PROGRESSIVE MUSIC COMPANY

AFRO-AMERICAN MUSIC INSTITUTE CELEBRATES 36 YEARS

BOYS CHOIR AFRICA SHIRTS
 
 
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/building-today-for-tomorrow/x/267428

 Pain Relief Beyond Belief

                         http://www.komehsaessentials.com/                              

 

PITTSBURGH JAZZ

 

From Blakey to Brown, Como to Costa, Eckstine to Eldridge, Galbraith to Garner, Harris to Hines, Horne to Hyman, Jamal to Jefferson, Kelly to Klook; Mancini to Marmarosa, May to Mitchell, Negri to Nestico, Parlan to Ponder, Reed to Ruther, Strayhorn to Sullivan, Turk to Turrentine, Wade to Williams… the forthcoming publication Treasury of Pittsburgh Jazz Connections by Dr. Nelson Harrison and Dr. Ralph Proctor, Jr. will document the legacy of one of the world’s greatest jazz capitals.

 

Do you want to know who Dizzy Gillespie  idolized? Did you ever wonder who inspired Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey? Who was the pianist that mentored Monk, Bud Powell, Tad Dameron, Elmo Hope, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Torme? Who was Art Tatum’s idol and Nat Cole’s mentor? What musical quartet pioneered the concept adopted later by the Modern Jazz Quartet? Were you ever curious to know who taught saxophone to Stanley Turrentine or who taught piano to Ahmad Jamal? What community music school trained Robert McFerrin, Sr. for his history-making debut with the Metropolitan Opera? What virtually unknown pianist was a significant influence on young John Coltrane, Shirley Scott, McCoy Tyner, Bobby Timmons and Ray Bryant when he moved to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh in the 1940s?  Would you be surprised to know that Erroll Garner attended classes at the Julliard School of Music in New York and was at the top of his class in writing and arranging proficiency?

 

Some answers  can be gleaned from the postings on the Pittsburgh Jazz Network.

 

For almost 100 years the Pittsburgh region has been a metacenter of jazz originality that is second to no other in the history of jazz.  One of the best kept secrets in jazz folklore, the Pittsburgh Jazz Legacy has heretofore remained mythical.  We have dubbed it “the greatest story never told” since it has not been represented in writing before now in such a way as to be accessible to anyone seeking to know more about it.  When it was happening, little did we know how priceless the memories would become when the times were gone.

 

Today jazz is still king in Pittsburgh, with events, performances and activities happening all the time. The Pittsburgh Jazz Network is dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the places, artists and fans that carry on the legacy of Pittsburgh's jazz heritage.

 

WELCOME!

 

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Duke Ellington is first African-American and the first musician to solo on U.S. circulating coin

    MARY LOU WILLIAMS     

            INTERVIEW

       In Her Own Words

Roy Hargrove, Trumpeter Who Gave Jazz a Jolt of Youth, Dies at 49

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Roy Hargrove performed at a “Celebrate Brooklyn” concert in Prospect Park in June 2011. “New York will not be the same without you,” the trumpeter Nicholas Payton said.CreditCreditMylan Cannon/The New York Times

  • Nov. 3, 2018
  • Roy Hargrove, a virtuoso trumpeter who became a symbol of jazz’s youthful renewal in the early 1990s, and then established himself as one of the most respected musicians of his generation, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 49.


His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital, was caused by cardiac arrest brought on by kidney disease, according to his manager, Larry Clothier. He said Mr. Hargrove had been on dialysis for 13 years.

Beginning in his high school years Mr. Hargrove expressed a deep affinity for jazz’s classic lexicon and the creative flexibility to place it in a fresh context. He would take the stock phrases of blues and jazz and reinvigorate them while reminding listeners of the long tradition whence he came.

“He rarely sounds as if he stepped out of a time machine,” the critic Nate Chinen wrote in 2008, reviewing Mr. Hargrove’s album “Earfood” for The New York Times. “At brisk tempos he summons a terrific clarity and tension, leaning against the current of his rhythm section. At a slower crawl, playing fluegelhorn, he gives each melody the equivalent of a spa treatment.”

“He is literally the one-man horn section I hear in my head when I think about music,” Questlove wrote on Instagram after Mr. Hargrove’s death.

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Mr. Hargrove in 2005 performing at the Jazz Gallery in Manhattan.CreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times

Even as he explored an ever-expanding musical terrain, Mr. Hargrove did not lose sight of jazz traditions. “To get a thorough knowledge of anything you have to go to its history,” he told the writer Tom Piazza in 1990 for an article about young jazz musicians in The New York Times Magazine. “I’m just trying to study the history, learn it, understand it, so that maybe I’ll be able to develop something that hasn’t been done yet.”

In 1997 he recorded the album “Habana,” an electrified, rumba-inflected parley between American and Cuban musicians united under the band name Crisol. The album, featuring Hargrove originals and compositions by jazz musicians past and present, earned him his first of two Grammy Awards.

In the 2000s, Mr. Hargrove released three records with RH Factor, a large ensemble that built a style of its own out of cool, electrified hip-hop grooves and greasy funk from the 1970s.

He held onto the spirit that guided those inquiries — one of creative fervor, tempered by cool poise — in the more traditionally formatted Roy Hargrove Quintet, a dependable group he maintained for most of his career. On “Earfood,” a late-career highlight, the quintet capers from savvy updates of jazz standards to original ballads and new tunes that mix Southern warmth and hip-hop swagger.

By his mid-20s, Mr. Hargrove was already giving back to the New York jazz scene that had made him its crown prince. In 1995, with the vocalist Lezlie Harrison and the organizer Dale Fitzgerald, he founded the Jazz Gallery, a little downtown venue that today stands as New York’s most reliable home for cutting-edge presentations by young jazz musicians.

Into his final days, dogged by failing health, Mr. Hargrove remained a fixture of the jam sessions at Smalls in Greenwich Village. When not on tour, he spent multiple nights each week in that low-ceilinged basement, his slight, nattily dressed frame emerging occasionally from a corner to blow a smoky, quietly arresting solo.

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Mr. Hargrove performing at the Marseille Jazz Festival of the Five Continents in July.CreditClaude Paris/Associated Press

Roy Anthony Hargrove was born on Oct. 16, 1969, in Waco, Tex., to Roy Allan and Jacklyn Hargrove, and raised primarily in Dallas, where his family moved when he was 9. His father served in the Air Force and then worked in a factory for Texas Instruments. His mother held clerical jobs, including as an administrator at the Dallas County Jail.

Mr. Hargrove is survived by his mother; his wife, Aida; a daughter, Kamala; and his brother, Brian.

Quiet and retiring by nature, Mr. Hargrove developed a close attachment to music. “My parents weren’t around that much; I was pretty much in solitude,” he told Mr. Piazza. “Originally I wanted to play the clarinet, but we didn’t have any money. My dad had a cornet that he’d bought from a pawn shop, so I just played that. I learned to love it.”

Mentored by his high school band teacher, Mr. Hargrove showed his talents early. He played at jazz-education festivals and conferences with his high school band, and rumors of his virtuosity spread.

When Mr. Hargrove was in 11th grade, the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis visited his high school during a tour stop in Fort Worth, asking to hear the young phenom. Mr. Marsalis was so impressed that he invited Mr. Hargrove to join him at a nearby club date. That led to a trip to Europe in the summer before his senior year to take part in the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague as a member of an all-star band.

After a year at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mr. Hargrove moved to New York City in 1990, at 20. He briefly attended the New School, but his home base was Bradley’s, the Greenwich Village club and jam-session hub peopled by many of jazz’s most esteemed elders. He usually stayed until closing each night. (Bradley’s closed in 1996.)

For his first six months in New York, he slept on the couch at the home of Wendy Cunningham, the owner of Bradley’s. By the end of that time, he had recorded a well-regarded debut album, “Diamond in the Rough,” for RCA and become the talk of the town.

“Among the newcomers, the one name everyone mentions is Roy Hargrove,” Mr. Piazza wrote in 1990. “His playing incorporates a wide, rich sound, something like that of the great Clifford Brown,” he added. “Barely out of his teens, Hargrove is a mixture of shyness and cockiness, boyish enthusiasm and high seriousness. Music is his whole life.”

The New Orleans trumpeter Nicholas Payton, who rose to prominence alongside Mr. Hargrove in the early 1990s, reflected on his significance in a blog post on Saturday. “I often say two things changed the New York City straight-ahead music scene: Art Blakey passing and Bradley’s closing,” Mr. Payton wrote. “Now I have to add a third, the departure of Roy Hargrove. New York will not be the same without you.

Correction: November 3, 2018

An earlier version of this obituary misspelled the middle name of Mr. Hargrove’s father. He was Roy Allan Hargrove, not Allen.

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