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(Joseph)

(b New Orleans, LA, 14 May 1897; d Paris, France, 14 May 1959). American jazz clarinetist and soprano saxophonist. He was an Afro-French Creole, descended from free people of color residing in Tremé, an early hotbed of jazz activity. As a boy he emulated his older brothers who worked semi-professionally as musicians and played in a family band, the Silver Bells. “Big Eye” Louis Nelson and George Baquet were his primary teachers. Nelson remembered Bechet resisting formal instruction (“He wouldn’t learn notes, but he was my best scholar”), and the latter never became musically literate. Like many younger Creoles, Bechet rejected traditional Creole proprieties and gravitated to African American vernacular culture, particularly the blues as expressed by Buddy Bolden. By 1910 he was sitting in with bands such as the Eagle, and by 1915 he was being praised as a prodigy by musicians who frequented the Piron and Williams music publishing company on Tulane Avenue. ...

Jazz-rock group. Emanating from the late 1960s melting pot, it was one of the earliest bands to characterize the jazz-rock idiom. Formed in 1967 by Al Kooper (Alan Peter Kuperschmidt, b 5 Feb 1944, Brooklyn, NY; vocals and keyboards), Steve Katz (b 9 May 1945; guitar), and Bobby Colomby (b 20 Dec 1944; drums), the group blended original composition with its own stylized arrangements of jazz, country, rock, and rhythm-and-blues material. The band played jazz standards such as Billie Holiday's “God bless the child” and Herbie Hancock's “Maiden Voyage,” as well as versions of songs by Laura Nyro (“And When I Die,” “He's a runner”), Brenda Holloway (“You’ve made me so very happy”), John Lennon and Paul McCartney (“Got to get you into my life”), and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (“Sympathy for the Devil”). Much of the original material framing these came from Katz and the band's second and longest-serving singer, the Canadian David Clayton-Thomas, who joined for the second, best-selling and Grammy Award-winning album ...

[Randal Edward ]

(b Philadelphia, PA, Nov 27, 1945). American trumpeter, flugelhorn player, composer, arranger, and bandleader, brother of Michael Brecker. After graduating from Indiana University in 1966, he moved to New York, where he played with Clark Terry, Duke Pearson, and the Thad Jones–Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. A versatile musician, he worked with Blood, Sweat and Tears, performing on their debut album, played hard bop and soul jazz with the Horace Silver Quintet and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and helped form the fusion group Dreams, which included his brother Michael, Billy Cobham, and John Abercrombie. During the 1970s he worked with Silver, Larry Coryell, Stevie Wonder, the Plastic Ono Super Band, and Cobham. He and Michael also performed and recorded (six albums) as the Brecker Brothers, garnering much critical acclaim. He continued to lead his own group into the 1980s and also recorded and toured with virtuoso performers Jaco Pastorious and Stanley Clarke. A reunion of the Brecker Brothers in ...

(b Polleur, Belgium, 1950). Belgian vibraphonist and leader. Self-taught, he first played drums and piano, but in 1966 he heard Gary Burton perform in Comblain, and two years later he took up vibraphone. In the early 1970s, while working towards an undergraduate degree in musicology at the University of Liège, he played in dixieland and modern-jazz groups; he then moved to Italy to pursue graduate work in medieval music. He played jazz standards with Steve Houben in the group Merry-Go-Round (1975), which performed in the Netherlands, toured the USSR as an accompanist to the singer Jean Vallée, and from 1978 recorded albums of his compositions, incorporating elements of jazz, Belgian traditional songs, and bossa nova, with such guest soloists as Bill Frisell, Toots Thielemans, Houben, and Larry Schneider. In the late 1970s he began teaching in secondary schools, and he played in Félix Simtaine’s Act Big Band (from ...

[Nicholas Anthony]

(b New Castle, PA, March 20, 1914; d Woburn, MA, Dec 1981). American tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. His full name appears on his handwritten 1940 draft registration card. His first important engagements were with Joe Haymes (1936–7) and Muggsy Spanier’s Ragtimers (November–December 1939), with which he may be heard on the pairing Lonesome Road/Mandy, Make up your Mind (1939, Bb 10766) respectively as a ballad soloist and in a rambunctious mood. Later he played with Woody Herman (early 1940), the band led by Will Bradley and Ray McKinley, and Bobby Hackett (autumn 1940), and worked with Spanier’s big band (April 1941 – spring 1942), Teddy Powell, the guitarist Alvino Rey, and the pianist Chico Marx (summer 1943). During the mid-1940s Caiazza made many V-discs with Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Hot Lips Page, and others, and he may be heard to advantage on ...

(b Philadelphia, PA, June 8, 1956). American classical and jazz pianist and composer. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Caine began playing piano at the age of seven. At age 12 he commenced studies with French jazz pianist Bernard Peiffer. He later studied composition with ...

(b Liège, Belgium, Feb 7, 1907; d Wavre, Belgium, Feb 10, 1987). Belgian pianist . After working in cinemas and music halls he performed in Switzerland (1928) and France (1929). In 1930 he toured Algeria and worked in Paris, and from 1931 to 1934 he was pianist, organist, and arranger at a nightclub in Liège. Colignon then played with Fud Candrix’s orchestra, often as a principal soloist (1935–40), and led his own group in Brussels. After World War II he was in Antwerp, and later he held residencies in Brussels (1947–53) and Charleroi. Thereafter he worked in Germany, mainly as an organist. He made recordings as an unaccompanied soloist (1937–8), as a leader (1939, 1941–2), and as a sideman with Candrix (1937–40), Kutte Widmann and the clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Jack Lowens (both 1942), and René Compère (...

Country in south-east Europe. Once the ancient Roman province of Illyricum, it was settled at the beginning of the 7th century by Slavs, who were converted to Western Christianity by the end of the 8th century. Medieval principalities were quickly formed, and a kingdom of Croatia existed from 925 (the dynasty of Trpimirović) to the end of the 11th century. In 1102 Croatia entered into a personal royal union with Hungary, with dynasties of Árpád, Anjou, and those of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia, and Poland on its throne during the 14th and 15th centuries; in 1527 it became part of the Habsburg Empire by electing Ferdinand King of Croatia. This political, cultural, and social union with Hungary and Austria lasted until 1918. Between 1409 and 1797, however, the Croatian maritime provinces of Istria and Dalmatia were under Venetian control, and from 1526 to 1699 other parts (e.g. the continental province of Slavonia) were conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The region comprising the Republic of Dubrovnik claimed autonomy from ...

(Dewey, III)

(b Alton, IL, 26 May 1926; d Santa Monica, CA, 28 Sept 1991). American trumpeter, composer, bandleader, and painter.

His father, Miles Dewey Davis II, was a dental surgeon with degrees from Arkansas Baptist College and Northwestern College of Dentistry. He established his dental practice in East St. Louis and from the age of one Davis was raised and educated there. Davis’s youth was spent in relatively affluent circumstances. With his sister Dorothy, two years older, and brother Vernon, three years younger, he spent vacations on their father’s 200-acre hog farm near Millstadt, Illinois. Davis learned to ride horses and other country pursuits. One of his lasting memories was hearing spirituals wafting from the rural churches. But he was essentially a city boy, and from early adolescence he came to know big-city nightlife in St. Louis.

Davis’s father seems to have indulged every whim of his oldest son. He inculcated in him a sharply honed family pride predicated on three generations of African American success against oppressive odds. The patriarch, ...

[Al Laurence Dimeola ]

(b Jersey City, NJ, July 22, 1954). American jazz fusion guitarist and composer. He is known especially for his technical virtuosity and for combining Latin, world, and jazz styles. His guitar influences include Larry Coryell, Tal(madge Holt) Farlow, and Kenny Burrell. He was also inspired by the tangos of Ástor Piazzolla, with whom he developed a close friendship. He enrolled in the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1971, where he remained until 1974 when he was invited to join the fusion group Return to Forever with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, and Lenny White. The group released three recordings with Di Meola, including the Grammy award-winning No Mystery (1975), before disbanding in 1976. The group reunited for a tour in 2008. Di Meola’s career as a leader began with the production of Land of the Midnight Sun (1976). Recordings on which he is recognized as leader now number over 20 albums. He has collaborated with luminaries such as Jaco Pastorius, Jan Hammer, and Chick Corea. One of his most successful collaborations was his trio with guitarists John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia. Their ...

Record label. It was owned by the East Wind Trade Associates company, founded in 1984 in Hartford, Connecticut, by Steve Boulay, Ted Everts, and David Barrick with the assistance of Gerald A. Friedman. Its catalogue was devoted to Russian jazz in styles ranging from bop to jazz-rock. (E. Schmitt: “3 in Hartford Importing Records of Russian Jazz,” ...

Record company. It was established by CBS in 1953 as a subsidiary of Columbia Records. Although from the start its issues included jazz and pop, Epic for many years was known primarily for its recordings of George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra (including those made with a young Leon Fleisher as piano soloist). In the latter part of the 1950s, as rock and roll began to overtake the industry, the company struggled to find itself artistically and commercially, accumulating an odd assortment of American, Australian, and European performers representing a wide array of classical, jazz, and popular styles.

The label’s fortunes began to change in 1964 with its participation in the British Invasion. Epic distributed the American releases of the Dave Clark Five and the Yardbirds and later those of the Hollies and Donovan. The true turning point for the company was the signing in 1967 of Sly and the Family Stone, whose critical and financial success helped redefine the label as a youth-oriented powerhouse. The company expanded through the 1970s, achieving unimaginable heights in the 1980s with Michael Jackson’s mature solo work (...

Czech string quartet, founded 1999. Its line-up has remained constant since its foundation: David Pokorný and Vladimír Klánský on violins, Vladimír Kroupa on viola, and Vít Petrášek on cello. Although classical repertoire remains central to their professional lives, the Epoque Quartet is remarkable for the breadth and professionalism of its ‘crossover’ work. The quartet has performed with the leading artists of Czech popular music, arranged world music from various traditions (most recently with the clarinettist Irvin Venyš for their CD Irvin_Epoque), and given the premières of over 80 pieces, the style of which ranges from rock- and jazz-influenced music to contemporary art music, mostly by Czech composers including Jan Kučera, Petr Wajsar, Jan Dušek, Gabriela Vermelho, and others.

Their open-mindedness and long-standing interest in various musical fields allows them to perform stylistically in a way classically-trained ensembles often find problematic, particularly in terms of rhythm, feeling, and energy when performing jazz- and rock-influenced repertoire....