News & Updates — jazz

Perhaps best known to casuals as the bassist of Cream, the Scottish virtuoso Jack Bruce in fact had a long and varied career that included rock, blues, jazz, classical, third stream, Latin, world music and fusion. He could play electric & upright bass, cello, piano, harmonica and was a singer/songwriter as well. Growing up listening to jazz, he studied classical cello and was kicked out of music school for playing jazz on the side. In the early '60s he toured Europe in a big band and joined the legendary Blues Incorporated in '62, which splintered off into the Graham Bond...

Canadian pianist, arranger, composer, bandleader, Gil Evans was the first call arranger time and time again with Miles Davis and later developed an obsession with Jimi Hendrix. Born in Toronto but moving around mining towns until the family settled in California, he saw Duke Ellington play in '27 and got the orchestration bug. He also took influence from Kurt Weill and Spanish & Brazilian music. He moved to NYC in the '40s with a gig arranging for Claude Thornhill.  In the late '40s his apartment hosted incubator sessions with Miles, Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, George Russell and others to develop...

Cockney-accented singer/songwriter/actor Ian Dury was a great punk poet, talented lyricist and cult hero. After getting polio at 8, he went to a school for the disabled that "toughened" him up. Indeed he strutted the stage with confidence, despite the handicap. His first band was Kilburn and the High Roads, who toured with The Who and broke up in '75. His next band was the entertaining music-hall spirited Ian Dury & the Blockheads and they had some lasting hits (mostly in the UK) of the new wave era. Their music was influenced by funk, reggae, disco and jazz and Dury...

An important voice in Cuba, Lázaro Ros is virtually unknown outside of Yoruba-oriented circles. One of Cuba's major Akpwons (praise singer), he was a Lucumí folkloricist and mentor to young singers & scholars serious about Santeria. Havana born, started singing at festivals at 13 and was singing on the radio by '49, around which time he was initiated. The new government formed the cultural/musical entity Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba and with this program Ros got to record and tour Europe, Mexico and the USA. In the '80s he lent his powerful voice, deep knowledge and blessing to a project...

Happy birthday to one of the early influential jazz greats, Joe "King" Oliver! Old enough to claim Buddy Bolden as an influence, he became one of New Orleans' star cornet & trumpet players (he also had professional experience playing trombone). Despite having one working eye he learned to read and write music and was also a notable composer. He was mentor and a lifelong friend to Louie Armstrong, whom he taught and helped in New Orleans and later hired in Chicago. From about 1908 or so he was one of the best musicians in NOLA's Storyville district, destroying competitors in...