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.
Lee Morgan (10 July 1938 - 19 February 1972) was an American hard-bop jazz trumpeter. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Morgan was a jazz prodigy, joining the Dizzy Gillespie big band at 18, remaining a member for two years. In 1956 he began recording as a leader, mainly for the Blue Note label; eventually he recorded twenty-five albums for the company. Morgan's principal influence as a player was Clifford Brown, having had direct contact with him before Brown's premature death.
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."
George Shearing (13 August 1919 – February 14, 2011) was a well-known jazz pianist and inventor of the famous "Shearing Sound": a form of smooth cocktail jazz characterised by block chords played on the piano along with similar chords played on the vibraphone.
Shearing was born blind and started to learn piano at the age of three. After limited training and extensive listening to recorded jazz, he began playing at hotels, clubs and pubs in the London area, sometimes solo, occasionally with dance bands.
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.
Sarah Moule
Cool London jazz vocalist with a sweet swinging sound.
"Honeyed in sound, subtle in timing and pitch, shrewd in weighting the music with meaning." The Guardian
Over the past few years singer Sarah Moule has established a rapidly growing reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting new jazz talents. Her highly acclaimed debut CD “It’s A Nice Thought” (AKD 192), released in 2002, showed that in lyricist Fran Landesman and composer Simon Wallace (“one of the finest songwriting partnerships alive” The Observer) she has found a source of contemporary songs which are melodic...
The Claudia Quintet is proof positive that the pessimists were wrong: jazz is not dead, despite being embalmed by major labels and confined by the narrow-minded to dead-ends. The stunningly original and lyrical works of this NY based ensemble, led by composer/drummer John Hollenbeck, reveal breathtaking new vistas for jazz beyond genre walls. In compositions that meld mental challenge with charm, captivating audiences with austere beauty or propulsive grooves, jazz breaks through its rigid shell, recombines with a myriad of other musics, and is reborn in a transcendent new form.
Maysa is one of few Smooth Jazz Artist to remain consistently on top of the Billboard’s Sales Chart. Born and raised in Baltimore, MD, Maysa discovered that she wanted to be a musician at six when her parents took her to see the musical Purlie. She recalls, “The moment Melba Moore took the stage an opened her mouth I made my decision that music would be my fate.” A graduate of Morgan State University with a degree in classical performance, Maysa met Stevie Wonder while still a senior in college.
An emerging talent on the international jazz scene, New Orleans-born trumpeter Christian Scott's debut album "Rewind That" was released on Concord in 2005 and received great critical acclaim. 9 of the 11 tracks on "Rewind That" are Scott's original work (also on the record is Scott's take on the legendary "So What" and Donald Harrison's "Paradise Found"). Scott's music builds its tonal foundation off of Matt Stevens' guitar riffs, which could easily find their place in a contemporary rock setting.
Bernard Herrmann (June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975) was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures. In over forty scores Bernard Herrmann[ enriched the work of such directors as Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Alfred Hitchcock (North By Northwest, Vertigo, Psycho, Marnie etc.), Francois Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451), and Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver). From his first film (Citizen Kane) to his last (Taxi Driver)...