Gary Burton: Forging Ahead
The News Review:
- Gary Burton: Forging Ahead
- The State of Jazz in Harlem
- David Benoit: All that jazz and more
- Bach With A Twist f Afro-Cuban Jazz
- Jazz musician Charles ‘Buddy’ Montgomery dies at 79
Gary Burton: Forging Ahead
All About Jazz
I got my first record contract from Chet Atkins who saw me playing in a local club in Nashville and who decided to talk to RCA and get them to offer me a long-term contract” says this renowned musician born in a small Indiana town less than 300 miles from the country music capital of the world. The musician speaking isn’t Crystal Gayle the popular country singer who was raised in an Indiana small town nor is it John Mellencamp one of Indiana’s favored songs who sang famously about “being born in a small town. “The musician speaking earlier this year from his Massachusetts home is Gary Burton one of the giant names in jazz music and education for decades and winner this past February of his sixth Grammy award for his album of duets with. Burton now 66 has led outstanding bands played with a myriad of jazz greats and churned out acclaimed albums over a career that started in the late 1950s when he was in his mid-teens. He’s also been a major figure in jazz education teaching at Berklee College of Music eventually becoming its deal of curriculum and later advancing to become its chief operating officer in the process touching the lives of hundreds of aspiring musicians. He has discovered some major talent and nurtured young musicians who have gone on to major success.
The State of Jazz in Harlem
Jazz.com
Harlem the beautiful the vibrant the rawest. The uncompromising Harlem. Nestled away in the Northern part of Manhattan this is the place that many greats in jazz music have called home. It has served as the springboard to fame for countless musicians and helped establish New York City as one of the hotbeds of jazz. Decades later Harlem has been altered by commercial businesses?125th Street doesn?t feel the way it did in the 1930s?but the same attitude and cultural pulse that defined the neighborhood more than seventy-five years ago is still alive and well. With the transformation and gentrification of Uptown Manhattan jazz music has taken on a new life of its own. The music is not as commercial or celebrated by the masses like it once was but Harlem remains a place where jazz music will thrive and survive.
David Benoit: All that jazz and more
Los Angeles Times
It is the 65-piece Rolling Hills Estates-based orchestra’s sole full-scale concert of the season. Yet its eclectic mix of genres seems an appropriate way to spotlight Benoit’s growing albeit not well known interest in classical music. Lighthouse dawnsBenoit was born in Bakersfield a place associated more with the country music of Buck wens than the jazz or Asian themes that would shape his adulthood. But Benoit’s early years were informed by his parents’ tastes — his mother’s love of Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland and his father’s fondness for jazz especially guitarists like Tal Farlow. When Benoit was 8 his family moved to Hermosa Beach home of the legendary jazz club the Lighthouse. As a teenager in the ’60s and early ’70s Benoit was not much moved by the Rolling Stones (“not enough melodic content for me”) but saw gigs at the Lighthouse that made him want to commit himself to jazz. Although he was drawn to the piano the instrument’s more intellectual and bebop-oriented masters such as Thelonious Monk Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano didn’t interest him much.
Bach With A Twist f Afro-Cuban Jazz
NPR
Their new CD Bach in Havana blends Bach melodies from pieces such as the Mass in B minor and the Well-Tempered Clavier with infectious Cuban rhythms including the cha-cha-cha the son and the danzon. It would be easy to write off Bach in Havana as just another cross-cultural crossover gimmick but the musicians of Tiempo Libre come by their blend honestly. In Cuba they studied classical music at a venerable Havana music conservatory by day and played Latin jazz rumbas under the cover of night as the Afro-Cuban style was forbidden at the school. For Jorge Gomez 37 the group’s leader and arranger the melding of Bach and Cuban music comes easily. “If you study the music of Bach for 15 years and at the same time every night you go to play rumba guaguanco and cha-cha-cha it’s easy to put both worlds together. “The classical connection gets even more personal for Gomez. His father one of Cuba’s most respected classical pianists played Bach at home.
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Jazz musician Charles ‘Buddy’ Montgomery dies at 79
Los Angeles Times
In 1957 Buddy and Monk formed the Mastersounds with Benny Barth on drums and Richie Crabtree on piano. Richard Bock the owner of Pacific Jazz Records released several albums of their work and the group found steady gigs in San Francisco. n Buddy’s suggestion one of their albums “The King and I: A Modern Jazz Interpretation by the Mastersounds” featured music from the hit Broadway show. Two of their other albums were thematic excursions through Broadway productions “Kismet: An Interpretation by the Mastersounds” and “Flower Drum Song: A Modern Jazz Interpretation by the Mastersounds. In 1959 the group recorded its only live album at what was then Pasadena Junior College before disbanding late in the year. Through much of the ’60s the three Montgomery brothers played together and recorded albums including “Groove Brothers” and “Groove Yard” as the Montgomery Brothers. After Wes Montgomery’s death from a heart attack in 1968 Buddy moved to Milwaukee and worked the hotel circuit there for much of the next decade.