Pianist and composer Dave Burrell was an important part of the free jazz scene of the 1960s, recording with Pharoah Sanders, Marion Brown, Archie Shepp and others. His new CD with his Full-Blown Trio, Expansion, marks Burrell's first recording for a U.S. label in almost 40 years.
Avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Zorn's most recent album reinterprets the music of film composer Ennio Morricone. His forthcoming recording pays homage to detective novelist Mickey Spillane.
Tuba player, composer, and arranger Howard Johnson has worked with jazz and rock legends. Johnson organized the band for the television show "Saturday Night Live," which he played for from 1975 to 1980. Johnson was won the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences "Most Valuable Tuba Player," for the last three years. Johnson also plays baritone saxophone and trumpet. He joins the show to discuss why he was drawn to the tuba, growing up in the South, and his career in jazz and rock.
As a composer, Coleman has been heavily influenced by James Brown's funk. You wouldn't mistake Coleman's band Five Elements for J.B.'s, but like the Godfather of Soul, he goes in for fast, jittery beats on Harvesting Semblances and Affinities.
The guitarist, composer and arranger died in his sleep Tuesday at 83. Hall was known for a subtle, lyrical playing style, a gift for innovation and collaborations with a host of talented musicians in a career that stretched for more than seven decades. Hear an interview from 1989.
The saxophonist and composer brings back the large ensemble sound on his new album. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says the performances are energetic but a often a little too loose. Hemphill's own playing steals the show.
Band leader and composer Mercer Ellington is the son of Duke Ellington, and leads the Duke Ellington Band. As a young man, Mercer Ellington played trombone, French horn and trumpet in his father's ensemble. Two recent Mercer Ellington albums have won wide acclaim: "Digital Duke" and "For Ellington," performed by the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Folk singer and composer Tom Paxton is known for his work as a musician in the Greenwich Village of the 1960s, where many of his songs became standards at the clubs in the area. His latest album is "The Paxton Report," and is full of topical songs about such subjects as nuclear power and the ERA. Paxton also brings his guitar for an in-studio concert.
South African pianist/composer Abdullah Ibrahim (E-bra-HEEM). His music is influenced by South African vocal and popular music, early American Jazz, church music, and American Jazz of the 1960's and 1970's which was influenced by African music. One of his songs, "Mannenberg is Where It's Happening (Capetown Fringe)," a vocal, was a hit in South Africa and became the anthem for the Soweto uprisings of 1976. Ibrahim formerly went by the name Dollar Brand, and has several albums under that name. Ibrahim lives in New York in self-imposed exile from South Africa.
Harnick collaborated with composer Jerry Bock on hit musicals like Fiorello! and Fiddler on the Roof. One of their earlier works, She Loves Me, has found newfound success; the original cast album has just been reissued on CD.
Tenor saxophonist and composer Archie Shepp is known for his radical jazz and his radical politics. His recent work has emphasized interpreting the traditions from which his playing and writing is derived, including a blues and spiritual album with Horace Parlan and a tribute album to Charlie Parker "Looking at Bird." His latest album is "Mama Rose." Shepp is also a playwright, poet, and professor. Shepp moved to Philadelphia at the age of 7, and will perform a concert with McCoy Tyner at the Cool Jazz Festival.
No'60s pop composer wrote more sophisticated songs than Bacharach, who died Feb. 8. Dozens of his best songs endure for all the right reasons; they're inventive, challenging and linger in your ear.
American guitarist and composer Ry Cooder. Cooder produced a new CD by Ibrahim Ferrer (ph), one of the singers with the band. A new documentary film called "Buena Vista Social Club," produced by Cooder, tells the story of these musicians.
Producer, writer, and composer Ralph Allen is one of the writers of the book for "Sugar Babies," the latest hit musical on Broadway. Allen joins the show to discuss musical theater, burlesque, vaudeville, and music.
Musician, producer, arranger, composer Quincy Jones has a new autobiography, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, (Doubleday) and a 4-CD boxset collecting his work, Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones (Rhino). In his fifty year career hes worked with just about anyone who is anybody in the music business. As a teenager he played backup for Billie Holiday, along with his 16 year old friend, Ray Charles. At 18 he began playing the trumpet in Lionel Hamptons band beside Clifford Brown.
Tenor saxophonist and composer, Ellery Eskelin. He's been called the most inventive American tenor player in creative music. His father, Rodd Keith, (also known as Rod Rodgers) was killed when he was struck by cars on the Hollywood Freeway after leaping or falling from the Santa Monica Boulevard overpass. Eskelin only knew his father for the first eighteen months of his life. As he grew up, Eskelin was inspired and intrigued by the continuous stories he heard about his father and his musical talent.
The musician, songwriter, composer and producer has made a name for himself by playing with the like of Amanda Palmer. For his latest album, however, he found himself departing from a rock sound as he began writing his own orchestral arrangements.
