Charles Tolliver

Charles Tolliver (born March 6, 1942) is an American jazz trumpeter and composer.

Biography

Tolliver was born in Jacksonville, Florida, where, as a child, he received his first trumpet as a gift from his grandmother. He attended Howard University in the early 1960s as a pharmacy student, when he decided to pursue music as a career and moved to New York City. He came to prominence in 1964, playing and recording on Jackie McLean's Blue Note albums. In 1971, Tolliver and Stanley Cowell founded Strata-East Records, one of the pioneer artist-owned jazz record labels. Tolliver himself released many albums and collaborations on Strata. Following a long hiatus, he reemerged in the late 2000s, releasing two albums arranged for big band. With Love was nominated in 2007 for a Grammy award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble.

He would later describe his experience: "There was so much going on with the music. Like with bebop, we had a long period of just salivating on. There were all these different idioms within a genre, the avant-garde and free music, bebop still, and of course the music of John Coltrane and Miles. It was just a hell of a period. And then there was also the political scene going on...."

Music Inc.

Music Inc. is an album by American jazz trumpeter Charles Tolliver's Music Inc. with a Big Band recorded in 1970 and first released on the Strata-East label.

Reception

The Allmusic review by Jason Ankeny awarded the album 4½ stars stating "The remarkable Music, Inc. Big Band remains the apotheosis of trumpeter Charles Tolliver's singular creative vision. Rarely if ever has a big band exhibited so much freedom or finesse, while at the same time never overwhelming the virtuoso soloists on whom the performances pivots".

Track listing

All compositions by Charles Tolliver except as indicated

Personnel

Stanley Cowell

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Stanley Cowell (born May 5, 1941 in Toledo, Ohio) is an American jazz pianist and co-founder of the Strata-East Records label. He played with Roland Kirk while studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and later with Marion Brown, Max Roach, Bobby Hutcherson, Clifford Jordan, Harold Land, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz. Cowell played with trumpeter Charles Moore and others in the Detroit Artist's Workshop Jazz Ensemble in 1965-66. During the late 1980s Cowell was part of a regular quartet led by J.J. Johnson. Cowell teaches in the Music Department of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Discography

As leader

Taliaferro

Taliaferro (/ˈtɒlɪvər/ TOL-i-vər), also spelled Tagliaferro, Talifero, Tellifero, Taliferro, Tolliver, or Toliver, is a prominent family in eastern Virginia and Maryland. The Taliaferros (originally Tagliaferro, Italian pronunciation: [ˌtaʎʎaˈfɛrro], which means "ironcutter" in Italian) are one of the early families who settled in Virginia in the 17th century. They migrated from London, where an ancestor had served as a musician in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The surname in that line is believed to trace back to Bartholomew Taliaferro, a native of Venice who settled in London and was made a denizen in 1562.

The origins of the Taliaferro name were of interest to George Wythe, a Virginia colonial lawyer and classical scholar, who had married a Taliaferro. Wythe urged his former student and friend Thomas Jefferson to investigate the name when Jefferson traveled to Italy. Jefferson later reported to Wythe that he had found two families of the name in Tuscany, and that the family was of Italian origin. Jefferson enclosed his sketch of the coat of arms of the Tagliaferro family as reported to him by a friend in Florence, Italy.

Charles

Charles is a masculine given name from the French form Charles of a Germanic name Karl. The original Anglo-Saxon was Ċearl or Ċeorl, as the name of king Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England.

The corresponding Old Norse form is Karl, the German form is also Karl. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinized as Karolus (as in Vita Karoli Magni), later also as Carolus.

Etymology

The name's etymology is a Common Germanic noun *karlaz meaning "free man", which survives in English as churl (< Old English ċeorl), which developed its deprecating sense in the Middle English period.

In the form Charles, the initial spelling ch- corresponds to the palatalization of the Latin group ca- to [tʃa] in Central Old French (Francien) and the final -s to the former subjective case (cas sujet) of masculine names in Old French like in Giles or James (< Latin -us, see Spanish/ Portuguese Carlos).

According to Julius Pokorny, the historical linguist and Indo-Europeanist, the root meaning of Karl is "old man", from Indo-European *ĝer-, where the ĝ is a palatal consonant, meaning "to rub; to be old; grain." An old man has been worn away and is now grey with age.