This Date in Music – October 16, 1969 – Jazz Trumpeter Roy Hargrove was born!

Today is the birthday of another of the great musicians of the last 20 years, who I  discovered last year when I listened to his album Earfood– what’s new!! It’s what happens when you’re paying more attention to the past and not the present. Anyway, today is the 45th birthday of trumpeter Roy Hargrove. From All About Jazz…. Trumpeter Roy Hargrove was born in Waco, TX on October 16, 1969. Inspired by the gospel music he heard in church on Sundays and the R&B and funk music that played on the radio, Roy began learning the trumpet in the fourth grade. By…

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This Day in Music – May 25, 1960 – In Philly – Jazz Trumpeter Wallace Roney was born! (video)

Today is the great Miles Davis‘ birthday. He shares his birthday with the only trumpet player that he ever mentored Wallace Roney. Wallace was born in Philadelphia in 1960 So he is too young to have experienced 1960, which was the year that former Whiz Kids manager re Eddie Sawyer resigned as the hapless Phillies’ manager after a 9-4 opening day loss to the Reds and said.: “I’m 49 years old and I want to live to be 50.”  But I digress so it’s back to Wallace. It was discovered when he was 4 years old that Wallace had perfect pitch…

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This Day in Music – May 1, 1982 – Jazz Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire was born (Video)

On this day May 1st in 1982 Ambrose Akinmusire (ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee) was born in Oakland California.  His latest release The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint  has been in my listening rotation and I have enjoyed it! This was not my first meeting with Mr. Akinmusire, winner of the 2007 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition, two of the most prestigious jazz competitions in the world. No, I first listened to his trumpet back in August of last year when  I  spent A Night of Exploration – Contemporary Jazz Trumpeters! Since then I have listened to his second album…

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2014 Jazz – Moment to Moment from Pianist Cava Menzies and Trumpeter Nick Phillips

So this morning at Me, Myself , Music and Mysteries I posted three songs that put me in a good mood, and tonight I am listening to an album that puts me in a mellow mood. I want to get home turn the lights out and drift to this wonderful album. Yes, drift to the fine piano of Cava Menzies and the “Chet Baker-esque trumpet of Nick Phillips on their album Moment to Moment. As a matter of fact, I was going to write to you readers if you want an album to settle back with put your feet up…

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This Day in Music Happy Birthday to Austria’s “Chet Baker” Michaela Rabitsch!!

Today March 8th Austria’s only and top female jazz trumpet player Michaela Rabitsch celebrates her ?????? birthday, Michaela is a singer, composer and is called a modern-day female Chet Baker by the US magazine Jazzscene!! She calls Weyer, Oberosterreich, Austria her hometown and currently Vienna is home. She has started her musical journey at 7 studying classical violin, at 14 she moved to Vienna to continue her studies. She switched to trumpet and studies for jazz- and popular music at the Bruckner conservatory Linz (now Anton Bruckner private University) with Ingrid Jensen, Peter Tuscher and classical trumpet with Fritz Handlbaue….

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Yesterday in Music – Feb 21, 1980 – Trumpeter Takuya Kuroda was born!!

About the same time that the Safari discovered Aynsley Lister, I also discovered the music of Japanese-born trumpet player Takuya Kuroda.That was several days ago, and yesterday Takuya celebrated his 34th birthday. While I had listened to a little of his latest album Rising Son, when I first heard about his music, but today I listened to the full album and it was a treat!! Kuroda grew up in Kobe, Japan and arrived in the US in 2000. While living in Kobe he played in various high school jazz bands, but he didn’t receive his first formal jazz training until…

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Today in Music – Feb 10, 1961 – Jazz Trumpet Player Paolo Fresu was Born!! (Video)

This morning the name that caught my attention on the list of birthdays at All About Jazz was Paolo Fresu,a trumpet player. Paolo is in fact not only a trumpet and flugelhorn player, but he is also an arranger and composer. And an award-winning  one at that!!  Paolo was born in Berchidda, Sardina on February 10, 1961 and he his musical career has spanned the last 30 years in which he has performed on over 300 albums.many as a sideman and lots as a leader of his quintet.But wait there’s more…(if you call now – just joking) He is also  according…

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The Safari Explores the Music of Terrence Blanchard – Magnetic!

I’ve written it before and I am sure I will write it again during the years from 1980 to 1995 there was so much going on in my life that there was little time for musical explorations. During that period our family grew to include four children Nick (1979), Andrew (1982), Peter (1986) and Elizabeth (1990). Along the way our family lost my wife’s mother to breast cancer (1982 at the age of 48), my wife’s grandmother, and father, my father (1984) the way our sons Nick and Andrew both had medical problems, and mu wife had to miscarriages!! Anyway you…

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The Safari Explores the Music of Woody Shaw (Dec 24, 1944 – May 10, 1989)

  Christmas Eve was the birthday of one of the best, least famous trumpet players, Woody Shaw.  Shaw was born  December 24, 1944 in Laurinburg, North Carolina. and raised in Newark, New Jersey from the age of one year old.  His parents  were Rosalie Pegues and Woody Shaw, Sr. His father was a member of the African American gospel group known as the ‘Diamond Jubilee Singers’ and both his parents attended the same secondary private school as Dizzy Gillespie: Laurinburg Institute. Shaw’s mother was from the same town as Gillespie: Cheraw, South Carolina.   NPR says that Shaw was :  “the last great trumpet innovator” Miles…

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This Date in Music – Dec 23, 1929 – Chet Baker was born!!

  Early this year May 13th marked  the 25th anniversary of the death of Chet Baker, today we celebrate his life, because on this date in 1929 Chesney Henry “Chet” Baker, Jr. Well,  back in the day I was not a Chet Baker fan. But through the years I would be listening to jazz radio and one would come this great trumpet or flugelhorn and I usually know that I was listening to the horn of Chet Baker. As I started to collect more and more jazz over the last ten years more of Chet’s music has made its way into my library. Looking…

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