Music

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digable planets

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Digable Planets' fusion of jazz and hip hop received excellent reviews and solid sales with the release of its debut album.

in 1993, which was certified gold by the RIAA. The album's lead single, "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)," became a crossover hit, peaking at #15 on Billboard magazine's singles chart, earning gold certification by the RIAA, and winning the Grammy award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

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Art Tatum

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Art Tatum was known for his virtuosic piano playing and creative improvisation. He was a legally blind pianist who personified piano playing in the 1930's and 1940's, during the swing era.

arguably one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century.

Critic Scott Yanow declares that "Tatum's recordings still have the ability to scare modern pianists.

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acid jazz

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Acid jazz (also known as club jazz) is a musical genre that combines elements of soul music, funk, disco particularly repetitive beats and modal harmony.

It developed over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as taking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance/pop music.

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Horace Silver

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Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva. is an American jazz pianist and composer.

He is known for his distinctive humorous and funky playing style and for his pioneering contributions to hard bop. Silver was influenced by a wide range of musical styles, notably gospel music, African music, and Latin American music.

Developed his own groups in hard bop after the first major group he was a part of, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

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Kind of Blue

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Kind of Blue is a jazz album by musician Miles Davis, released on August 17, 1959.

As of January 16, 2002, it has been certified triple platinum in sales

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Cassandra Wilson

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is an American jazz singer and songwriter from Jackson, Mississippi. In 1996 she won the Grammy award for Best Jazz Vocal Album for New Moon Daughter. Two of her albums, Blue Skies and New Moon Daughter, have topped the US jazz charts.

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Dizzy Gillespie

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He was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, singer, and composer. Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz.

He also used a trumpet whose bell was bent at a 45 degree angle rather than a traditional straight trumpet. This was originally the result of accidental damage caused during a job on January 6, 1953, but the constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect.

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"The Spanish Tinge"

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The phrase Spanish Tinge is a reference to the belief that a Latin American touch offers a reliable method of spicing the more conventional 4/4 rhythms commonly used in jazz and pop music. The phrase is a quotation from Jelly Roll Morton. In his Library of Congress recordings, after referencing the influence of his own French Creole culture in his music, he noted the Spanish presence.

This was in the 1920's.

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Clifford Brown

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was an influential and highly rated American jazz trumpeter. Despite an abbreviated recording career of only 4 years duration. He's paired with Max Roach in their quintet, and was a leader in the hard bop movement; he didn't cater too much commercially, either.

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Synthesizers

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Synthesizer as used in music, is a term derived from a Greek word syntithenai (synthesis.)

is being used to describe a device capable of generating and/or manipulating electronic signals for use in music creation, recording and performance. A synthesizer is capable of generating and manipulating audio tones such as for example musical notes.

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Jazz Repertory Movement

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good question

The jazz repertory movement was but one symptom of the larger process of institutionalization jazz underwent in the1980s and 90s. In the USA particularly, jazz came to receive a level of economic support and recognition previouslyreserved for classical music. Private foundations, government arts agencies, museums and major corporationsbecame important sources of funding, underwriting special events and media projects and sponsoring fellowships,awards and competitions for jazz musicians. Institutions of higher learning established jazz degree programmes andhired seasoned professionals to serve as teachers. The literature on jazz expanded greatly in the form of textbooks,scholarly monographs, popular biographies and histories and pedagogical materials. And when in the 1990s somewriters began to debate the virtues or perils of a ‘jazz canon’ (recorded performances that had assumed the status of‘masterpieces’, as on the critic Martin Williams's widely-used anthology The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz,1972, 2/1987), it was evident that jazz had covered vast cultural distance over the relatively short course of its history.

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Wynton Marsalis

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He is among the most prominent jazz musicians of the modern era, and a well-known instrumentalist in classical music. He is also the Musical Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

he has made sixteen classical and more than thirty jazz recordings, has been awarded nine Grammys, between the genres and the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first time it has been awarded for a jazz recording.

virtuosity in classical trumpet

Part of the group of musicians that became known as the "Young Lions"

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John Coltrane

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nicknamed Trane, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. He was of the 1960's generation, and served as a link between swing style and more moderntenor saxophone. He was an important leader of Hard Bop.

Coltrane has been credited with reshaping modern jazz and with being the predominant influence on successive generations of saxophonists. Along with tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Sonny Rollins, Coltrane fundamentally altered expectations for the instrument.

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Ella Fitzgerald

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lso known as Lady Ella and the First Lady of Song, is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th Century.

she was noted for her purity of tone, near faultless phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. She is widely considered to have been one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook.

She is paralleled with Coleman Hawkins because of her exceptional improv. She shot to fame after she recorded "A Tisket, A Tasket".

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Ornette Coleman

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is an American saxophonist and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s.

his keening, crying sound draws heavily on blues music. Part of the uniqueness of his sound came from his use of a plastic saxophone on his classic early recordings (Coleman claimed that it sounded drier, without the pinging sound of metal), though in more recent years he has played a metal saxophone. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007.

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Charlie Parker

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was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Early in his career Parker was dubbed "Yardbird"

It was later shortened to "Bird" and remained Parker's nickname for the rest of his life and inspiration for the titles of his works, such as "Yardbird Suite" and "Bird Feathers".

Parker, along with Dizzy Gillespie, were the two main founding fathers of bebop.

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Third Stream

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music is a term coined in 1957 by Gunther Schuller to describe a musical genre which is a synthesis of classical music and jazz. Improvisation -- a key element of jazz, but far less common in classical music -- is generally seen as a vital component of Third Stream.

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Comping

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In a standard jazz combo, the pianist or guitarist typically comps during the horn and double bass solos by improvising chords and improvised countermelodies.

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Bill Evans

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One of the long line of pianists who served with Miles Davis' bands; he revolutionized the "trio". Joined the MD Quintet in 1958. His close block chord solos style was known as locked hands style. His trio explored more music interaction than bands previous.

In a rock or folk band, a guitarist or piano player will accompany by playing primarily root-position chords consisting of the root, 3rd, and 5th note of a chord. In the key of C, the G chord would include the notes "G", "B", and "D" (the root, 3rd, and 5th of the chord).

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Bebop

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Bebop is a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos and improvisation based on harmonic structure rather than melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. It first surfaced in musicians' argot some time during the first two years of the Second World War. Hard bop later developed from bebop combined with blues and gospel music.

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Dave Brubeck

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better known as Dave Brubeck, is a U.S. jazz pianist. Often regarded as a genius in his field, he has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic,

His long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, wrote the Dave Brubeck Quartet's most famous piece, "Take Five", which is in 5/4 time and has endured as a jazz classic.

He was part of the Cool Jazz movement, and became famous for merging jazz with classical techniques.

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Stan Kenton

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He learned piano as a child, and while still a teenager toured with various bands. He was a big band leader of the 1950's.

he formed his own band, which developed into one of the best-known West Coast ensembles of the Forties. In the Mid 40's Kenton's Band and style became known as "The Wall of Sound", a tag later used by Phil Spector.

led a highly innovative, influential, and often controversial American jazz orchestra. In later years he was widely active as an educator.

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Walking Bass

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a walking bass is a bass accompaniment generally consisting of unsyncopated notes of equal value, usually quarter notes (known in jazz as a "four feel"). Walking bass lines are used in rock, blues, rock-a-billy, ska, R&B, gospel, latin, country, and many other genres (Friedland 1995, p.4).

the last two quarter notes of the second measure, D and E, "walk" up from the first quarter note in that measure, C, to the first note of the third measure, F (C and F are the roots of the chords in the first through second and third through fourth measures, respectively).

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Miles Davis

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A trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s. He played on various early bebop records and recorded one of the first cool jazz records.

He was partially responsible for the development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s

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Gunther Schuller

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He coined the term "Third Stream" to describe music that combines classical and jazz techniques. Schuller has written over 160 original compositions.

He studied at the Saint Thomas Choir School and became an accomplished horn player; at the age of seventeen he was principal hornist with the Cincinnati Symphony

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Charles Mingus

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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 onstage explosions, though it has been argued that his temper also grew from a need to vent frustration. Ironically, a perfect show could irritate him by closing this outlet.

also known as Charlie Mingus, was an American jazz bassist, composer, bandleader, and occasional pianist. He was also known for his activism against racial injustice.

Big bassist bandleader of the early postmodern era.

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Blood on the Fields

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It received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Music. However, Marsalis' victory was controversial because according to the Pulitzer guidelines, his work was not eligible.



After being read the list of revisions made to to piece, Ward acknowledged that the minor changes should not have qualified it as eligible, but he said that "the list you had here was not available to us, and we did not discuss it

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Herbie Hancock

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part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet", Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound. Later, he was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk.

is an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist and composer from Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Hancock is one of jazz music's most important and influential pianists and composers. He embraced elements of rock, funk, and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz.

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The Jazz Messengers

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profoundly influential on mainstream jazz. Founded by Art Blakey and included Horace Silver, Clifford Brown,
Over more than 30 years his band the Jazz Messengers included many young musicians who went on to become prominent names in jazz

also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Along with Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, he was one of the inventors of the modern bebop style of drumming.

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Scat singing

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Scat singing is vocalizing either wordlessly or with nonsense words and syllables (e.g. "bippity-bippity-doo-wop-razzamatazz-skoobie-doobie-bee-bop-a-lula-shabazz") as employed by jazz singers who create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using only the voice. Also it is a type of voice instrumental.

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postmodernism

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ideas in the arts have influenced philosophy and the analysis of culture and society, expanded the importance of critical theory, and been the point of departure for works of literature.

It is the jazz that followed Ornette Coleman into the mid to late 1960's and beyond, a "jazz style revolution". It features a mix of historical styles and new approaches.

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Gil Evans

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His modest basement apartment behind a Chinese laundry soon became a meeting place for musicians looking to develop the music from bebop, though Charlie Parker himself was among those involved. With Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan and others Evans collaborated on a band book for a nonet starting in 1948, which had a booking for a week's appearance at the "Royal Roost"

an Ernest Gilmore Green and early took the family name Evans from his stepfather

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Thelonius Monk

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He was a pionies and composer who contributed a sophisticated and orinigal harmonic approach to bop. He servced as the house pianist at Minton's and participated in many important bop session. His quirky, unorthodox syle doesn't fit into the typical bop ideal. During his time, his musica and performance style defied classification and mainstream trends.


Us3 is a jazz-rap group founded in London in 1991. Their name was inspired by a Horace Parlan recording produced by Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records[1]. On their debut album, Hand on the Torch, Us3 used samples from the Blue Note Records catalogue, all originally produced by Lion.

had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire (including his classic works "'Round Midnight" and "Blue Monk"). He is often regarded as a founder of bebop

harmonies and angular melodic twists, and are impossible to separate from Monk's unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of silences and hesitations.

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cutting contests

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were a form of musical battles between the various stride pianoplayers of Harlem in the early 1920s. The players would cut into the play of the other player and as such try to show who was the better performe

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Us3

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Us3 is the brainchild of London-based producer Geoff Wilkinson. Formed in 1992, alongside production partner Mel Simpson, Us3 rose from the ashes of 2 previous incarnations.

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Jet Set Six

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the teachers friends band his friend played the...