Phil Kelly Big Band Group Portrait
June 9th, 2009
Phil Kelly has been working on a new CD project out at Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville recently. I got to make a panoramic photo of the whole band on a break out behind the studio. Phil is seated at right.
Jerry Dodgion Portrait
June 3rd, 2009
Jerry Dodgion was in town this weekend playing in a big band making a recording with Phil Kelly. He told me he needed a new portrait for publicity since he has some gigs coming up in the San Francisco Bay area. He grabbed his sax and we got together and made this portrait. Jerry is a jazz saxophonist and flautist.
Jerry Dodgion, alto saxophone, flute, arranger and composer, hails from Richmond, California on San Francisco Bay. He gained early experience in 1950s with bay area bands of Rudy Salvini, John Coppola/Chuck Travis and Gerald Wilson as well as brief appearances with the Vernon Alley quartet which included backing Billie Holiday in 1955.
Dodgion joined Benny Carter, on Gerald Wilson’s recommendation, for the opening of the “Moulin Rouge” in Las Vegas ‘55. Jerry joined the Red Norvo quintet [`58-’61] which included long stints in Las Vegas at the “Sands Hotel.” Many tours accompanying Frank Sinatra ‘59-’60 plus touring as part of the Benny Goodman groups of ‘59-’61 which incorporated the Red Norvo quintet into Goodman’s ten piece band (including Flip Phillips, Bill Harris and Jack Sheldon) and subsequent versions which included Zoot Sims, Carl Fontana and Charlie Shavers.
After a long career as a side man, Dodgion’s first release as a bandleader arrived in 2004 with his ensemble The Joy of Sax, featuring saxophonists Frank Wess, Brad Leali, Dan Block and Jay Brandford, pianist Mike LeDonne, bassist Dennis Irwin and percussionist Joe Farnsworth.
Jazz Photos – Mingus Big Band
May 27th, 2009
Here are some more shots of the fantastic Mingus Big Band who appeared last weekend at the 2009 Bellevue Jazz Festival with a description of them from their website at http://mingusmingusmingus.com/:
“The Mingus Big Band celebrates the music of the composer and bassist, Charles Mingus, who died in 1979. Under the artistic direction of Sue Mingus, this 14-piece band performed Thursday nights from 1991 to 2004 at the Fez under Time Cafe in New York City, occasionally alternating with the Charles Mingus Orchestra. From November 2004 to September 2008, the big band had a residency at Iridium Jazz Club and in October 2008 moved to Monday residency at Jazz Standard. The Mingus Big Band tours extensively in the United States and abroad, and has eight recordings to its credit, six of which have been nominated for Grammys.
Regulars currently appearing in the 14-piece band:
3 Trumpets: Randy Brecker, Earl Gardner, Alex Sipiagin, Lew Soloff, Tatum Greenblatt, Ryan Kisor, Kenny Rampton, Jack Walrath, Sean Jones
3 Trombones: Conrad Herwig, Andy Hunter, Ku-umba Frank Lacy, Earl McIntyre, Dave Taylor, Robin Eubanks, Joe Fiedler, Clark Gayton
5 Saxophones: Vincent Herring, Seamus Blake, Abraham Burton, Wayne Escoffery, Donny McCaslin, Mark Gross, Craig Handy, Jason Marshall, Lauren Sevian, Jaleel Shaw, Steve Slagle, Ronnie Cuber, David Lee Jones
Piano: Orrin Evans, David Kikoski, Helen Sung, George Colligan, Kenny Drew Jr.
Bass: Boris Kozlov, Hans Glawischnig, Andy McKee, Joe Martin, Ugonna Okegwo, Dwayne Burno
Drums: Donald Edwards, Gene Jackson, Victor Lewis, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Adam Cruz ”
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra
May 27th, 2009
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra Here are some more images form The Bellevue Jazz Festival 2009 this past weekend starting with the SRJO.
Jay Thomas on trumpet.
Hadley Caliman on saxophone.
Randy Halberstadt on piano.
About The SRJO
The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra (SRJO) is the Northwest’s premier big band jazz ensemble. Founded in 1995, the 17-piece big band is made up of the most prominent jazz soloists and band leaders in the greater Seattle area.
The SRJO is co-directed by drummer Clarence Acox, nationally recognized director of bands at Seattle’s Garfield High School, and saxophonist/arranger Michael Brockman, long-time faculty member at the University of Washington School of Music.
The SRJO’s extensive and growing repertoire is drawn from the 100-year history of jazz, from turn-of-the-20th century ragtime to turn-of-the-21st century avant-garde. This includes works by America’s most famous jazz composers, among them Fletcher Henderson, Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Thad Jones, and of course, Count Basie and Duke Ellington. In addition, the SRJO’s repertoire grows each year as the ensemble adds previously unpublished works to its library.
Recovering jazz classics for performance by the ensemble is accomplished by co-director Michael Brockman, our region’s outstanding practitioner of the art of transcribing lost-to-print composition and arrangement, note for note, from vintage recordings.
The Players
The SRJO is made up of the Seattle area’s leading jazz instrumentalists, comprising an ethnically diverse group of young and veteran performers.
Trumpeter Jay Thomas has repeatedly been named best instrumentalist at Earshot’s annual Golden Ear awards and has recorded with Cedar Walton and Herb Ellis. Saxophonist Bill Ramsay is a touring veteran of the Count Basie Orchestra and the Benny Goodman bands. Saxophonist Hadley Caliman is a jazz faculty member at the Cornish College of the Arts, and a veteran of the bands of Freddie Hubbard and Earl Hines. Phil Sparks, named Earshot Musician of the Year in 1996, is the busiest bass player in Seattle. Saxophonist Mark Taylor is among the most in-demand young players in Seattle. Pianist Randy Halberstadt, another local headliner, serves on the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts.
A Great History
The SRJO has brought internationally known guest soloists to join in its concerts, including trumpeters Clark Terry and Arturo Sandoval, saxophonists James Moody, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Frank Wess and Kenny Hing, trombonist Slide Hampton, and singers Marlena Shaw, Ernie Andrews and Dee Daniels. In 2001, Quincy Jones conducted the SRJO at the Seattle Opera House in a performance of works he wrote for the Basie band and his own groups. The SRJO has played tribute concerts to Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, Stan Kenton, and Thelonious Monk.
Awards and Recognition
Named in “Best Jazz Concerts of 2006″ by the Seattle Times
Named in “Best Recordings of 2006″ by AudiophileAudition.com
Winner of 2005 Earshot Jazz Society Golden Ear Award for “NW Best Acoustic Jazz Ensemble”
Named in “Best Jazz Concerts of 2005″ by the Seattle Times
Named in “Best of 2005″ by Public Radio International�s Jazz After Hours
Winner of 1998 Earshot Jazz Society Golden Ear Award for “Concert of the Year”
Winner of 1999 and 2000 Starlight Award from the Kirkland Performance Center
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra
May 25th, 2009
The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra (SRJO), the Northwest’s premier big band jazz ensemble was the final main act of the 2009 Bellevue Jazz Festival at the Theatre at Meydenbauer Center Sunday night.
It was a great festival this year and I have so many more photos to process and edit from the shows I have already posted as well as some of the other free shows over the course of the 3 day festival. I will continue to put them up here over the next week after a break for the Memorial Day holiday.
Mingus Big Band
May 24th, 2009
The main event of the Bellevue Jazz Festival’s Saturday night lineup was avant-garde jazz ensemble, Mingus Big Band which celebrated the music of the composer and bassist, Charles Mingus Saturday night at Meydenbauer Center . What a great performance and a good turnout for an amazingly great band. More photos from Friday and Saturday;s other concerts to come in the next few days.
More form all of the Bellevue
Jazz Photography – Toshiko Akiyoshi
March 18th, 2009
Toshiko Akiyosh conducts the Seattle Jazz Repertory Jazz Orchestra during a performance at Nordstrom Hall on March 7th 2009
I wanted to run another image from a fantastic and entertaining performance, by internationally renowned, award-winning composer, pianist, and NEA Jazz Master Toshiko Akiyoshi . She lead the SRJO in a concert of big band works from her many years touring the globe with the Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band. Born in Manchuria, Akiyoshi took up jazz as a teenager in Japan, coming to the US in her 20s to immerse herself in the sounds of Basie and Ellington. She became the first woman named “Best Arranger and Composer” by Down Beat magazine, and has recorded over 45 albums with a refreshing view of the art of jazz.
This was one in a series of concerts by the : NEA Jazz Masters Live a new NEA initiative and Earshot Jazz has been chosen to participate. The program celebrates the living legends who have made exceptional contributions to the advancement of jazz, NEA Jazz Masters Live supports meaningful, in-depth, extended engagements featuring NEA Jazz Masters that:
Photograph by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, a photojournalist specializing in jazz photography, photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations. He is also a Seattle wedding photographer with an unobtrusive, story-telling approach creating award winning wedding photojournalism among Seattle wedding photographers.
Wayne Horvitz: New York Composers Orchestra, East and West
November 4th, 2008
This concluding evening of the Wayne Horvitz retrospective featured Horvitz’s New York Composers Orchestra West and the President. What an incredible night of bands. The range and scope of his music left little to be desired. The fantastic level of talent represented on stage was simply amazing too. Not just for Seattle but for anywhere on this planet. The performance blew me away, although I did manage to hold on and stay until the end.
The New York Composers Orchestra was formed in 1986 by composers Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb as a means to perform works by composers wishing to write for jazz instrumentation without being confined by traditional jazz and big band styles. In New York, the orchestra was commissioned to perform works by Anthony Braxton, Lenny Picket, Butch Morris, Marty Ehrlich, and Elliott Sharp, among many others. After Horvitz and Holcomb relocated to Seattle in 1988, however, the NYCO repertoire spread out across the US – it has been performed by the original ensemble in New York City, Horvitz and Holcomb’s New York Composers Orchestra West, which very occasionally performed here in Seattle, and the Boston-based Jazz Composers Alliance, which has also showcased some of its scores.
Opportunities to hear large orchestras as adventurous as this, featuring musicians as gifted as this, are few and far between. As Rolling Stone has noted: “The NYCO points directions out of the musical prison that surround too much current jazz. And, like all truly great big bands, it swings its tail off.”
In this Seattle revival, Horvitz presented a stellar lineup of old friends from New York days along with some of the outstanding Seattleites whom he recruited to his cause early in his time here: on reeds, Hans Teuber, Briggan Krauss, Skerik, Doug Wieselman, and Jim Dejoie; on trumpets, Ron Miles, Brad Allison, and Thomas Marriott; on trombones, Chris Stover and Nelson Bell; on French horn, Tom Varner; on drums, Bobby Previte; on bass, Phil Sparks; on piano and organ, Wayne Horvitz. Robin Holcomb conducts and plays piano. With special guest, on guitar: Tim Young.
Click here for the complete schedule for the rest of the upcoming shows at the 2008 Earshot Jazz Festival
Photograph by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, a photojournalist specializing in jazz photography, photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations and also a Seattle wedding photographer with an unobtrusive, story-telling approach creating award winning Seattle wedding photography and wedding photojournalism among Seattle wedding photographers.
Wayne Horvitz: New York Composers Orchestra
November 4th, 2008
Wayne Horvitz conducts the New York Composers Orchestra, Monday, November 3, Triple Door
This concluding evening of the Wayne Horvitz retrospective featured Horvitz’s New York Composers Orchestra West and the President. What an incredible night of bands. The range and scope of his music left little to be desired. The fantastic level of talent represented on stage was simply amazing too. Not just for Seattle but for anywhere on this planet. The performance blew me away, although I did manage to hold on and stay until the end.
The New York Composers Orchestra was formed in 1986 by composers Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb as a means to perform works by composers wishing to write for jazz instrumentation without being confined by traditional jazz and big band styles. In New York, the orchestra was commissioned to perform works by Anthony Braxton, Lenny Picket, Butch Morris, Marty Ehrlich, and Elliott Sharp, among many others. After Horvitz and Holcomb relocated to Seattle in 1988, however, the NYCO repertoire spread out across the US – it has been performed by the original ensemble in New York City, Horvitz and Holcomb’s New York Composers Orchestra West, which very occasionally performed here in Seattle, and the Boston-based Jazz Composers Alliance, which has also showcased some of its scores.
Opportunities to hear large orchestras as adventurous as this, featuring musicians as gifted as this, are few and far between. As Rolling Stone has noted: “The NYCO points directions out of the musical prison that surround too much current jazz. And, like all truly great big bands, it swings its tail off.”
In this Seattle revival, Horvitz presented a stellar lineup of old friends from New York days along with some of the outstanding Seattleites whom he recruited to his cause early in his time here: on reeds, Hans Teuber, Briggan Krauss, Skerik, Doug Wieselman, and Jim Dejoie; on trumpets, Ron Miles, Brad Allison, and Thomas Marriott; on trombones, Chris Stover and Nelson Bell; on French horn, Tom Varner; on drums, Bobby Previte; on bass, Phil Sparks; on piano and organ,Wayne Horvitz. Robin Holcomb conducts and plays piano. With special guest, on guitar: Tim Young.
Click here for the complete schedule for the rest of the upcoming shows at the 2008 Earshot Jazz Festival
Photograph by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, a photojournalist specializing in jazz photography, photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations and also a Seattle wedding photographer with an unobtrusive, story-telling approach creating award winning Seattle wedding photography and wedding photojournalism among Seattle wedding photographers.
Sam Gray’s Frantic Menagerie Orchestra
November 4th, 2008
Sam Gray, the outstanding composer and arranger, leads a driving big band of his contemporary, younger Seattleites at the Triple Door, opening up for the third and last night of the Wayne Horvitz 20-year retrospective. Monday, November 3, Triple Door
Gray, a 2008 graduate of Garfield High School’s extraordinary jazz program, has also been a student of Wayne Horvitz’s for many years. Of Gray, who now is studying composition at Temple University in Philadelphia, Horvitz says: “Sam was one of a few students first at Washington Middle School and then with the Garfield band who studied improvisation with me – he’s a sax player – who also were interested in composition. By ninth and tenth grade he was bringing me really interesting charts, and by eleventh grade they were really great, really interesting. For example, he did an arrangement of ‘Caledonian Mission,’ off The Band’s Music from Big Pink, and also a They Might Be Giants tune. Plus a lot of originals. He was already pulling this off in eleventh and twelfth grade. When he gets out he’s going to be a force of nature.”
Click here for the complete schedule for the rest of the upcoming shows at the 2008 Earshot Jazz Festival
Photograph by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, a photojournalist specializing in jazz photography, photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations. He is also a Seattle wedding photographer with a subtle, unobtrusive, story-telling approach creating award winning wedding photojournalism ranking him among the best Seattle wedding photographers.