contemporary jazz | Musicosity

Nels Cline

Nels Cline (born in Los Angeles in 1956) is an American guitarist and composer. Currently he is the lead guitarist of the rock band Wilco. Nels began to play guitar at age 12 when his twin brother, Alex Cline took up the drums. Cline is not classically trained. This gives him a unique avant-garde style that many other jazz guitarists fail to match, due to their probable conventional training. He is noted for his apt use of effects pedals and looping devices, which enhances his style and gives his approach to guitar and music a distinct sound.

Maria Schneider

Biography
Schneider was born in Windom, Minnesota. She moved to New York City in 1985 after attending college at the University of Minnesota, the University of Miami and the Eastman School of Music. She studied under Bob Brookmeyer and Gil Evans, working on various projects with Evans, including the film The Color of Money. Schneider formed the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra in 1993, appearing weekly at Visiones in Greenwich Village for five years. Her orchestra performed at many jazz festivals and toured Europe.

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Marcin Masecki

From Marcin's website:
www.marcinmasecki.com I was born in Warsaw in 1982. When I was six months old I moved with my parents to Popayan, Colombia. My father, a clarinetist, started teaching me simple harmony, rhythm and singing when I was three. At the age of seven I moved with my mother to San Fransisco where I began taking piano lessons. A year later I moved back to Poland and continued studies with my grandmother - one of the best piano teachers I know. Since I was seen improvising little melodies here and there I was also sent to my first jazz piano teacher, Jurek Kossacz.

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Tonbruket

Swedish experimental jazz. Band members:
*Dan Berglund: Double bass
*Johan Lindström: guitars, lap- and pedalsteel, piano
*Martin Hederos: piano, keyboards, pump organ, violin, accordion
*Andreas Werliin: drums, percussion

Mike Westbrook

Mike Westbrook (born Michael John David Westbrook 21 March 1936 in High Wycombe, England) is an English jazz pianist, composer, and writer of orchestrated jazz pieces. He became a key figure in the development of British Jazz in the late 1960s. Westbrook spent his childhood in Torquay and went to art school in Plymouth where he began his first bands with such musicians as John Surman, Lou Gare and Keith Rowe.

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Rat Faced Bastard

Rat Faced Bastard are a Grindcore / Hardcore Punk band from the North East of England. Influences include bands such as: Napalm Death, Carcass, Repulsion, Insect Warfare, Terrorizer, Extreme Noise Terror, Doom and Discharge. http://www.facebook.com/Ratfacedbastard

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Janette Mason

Janette Mason is a band leader, keyboard virtuoso and gifted improviser who has been a standout talent in Jazz, Pop, Indie Rock and World Music. From her high profile gigs throughout the 90s as keyboardist /side (wo)man recording and touring with artists like Seal, Oasis, k.d.Lang and Robert Wyatt, she spent a number of years on camera as Music Director for Jonathan Ross and Antoine De Caunnes on their hit British television chat shows .

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Jason Moran

34 year-old pianist Jason Moran has proven, after seven years on the estimable Blue Note Records, more than his brilliance as a performer. He’s established himself as a risk-taker, a seeker of new directions for jazz as a whole. Looking to the wider world of art for inspiration, Moran has found it in edgy 20th century painters like Jean-Michel Basquiat (check out “JAMO Meets SAMO” from Soundtrack to Human Motion, his 1999 debut as a leader...

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Kenny Garrett

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.

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Anouar Brahem

Anouar Brahem (Arabic: أنور ابراهم) is a Tunisian oud (middle eastern lute) player and composer who is widely regarded as an innovator in his field. Performing for primarily a jazz audience, he fuses arabic classical music, folk music and jazz and has been recording since at least 1991 after becoming prominent in his own country in the late 1980s. Brahem began studying the oud at age 10 under the tutelage of Ali Sitri at the National Conservatory of Music in Tunis. In 1987, after six years in Paris, he spent two years as the director of the Ensemble Musical De Ia Ville De Tunis.