.

Tribute albums

Amarcord Nino Rota (1981) Willner's first tribute album salutes Italian composer Nino Rota, and features interpretation of his music for Federico Fellini films by jazz and pop musicians including: Wynton and Branford Marsalis; Carla Bley; Muhal Richard Abrams; Bill Frisell; Steve Lacy; Jaki Byard; and Deborah Harry

That's The Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonious Monk (1984) features musicians ranging from John Zorn to Peter Frampton

(1985) features musicians ranging from Sting to Charlie Haden

(1988) features performances of songs from Walt Disney movies by a large cast of artists ranging from Sun Ra to Michael Stipe, Ringo Starr, Yma Sumac and Ken Nordine

Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus (1992) is a tribute to Charles Mingus, featuring instruments designed and built by American composer Harry Partch, on loan from his estate. Performers include Bill Frisell, Vernon Reid, Henry Rollins, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Don Byron, Henry Threadgill, Gary Lucas, Bobby Previte, Robert Quine, Leonard Cohen, Diamanda Galás, Chuck D and Elvis Costello

September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill (1995) re-creation of the previous Weill tribute as a Canadian TV special directed by Larry Weinstein. A CD was issued including performances by Nick Cave and P J Harvey

(2005) another Larry Weinstein TV program. The CD includes performances by Rufus Wainwright, Debbie Harry, David Johansen, Eric Mingus and Sandra Bernhard

(2006) soundtrack for Lian Lunson's documentary film about Willner's Leonard Cohen tribute event Came So Far For Beauty

(2006) 2x double CD includes performers ranging from Bono to Van Dyke Parks.

The Harry Smith Project: Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited (2006). Recorded at Hal Willner's Harry Smith Project events in London (1999), Brooklyn (1999) and LA (2001), plus a DVD documentary.

Live tribute events

Greetings From Tim Buckley (1991)

Edgar Allan Poe's writings (1995), which led to the album Closed on Account of Rabies (1997)

Marquis de Sade's writings (1998)

The Harry Smith Project (1999–2001)

Came So Far For Beauty, An Evening of Songs by Leonard Cohen (2003–2006)

Forest of No Return: Hal Willner Presents Vintage Disney Songbook (2007)

Stay Awake at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY (2008-04-02) Hal Willner's Stay Awake at UCLA was scheduled for October 30, 2008, but was cancelled due to unavailability of some performers.

Rogue's Gallery (Dublin 2008, London 2008, Gateshead 2008, Sydney 2010)

Hal Willner's Bill Withers Project (Brooklyn 2008)

Hal Willner's Neil Young Project (Vancouver 2010 Olympics)

Spoken word recordings

With the increasing prevalence of tribute albums in the late 1980s (such as Red Hot + Blue), Willner decided to turn his attention to spoken word recordings.

Dead City Radio (1990) by William Burroughs has musical backing by Sonic Youth, Donald Fagen, John Cale and others.

Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales (1996) by William Burroughs with music by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.

The Lion For Real by Allen Ginsberg features musical accompaniment by Bill Frisell, Philip Glass, Paul McCartney and others.

Closed on Account of Rabies (1997) consists of readings of Edgar Allan Poe poems and tales by Iggy Pop and others. As Willner's only "spoken word" tribute album, it fits in the context of his other music-based tributes.

In With The Out Crowd (1998) by poet Bob Holman.

Let The Buyer Beware (2004) is an authoritative six CD box set of historic recordings by the comedian Lenny Bruce.

Film related projects

A more complete list of Willner's contributions to films and television can be found at www.imdb.com (see external links).

The Carl Stalling Project: A CD of music composed and/or arranged by Carl Stalling for Warner Brothers cartoons.

The soundtracks to Robert Altman's films Short Cuts (1993) and Kansas City (1996).

Music Supervisor or Producer for The Million Dollar Hotel (Dir. Wim Wenders, 2000), Finding Forester (Dir. Gus Van Sant, 2000), Gangs of New York (Dir. Martin Scorcese, 2002), Talladega Nights (Dir. Adam McKay, 2006), and others.

References

External links

An article about Willner's spoken word recordings

An interview with Willner

Category:American record producers Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:Grammy Award winners

Name	Eric Dolphy
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Eric Allan Dolphy
Born	June 20, 1928Los Angeles, California
Died	June 29, 1964 Berlin, Germany
Instrument	Alto saxophone, Flute, Bass clarinet
Genre	Jazz, Avant-garde jazz
Occupation	Bandleader, Composer, Sideman
Years active	1949–1964
Label	VerveImpulse!PrestigeBlue NoteMercury |
Associated acts	Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Booker Little
Notable instruments	Bass clarinet, alto saxophone, flute

Eric Allan Dolphy (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, flautist, and bass clarinetist. He also played, on a few occasions the clarinet and baritone saxophone. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the 1960s. He was also the first important bass clarinet soloist in jazz, and among the earliest significant flute soloists. His improvisational style was characterized by the use of wide intervals, in addition to using an array of extended techniques to reproduce human- and animal-like effects which almost literally made his instruments speak. Although Dolphy's work is sometimes classified as free jazz, his compositions and solos were often rooted in conventional (if highly abstracted) tonal bebop harmony.

Biography

Early life

Dolphy was born in Los Angeles and was educated at Los Angeles City College. He performed locally for several years, most notably as a member of bebop big bands led by Gerald Wilson and Roy Porter. On early recordings, he occasionally played soprano clarinet and baritone saxophone, as well as his main instrument, the alto saxophone. Dolphy finally had his big break as a member of Chico Hamilton's quintet. With the group he became known to a wider audience and was able to tour extensively through 1959, when he parted ways with Hamilton and moved to New York City.

Early partnerships

John Coltrane had gained an audience and critical notice with Miles Davis's quintet. Although Coltrane's quintets with Dolphy (including the Village Vanguard and Africa/Brass sessions) are now legendary, they provoked Down Beat magazine to brand Coltrane and Dolphy's music as 'anti-jazz'. Coltrane later said of this criticism: "they made it appear that we didn't even know the first thing about music (...) it hurt me to see [Dolphy] get hurt in this thing."

The initial release of Coltrane's stay at the Vanguard selected three tracks, only one of which featured Dolphy. After being issued haphazardly over the next 30 years, a comprehensive box set featuring all of the recorded music from the Vanguard was released by Impulse! in 1997. The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings carried over 15 tracks featuring Dolphy on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, adding a new dimension to these already classic recordings. A later Pablo box set from Coltrane's European tours of the early 1960s collected more recordings with Dolphy for the buying public.

During this period, Dolphy also played in a number of challenging settings, notably in key recordings by Ornette Coleman (), arranger Oliver Nelson (The Blues and the Abstract Truth and Straight Ahead) and George Russell (Ezz-thetics), but also with Gunther Schuller, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, multi-instrumentalist Ken McIntyre, and bassist Ron Carter among others.

As a leader

Dolphy's recording career as a leader began with the Prestige label. His association with the label spanned across 13 albums recorded from April 1960 to September 1961, though he was not the leader for all of the sessions. Fantasy eventually released a 9-CD box set containing all of Dolphy's recorded output for Prestige.

Dolphy's first two albums as leader were Outward Bound and Out There. The first, more accessible and rooted more in the style of bop than some later releases, was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey with hard-bop trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. However the album still offered up challenging performances, which at least partly accounts for the record label's choice to include "out" in the title. Out There is closer to the third stream music which would also form part of Dolphy's legacy, and reminiscent also of the instrumentation of the Hamilton group with Ron Carter on cello and Dolphy on bass clarinet, clarinet and flute as well as saxophones.

Far Cry was also recorded for Prestige in 1960 and represented his first pairing with trumpeter Booker Little, a like-minded spirit with whom he would make a set of legendary live recordings at the Five Spot in New York before Little's death at the age of 23.

Dolphy would record several unaccompanied cuts on saxophone, which at the time had been done only by Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins before him. The album Far Cry contains one of his more memorable performances on the Gross-Lawrence standard "Tenderly" on alto saxophone, but it was his subsequent tour of Europe that quickly set high standards for solo performance with his exhilarating bass clarinet renditions of Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child". Numerous recordings were made of live performances by Dolphy on this tour, in Copenhagen, Uppsala and other cities, and these have been issued by many sometimes dubious record labels, drifting in and out of print ever since.

20th century classical music also played a significant role in Dolphy's musical career. He performed Edgard Varèse's Density 21.5 for solo flute at the Ojai Music Festival in 1962 and participated in Gunther Schuller's Third Stream efforts of the 1960s.

In July 1963, Dolphy and producer Alan Douglas arranged recording sessions for which his sidemen were among the leading emerging musicians of the day. The results were his Iron Man and Conversations LPs. Around this time Dolphy's pianist was occasionally the young Herbie Hancock, this group was recorded at the Illinois Concert and others.

In 1964, Dolphy signed with Blue Note Records and recorded Out to Lunch! with Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams. This album was deeply rooted in the avant garde, and Dolphy's solos are as dissonant and unpredictable as anything he ever recorded. Out to Lunch, his last major studio recording, is often considered his magnum opus.

Final months

After Out to Lunch! and an appearance as a sideman on Andrew Hill's Point of Departure, Dolphy left to tour Europe with Charles Mingus' sextet in early 1964. (Dolphy also played with Mingus in 1960, as heard on the Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and Mingus at Antibes albums). From there he intended to settle in Europe with his fiancée, who was working on the ballet scene in Paris. The Mingus band for this tour was extensively recorded, including on the Cornell 1964 album and is one of Mingus' strongest line-ups, including Dolphy and pianist Jaki Byard. After leaving Mingus, he performed with and recorded a few sides with various European bands, including the mis-named Last Date with Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, and was preparing to join Albert Ayler for a recording.

Eric Dolphy died accidentally in Berlin on June 28, 1964. The circumstances of his passing are disputed. The liner notes to the Complete Prestige Recordings boxset say that Dolphy "collapsed in his hotel room in Berlin and when brought to the hospital he was diagnosed as being in a diabetic coma. After being administered a shot of insulin (apparently a type stronger than what was then available in the US) he lapsed into insulin shock and died." A later documentary and liner note disputes this, saying Dolphy collapsed on stage in Berlin and was brought to a hospital. The attending hospital physicians had no idea that Dolphy was a diabetic and decided on a stereotypical view of jazz musicians, that he had overdosed on drugs. He was left in a hospital bed for the drugs to run their course.

Dolphy was posthumously inducted into the Down Beat magazine Hall of Fame in 1964. Coltrane paid tribute to Dolphy in an interview: "Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician." Dolphy's mother, Sadie, who had fond memories of her son practicing in the studio by her house, gave instruments that Dolphy had bought in France but never played to Coltrane, who subsequently played the flute and bass clarinet on several albums before his own death in 1967. Dolphy was engaged to be married to Joyce Mordecai, a classically-trained dancer.

Influence

Dolphy's musical presence was hugely influential to a who's who of young jazz musicians who would become legends in their own right. Dolphy worked intermittently with Ron Carter and Freddie Hubbard throughout his career, and in later years he hired Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson and Woody Shaw to work in his live and studio bands. Out to Lunch! featured yet another young lion who had just begun working with Dolphy in drummer Tony Williams, just as his participation on the Point of Departure session brought his influence into contact with up and coming tenor man Joe Henderson.

Carter, Hancock and Williams would go on to become one of the quintessential rhythm sections of the decade, both together on their own albums and as the backbone of the second great quintet of Miles Davis. This part of the second great quintet is an ironic footnote for Davis, who was not fond of Dolphy's music (in a 1964 Down Beat Blindfold Test, Miles famously quipped, "The next time I see [Dolphy] I'm going to step on his foot.") yet absorbed a rhythm section who had all worked under Dolphy and created a band whose brand of "out" was unsurprisingly very similar to Dolphy's.

In addition, his work with jazz and rock producer Alan Douglas allowed Dolphy's style to posthumously spread to musicians in the jazz fusion and Rock environments, most notably with artists John McLaughlin and Jimi Hendrix. Frank Zappa, a highly influential composer who drew his inspiration from a variety of musical styles and idioms, paid tribute to Dolphy's style in the instrumental "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" (on the 1970 album Weasels Ripped My Flesh).

Discography

As leader

;Prestige Records

Status (1960)

Dash One (1960)

Outward Bound (1960)

Looking Ahead (1960)

Fire Waltz (1960)

Out There (1960)

The Caribe with the Latin Jazz Quintet (1960)

Magic (1960)

Far Cry (1960)

Eric Dolphy (1960)

Here and There (1961)

The Quest (1961)

The Great Concert of Eric Dolphy [live] (1961)

Live! at the Five Spot, Vols. 1 & 2 (1961) with Mal Waldron and Booker Little

Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vols. 1-3 [live] (1961)

Copenhagen Concert [live] (1961)

Quartet 1961 (1961)

Eric Dolphy Quintet featuring Herbie Hancock: Complete Recordings (1962)

;Blue Note

Other Aspects (1960)

The Illinois Concert (1963)

Out to Lunch! (1964)

;Other labels

Hot & Cool Latin (1959)

Wherever I Go (1959)

Candid Dolphy (1960)

Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (1961)

Berlin Concerts [live] (1962)

Vintage Dolphy (1962)

Iron Man (1963)

Conversations (1963) (also known as Jitterbug Waltz)

Last Date (1964)

Naima (1964)

Unrealized Tapes (1964)

As sideman

With Chico Hamilton

Chico Hamilton Quintet with Strings Attached (1958)

The Original Ellington Suite (1958)

Gongs East! (1958)

That Hamilton Man (1959)(also released as Truth)

With Charles Mingus

Pre-Bird [aka Mingus Revisited] (1960)

'Mingus!' (1960)

Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (1960)

Mingus at Antibes (1960)

Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963)

Town Hall Concert (1964)

The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (1964)

Revenge! (1964)

Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy: Cornell 1964 (1964)

With Ornette Coleman

(1960)

With Oliver Nelson

''Screamin' the Blues (1960)

The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961)

Straight Ahead (1961)

With John Coltrane

Olé Coltrane (1961)

Africa/Brass (1961)

Live! at the Village Vanguard (1961)

Impressions (One Track, "India") (1963)

With Makanda Ken McIntyre

Looking Ahead (1960)

With Booker Little

Out Front (1960)

With George Russell

Ezz-thetics (1961)

With Max Roach

Percussion Bitter Sweet (1961)

With Andrew Hill

Point of Departure (1964)

With John Lewis

The Sextet of Orchestra U.S.A. (1964)

John Lewis Presents Jazz Abstractions (1960)

With Phil Diaz

The Latin Jazz Quintet (United Artists, 1961)

References

Further reading

Vladimir Simosko & Barry Tepperman: Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography and Discography, Da Capo Press, New York, 1979, ISBN 0-306-80107-8

Guillaume Belhomme: Eric Dolphy, Le mot et le reste, Marseille, 2008, ISBN : 9782915378535

External links

A Dolphy website and instructions for mailing list

Session and discography

Category:1928 births Category:1964 deaths Category:Avant-garde jazz musicians Category:African American musicians Category:American expatriates Category:American jazz flautists Category:American jazz alto saxophonists Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz clarinetists Category:American multi-instrumentalists Category:American jazz bass clarinetists Category:Deaths from diabetes Category:Musicians from California Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Prestige Records artists Category:Blue Note Records artists Category:Bass clarinetists