Category Archives: jazz

Spain by Chick Corea – Return to Forever, Kansas City Aug. 26th 2011

Return to Forever IV: Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Frank Gamble. Zappa Plays Zappa. Chick Corea actually shook my hand! :D

The Midland Theatre, KCMO

Return to Forever is a jazz fusion group founded and led by keyboardist Chick Corea. Through its existence, the band has cycled through a number of different members, with the only consistent band mate of Corea’s being bassist Stanley Clarke. Along with Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever is often cited as one of the core groups of the jazz-fusion movement of the 1970s. Several musicians, including Clarke, Flora Purim, Airto Moreira and Al Di Meola, first came to prominence through their performances on Return to Forever’s albums.

Miles Davis Report

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”
–Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois, on May 25, 1926. There were also two other children, an older sister and a younger brother. In 1928 the family moved to St. Louis, Illinois, where Davis’s father became a successful oral surgeon. At the age of thirteen his father gave him a trumpet and soon Davis joined his high school band. While still in high school he met and was coached by his earliest idol, the great St. Louis trumpeter Clark Terry.

Davis fathered two kids in 1944 in New York, City. He studied classical music then. He also enrolled in a school of music. Then in the early 1950′s he became addicted to heroin. But he soon fought the battle and came back to being successful three years later. In the 1970s Miles found that rock had replaced jazz as the music choice for the younger people, kids, generation. In order not to get left behind he started to perform with an electronic band. The sound was bubbling, dark, and dense, and it further decreased some jazz fans and many critics as well. Davis didn’t end it though. He though that that there are other powers music yet to be discovered.

So in the 1970s and between the 80′s he sure did continue group with electronic players. He played the organ instead of his laid back trumpet. He also began to play with his back to the audience. He loved to experiment being on the stage in front of people just to see how they would respond. How funny Davis with the art. At the end of the 70s things started to foreshadow lots of things and the electronic. Miles died on September 28, 1991, but his music, style, will always continue to influence not only jazz music, but popular culture as well.

Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Davis was noted as “one of the key figures in the history of jazz”. On November 5, 2009, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan sponsored a famous piece of work (music) in the US House of Representatives to recognize and commemorate the album Kind of Blue on its 50th anniversary. The measure also talks about jazz being a national treasure and pressures the United States government to preserve and advance the art form of jazz musis and to never let it go anywhere. It passed with seceral votes of 409–0 on December 15, 2009.

3/5/2010

Mary Lou William’s Report

“During the years I was with Andy Kirk we starved almost. I remember not eating for practically a month several times. But we were very, very happy because the music was so interesting, and you forgot to eat, anyway.”

–Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams was born on May 10, 1910, in Atlanta, Georgia, as Mary Elfreda Winn. She never knew her father until she was in her twenties. Her mother drank and worked doing a lot of laundry to support the kids. Her mother also liked to play the reed organ and kept Mary there while she practiced. One day Mary began to play. Her mom was so astonished she dropped Mary and ran to tell the neighbors to watch Mary Play. Williams was able to play by ear. The easiest she could play was Ragtime. What was so amazing about Mary was that she never needed to read music, and she never needed lessons. Since Mary was already good at playing the piano and was able to perform the family thought of it as a ticket out of Atlanta and in 1914 they moved to Pittsburgh. When Marry moved there her first job was in a bar. She earned 20 dollars for playing the piano.

One of Marry’s nicknames was “The little piano girl”.

At the age of 12 she was already in a band. In 1922 after a African American there came to town to play one of the musicians got sick. Business Managers learned of William’s Power and Will to play. Williams didn’t stay in High School. She left in in the 1920′s to be in a famous act. She got married around then. She also started making her own recordings and people around world-wide began to notice her. She even got enough money to have almost a week long engagement.

In a show called the Seymour and Jennette Show she fell in love with a guy named John Williams. A couple years later they got married. Later, she then moved to Oklahoma. Within a couple of years the band moved its base to Kansas City. She became not only a full time pianist but a very nice musical arranger. Williams’ made very well arrangements. Everyone began to here about Mary as the biggest jazz bandleaders of the day. Soon she began working with Duke Ellington. In the 1930s, she was one of the leading Woman in Kansas City jazz scene. In 1940 her marriage and the Kirk band had started to break down. Williams broke up with Kirk and married a trumpet player “baker”.

In the 1970s she toured throughout the U.S. and Europe as both a solo artist and with a trio. Along the way she performed at numerous international jazz festivals on television even the White House. Williams’s made one last recording. The following year at the age of 69 she was diagnosed with cancer. It lasted for about two years. But she didn’t stop. She kept teaching at schools. She died in 1981. In 1990 she became the first woman instrumentalist honored wonderful glory. When she died, Williams left behind a musical legacy that few people of any gender or race can match.

By: Jada Kimbrough

3/5/10