tagged w/ Dizzy Gillespie
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Los Angeles Times...
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Clare Fischer dies at 83; versatile pianist, composer, arranger
The Grammy-winning musician's interests included jazz, Latin and pop music, and he released more than 50 albums under his name.
PHOTO:
Although Clare Fischer, shown in 1987, entered professional music through jazz, his expansive creative perspective quickly grew to embrace many other musical areas.
(Los Angeles Times)
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By Don Heckman, Special to The Los Angeles Times
January 28, 2012
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Clare Fischer, a Grammy-winning pianist, composer and arranger who crossed freely from jazz to Latin and pop music, working with such names as Dizzy Gillespie, George Shearing and Natalie Cole as well as Paul McCartney, Prince and Michael Jackson, has died. He was 83.
Fischer died Thursday at Providence St. Joseph's Medical Center in Burbank of complications from a heart attack he had two weeks ago, said family spokeswoman Claris Dodge.
Although he entered professional music through jazz, his expansive creative perspective quickly grew to embrace many other musical areas.
"I relate to everything," he explained in 1987 in The Times. "I'm not just jazz, Latin or classical. I really am a fusion of all of those." He went on to describe his fascination with Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bartok, as well as Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, Lee Konitz, Tito Puente and boogie-woogie pianist Meade Lux Lewis.
Regardless of genre, Fischer's arranging and composing invariably possessed a rich harmonic palette, one that attracted and influenced other musicians.
"Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept," Herbie Hancock said in a statement on Fischer's website. Hancock credited Fischer's arrangements for the 1950s vocal group the Hi-Lo's with significantly influencing his 1968 recording "Speak Like a Child."
Pop and rock artists especially valued Fischer's arranging for the lush, classical qualities of the textures he created, particularly for string ensembles. He worked closely with his son, Brent Fischer, also an arranger and conductor, to provide arrangements and orchestrations for McCartney, Chaka Khan, Carlos Santana, Rufus, Brandy and many others. Fischer's first music credit in film was for Prince's "Under the Cherry Moon."
Fischer was also in demand as a studio keyboardist, performing, composing or arranging for commercials, film and television scores, and for more than 100 albums for other artists.
He released more than 50 albums under his own name in a recording career that began in 1962 with the album "First Time Out." His diverse ensembles included the Latin group Salsa Picante; the vocal group 2 + 2; his Clarinet Choir; and the 30-piece band Clare Fischer's Jazz Corps. He also performed solo on piano and paired with Donald Byrd, Gary Foster, Jerry Coker and others.
Fischer's first classical recording, 2001's "After the Rain," was a collection of his symphonic works.
He won two Grammy awards, in 1981 for "Clare Fischer and Salsa Picante Present 2+2" and in 1986 for "Freefall."
Douglas Clare Fischer was born Oct. 22, 1928, in Durand, Mich., the third of four children. His first instruments were violin and piano; but during high school he added cello, clarinet and saxophone. As a teenager in Grand Rapids, he composed and arranged for big bands.
At Michigan State University, he majored in composition and theory, earning a bachelor's degree in music in 1951. After serving in the Army, Fischer received a master's in music from the school in 1955.
His professional career escalated in the late 1950s during his five-year association as pianist/arranger/conductor with the musically adventurous Hi-Lo's. But his arrangements for Dizzy Gillespie's 1960 album, "A Portrait of Duke Ellington," brought him the full attention of the jazz community. Albums for pianist George Shearing, vibraphonist Cal Tjader, alto saxophonist Bud Shank and guitarist Joe Pass followed.
A mid-1970s reunion with Tjader revived Fischer's fascination with Latin music, via his Salsa Picante group. He was fond of Brazilian music in general and bossa nova in particular.
In 1988, Fischer had a freeway encounter with another driver that escalated into a roadside physical confrontation. Fischer, then 60, was assaulted, suffering a hairline skull fracture and a concussion. It took nearly a year for him to recover and return to music.
"If I discovered anything in that strange, 10-month period of recovery," Fischer later told The Times, "it's that music is the one thing that makes me sane."
He is survived by his wife, Donna; his children, Lee, Brent and Tahlia; two stepchildren, Lisa and Bill Bachman; three grandchildren; and a brother, Stewart.
.Los Angeles Times...
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Clare Fischer dies at 83; versatile pianist, composer,... more
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Los Angeles Times...
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Sam Rivers dies at 88; pioneering jazz saxophonist, composer
Sam Rivers, who helped define the avant-garde jazz scene in the 1960s and '70s, played with an array of greats while crossing musical boundaries as well.
From Times staff and wire reports
December 28, 2011, 1:39 p.m.
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Sam Rivers, a saxophonist and composer who helped define the avant-garde jazz scene in the '60s and '70s, died Monday of pneumonia in Orlando, Fla. He was 88.
Rivers, whose legacy is defined by both his pioneering spirit in the post-bop jazz scene and a style that married unfettered creativity with a strong foundation of technical ability on a range of instruments, had lived in Orlando since the early 1990s.
The son of church-choir musicians who toured with a gospel group, Rivers was born in El Reno, Okla., in 1923 and raised in Chicago and Little Rock, Ark. He started piano lessons as a child and later played trombone before settling on the tenor saxophone. Though tenor sax was his primary instrument, he also recorded on flute and piano.
Taking inspiration from jazz heroes such as Coleman Hawkins, among others, he moved to Boston in the late 1940s after serving in the Navy. He studied at the Boston Conservatory of Music and Boston University and performed with Herb Pomeroy's big band, an ensemble that also included future music producer Quincy Jones. In 1964, he moved to New York, where he was hired by Miles Davis.
As his reputation spread, Rivers played with a diverse array of musicians ranging from jazz icons Dizzy Gillespie and Cecil Taylor to blues musicians T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker.
"People couldn't quite figure out where I was coming from," Rivers told jazz writer Don Heckman for a 2003 Times profile. "When I came to New York, I was playing with Miles Davis. Then I went with Cecil Taylor, and everybody seemed to think that was what I did. Then, later, when I went with Dizzy Gillespie, they said, 'What is Sam Rivers the avant-gardist doing with Dizzy?' But I think I really benefited from the different things I did. I'm one of the few players who felt comfortable about crossing back and forth."
In the 1970s, Rivers' makeshift loft venue, Studio Rivbea (where he lived with his late wife, Beatrice), became the hub of the avant-garde jazz scene in Lower Manhattan. He also released his own recordings, including "Fuchsia Swing Song."
When he relocated to Orlando, he was invited by a number of notable musicians working at Walt Disney World to take part in a booming jazz scene. Until September, Rivers held weekly open auditions for his Rivbea Orchestra at Orlando's musicians' union hall.
"Music was his life, music is what kept him alive," said his daughter Monique Rivers Williams, who also handled her father's concert bookings. "My father, in my eyes, was on vacation all his life. He used to tell me, 'I'm working, but I'm loving every minute of it.' Retirement was not in his vocabulary. 'Why do we even have that word,' he used to ask me, 'there should be no such thing.'"
Rivers' wife Bea died in 2005. Besides his daughter Monique, he is survived by daughters Cindy Johnson and Traci Tozzi; a son, Dr. Samuel Rivers III; five grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
.Los Angeles Times...
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Sam Rivers dies at 88; pioneering jazz saxophonist,... more
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Ray Bryant dies at 79; jazz pianist and composer
Ray Bryant played with such greats as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins at the Blue Note club in Philadelphia. He had a long recording career and was known for his blues style.
By Keith Thursby, Los Angeles Times
June 9, 2011
Ray Bryant, a pianist and composer whose long career took off after he accompanied a variety of jazz greats during the 1950s at the Blue Note club in Philadelphia, has died. He was 79.
Bryant died June 2 at New York Hospital Queens, a hospital spokeswoman said. No cause was given.
As house pianist at the Blue Note, Bryant played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, among others. "The Blue Note was a real jumping off point for me," he told the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., in 1994. Bryant played with a trio that sometimes included his older brother, Tommy, a bassist who died in 1982.
Bryant became "a powerful blues player known for his versatility," Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler wrote in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz.
"I grew up with the blues," Bryant told The Times in 1995. "I played with some great bluesmen, and it rubbed off on me. No matter what you play you retain some of what you have been around."
Raphael Homer Bryant was born into a musical family on Dec. 24, 1931, in Philadelphia. His mother played the piano and organ, as does his sister, Vera Eubanks.
"He was kind of the patriarch of the jazz side of our family," trombonist Robin Eubanks, Bryant's nephew, told The Times this week. "He was like the mentor, paving the way."
Eubanks' brother Kevin, a guitarist, is the former bandleader of "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," and another brother, Duane, is a trumpeter.
After working at the Blue Note, Bryant toured with singer Carmen McRae in 1956-57, played with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957 and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie.
He moved to New York in the late 1950s and had his first hit in 1960 with his composition "Little Susie." His composition "Cubano Chant" was recorded by such jazz notables as Art Blakey and Oscar Peterson, and "Changes" was recorded by Davis.
Bryant recorded steadily through the years and toured in Europe and Japan beginning in the 1970s.
His first solo album was 1958's "Alone With the Blues," and his most recent release was 2008's "In the Back Room."
In addition to his sister, Bryant's survivors include his wife, Claude; son Raphael Jr.; daughter Gina; grandchildren; and brothers Leonard and Lynwood.Ray Bryant dies at 79; jazz pianist and composer
Ray Bryant played with such greats... more
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Jump into some Afro-Cuban sounds tonight with the immortal Dizzy Gillespie playing his 1947 original Manteca, featuring Cuban percussion legend Chano Pozo. Cool, no?Jump into some Afro-Cuban sounds tonight with the immortal Dizzy Gillespie playing his... more
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Just "opened" The New York Times to discover that a real favorite of mine, James Moody, has died. Here's the initial article.....
December 10, 2010
James Moody, Jazz Saxophonist, Dies at 85
By PETER KEEPNEWS
James Moody, a jazz saxophonist and flutist celebrated for his virtuosity, his versatility and his onstage ebullience, died on Thursday in San Diego. He was 85.
His death, at a hospice, was confirmed by his wife, Linda. Mr. Moody lived in San Diego.
Last month, Mr. Moody disclosed that he had pancreatic cancer and had decided against receiving chemotherapy or radiation treatment.
Mr. Moody, who began his career with the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie shortly after World War II and maintained it well into the 21st century, developed distinctive and equally fluent styles on both tenor and alto saxophone, a relatively rare accomplishment in jazz. He also played soprano saxophone, and in the mid-1950s he became one of the first significant jazz flutists, impressing the critics if not himself.
“I’m not a flute player,” he told one interviewer. “I’m a flute holder.”
The self-effacing humor of that comment was characteristic of Mr. Moody, who took his music more seriously than he took himself. Musicians admired him for his dexterity, his unbridled imagination and his devotion to his craft, as did critics; reviewing a performance in 1980, Gary Giddins of The Village Voice praised Mr. Moody’s “unqualified directness of expression” and said his improvisations at their best were “mini-epics in which impassioned oracles, comic relief, suspense and song vie for chorus time.” But audiences were equally taken by his ability to entertain.
Defying the stereotype of the modern jazz musician as austere and humorless (and following the example of Gillespie, whom he considered his musical mentor and with whom he worked on and off for almost half a century), Mr. Moody told silly jokes, peppered his repertory with unlikely numbers like “Beer Barrel Polka” and the theme from “The Flintstones,” and often sang. His singing voice was unpolished but enthusiastic — and very distinctive, partly because he spoke and sang with a noticeable lisp, a result of having been born partly deaf.
The song he sang most often had a memorable name and an unusual history. Based on the harmonic structure of “I’m in the Mood for Love,” it began life as an instrumental when Mr. Moody recorded it in Stockholm in 1949, improvising an entirely new melody on a borrowed alto saxophone. Released as “I’m in the Mood for Love” (and credited to that song’s writers) even though his rendition bore only the faintest resemblance to the original tune, it was a modest hit for Mr. Moody in 1951. It became a much bigger hit shortly afterward when the singer Eddie Jefferson wrote lyrics to Mr. Moody’s improvisation and another singer, King Pleasure, recorded it as “Moody’s Mood for Love.”
“Moody’s Mood for Love” (which begins with the memorable lyric “There I go, there I go, there I go, there I go ...”) became a jazz and pop standard, recorded by Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Van Morrison, Amy Winehouse and others. And it was a staple of Mr. Moody’s concert and nightclub performances as sung by Mr. Jefferson, who was a member of his band for many years. Mr. Jefferson was shot to death in 1979; when Mr. Moody, who was in the middle of a long hiatus from jazz at the time, resumed his career a few years later, he began singing the song himself. He never stopped.
James Moody — he was always Moody, never James, Jim or Jimmy, to his friends and colleagues — was born in Savannah, Ga., on March 26, 1925, to James and Ruby Moody, and raised in Newark. Despite being hard of hearing, he gravitated toward music and began playing alto saxophone at 16, later switching to tenor. He played with an all-black Army Air Forces band during World War II. After being discharged in 1946, he auditioned for Gillespie, who led one of the first big bands to play the complex and challenging new form of jazz known as bebop. He failed that audition but passed a second one a few months later, and soon captured the attention of the jazz world with a brief but fiery solo on the band’s recording of the Gillespie composition “Emanon.”
Mr. Moody’s career was twice interrupted by alcoholism. The first time, in 1948, he moved to Paris to live with an uncle while he recovered. He returned to the United States in 1951 to capitalize on the success of “I’m in the Mood for Love,” forming a seven-piece band that mixed elements of modern jazz with rhythm and blues. After a fire at a Philadelphia nightclub destroyed the band’s equipment, uniforms and sheet music in 1958, he began drinking again and checked himself into the Overbrook psychiatric hospital in Cedar Grove, N.J. After a stay of several months, he celebrated his recovery by writing and recording the uptempo blues “Last Train From Overbrook,” which became one of his best-known compositions.
In 1963 he reunited with Gillespie, joining his popular quintet. He was featured as both a soloist and the straight man for Gillespie’s between-songs banter, sharpening his musical and comedic skills at the same time. He left Gillespie in 1969 to try his luck as a bandleader again but met with limited success; four years later he left jazz entirely to work in Las Vegas hotel orchestras.
“The reason I went to Las Vegas,” he told Saxophone Journal in 1998, “was because I was married and had a daughter and I wanted to grow up with my kid. I was married before and I didn’t grow up with the kids. So I said, ‘I’m going to really be a father.’ I did much better with this one because at least I stayed until my daughter was 12 years old. And that’s why I worked Vegas, because I could stay in one spot.”
After seven years of pit-band anonymity, providing accompaniment for everyone from Milton Berle to Ike and Tina Turner to Liberace, Mr. Moody divorced his wife, Margena, and returned to the East Coast to resume his jazz career. His final three decades were productive, with frequent touring and recording (as the leader of his own small group and, on occasion, as a sideman with Gillespie, who died in 1993) and even a brief foray into acting, with a bit part in the 1997 Clint Eastwood film “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” set in Mr. Moody’s birthplace, Savannah.
The National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master in 1998. His last album, “Moody 4B,” was recorded in 2008 and released this year on the IPO label; it earned a Grammy nomination this month.
Mr. Moody, who was divorced twice, is survived by his wife of 21 years, the former Linda Peterson McGowan; three sons, Patrick, Regan and Danny McGowan; a daughter, Michelle Moody Bagdanove; a brother, Louis Watters; four grandchildren; and one great-grandson.
For all his accomplishments, Mr. Moody always saw his musical education as a work in progress. “I’ve always wanted to be around people who know more than me,” he told The Hartford Courant in 2006, “because that way I keep learning.”Just "opened" The New York Times to discover that a real favorite of mine,... more
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