Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra is a project by multi-instrumentalist Shawn Lee. Shawn grew up in a rural area on the outskirts of Wichita, Kansas. His mother is half Lebanese, half American Indian, his father Irish-American. While his peers got off on cheesy corporate rock and the kind of line-dancing tunes recently fashionable in Gap ads, Shawn was groovin to the blaxploitation funk Sly and the Isleys.
Wynton Marsalis has been described as the most outstanding jazz musician and trumpeter of his generation, as one of the world’s top classical trumpeters, as a big band leader in the tradition of Duke Ellington, a brilliant composer, a devoted advocate for the Arts and a tireless and inspiring educator. He carries these distinctions well. His life is a portrait of discipline, dedication, sacrifice, and creative accomplishment.
Laurent De Wilde, the Mid-Atlantic piano player of the year, is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. This school and a few others like it are called Les Grandes Ecoles and they are comparable to the Ivy League. They produce the elite in this country. And so it seemed appropriate to ask De Wilde: "What's a nice guy like you doing in a métier like this?" He replied with a very American have-a-nice-day croon: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Ken Nordine ( January 1920) is an American voiceover and recording artist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ken Nordine is the son of an architect. He attended Lane Technical College Prep High School (Chicago) and the University of Chicago. He has three sons with his wife Beryl whom he married in 1946. Nordine's deep, resonant voice has been featured on many commercial advertisements. One critic wrote that "you may not know Ken Nordine by name or face, but you'll almost certainly recognize his voice."
Bohren & der Club of Gore are a noir jazz band founded in 1992 in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany by Thorsten Benning (drums), Morten Gass (keys), Reiner Henseleit (guitar), and Robin Rodenberg (upright / double bass). They play a crossover of jazz and ambient, which they self described as an "unholy ambient mixture of slow jazz ballads, Black Sabbath doom and down tuned Autopsy sounds". Over the years they have continously reduced and compressed their music to extremes.
Celebrated pianist-composer Ahmad Jamal continues his performance schedule around the world, as he has for well over the last four decades. Noted for his outstanding technical command and identifiable sound as a piano stylist, Mr. Jamal was born on July 2, 1930, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A child prodigy who began to play the piano at the age of three, he began formal studies at age seven. While in high school, he completed the equivalent of college master classes under the noted African-American concert singer and teacher Mary Cardwell Dawson and pianist James Miller.
Kenny Garrett is a jazz saxophonist. He was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1960. His father was a tenor saxophonist. Kenny's career took off when he joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1978, then led by Duke's son, Mercer Ellington. Three years later he played in the Mel Lewis Orchestra (playing the music of Thad Jones) and also the Dannie Richmond Quartet (focusing on Charles Mingus's music). In 1984 he earned a shot at his first album as a band leader, "Introducing Kenny Garrett". From there, his career has exploded into 11 albums (as a leader) and numerous grammy nominations.
As a virtuoso bassist, versatile composer, and acclaimed bandleader, Marc Johnson has been a major innovator on the jazz scene for the past two decades. Born in Nebraska in 1953, Johnson took up bass at the age of 16, having already studied piano and cello. While completing his formal education in the celebrated music program at the University of North Texas, at age 19, Johnson began performing professionally with the Fort Worth Symphony. In 1977, he was on the road with the Woody Herman Band.
Bobby (Robert Coull) Wellins is a jazz tenor saxophonist. He was born in Glasgow on 24 January 1936. He came from a musical family and later studied music at college, originally playing alto sax. After college he played in dance bands and made his first recording in 1956 with Buddy Featherstonhaugh's quintet. In the early 1960s Wellins worked with the Tony Crombie Band, Tubby Hayes, and most notably began a long association with the pianist Stan Tracey. He recorded the landmark Under Milk Wood with Tracey in 1965.