Gold Coast Jazz Pays Tribute to Local Florida Jazz Legend Eddie Higgins

December Concert Honors Eddie Higgins and Features Jazz Pianist, Dick Hyman

Fort Lauderdale, FL – Jazz pianist Eddie Higgins was an icon on the local jazz scene as well as an international jazz superstar. To pay tribute to the life of this jazz legend, another jazz legend, pianist Dick Hyman, will perform with Don Coffman, bassist and Danny Burger, drummer in An Evening to Remember - A Tribute to Eddie Higgins. The concert will occur on December 9, 2009 at the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW 5th Ave, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The show begins at 7:45 pm. Buy tickets online at http://www.goldcoastjazz.org/ or http://www.browardcenter.org/. A pre-concert Jazz Riff jazz talk will be given by radio personality Stu Grant at 7:00pm in the theater before the show.

Dick Hyman, jazz pianist
Dick Hyman is a veritable renaissance man of the music world. A performer, composer, orchestrator, arranger and conductor, Hyman was music director for Arthur Godfrey and orchestrated the hit musical Sugar Babies. He has served as composer/arranger conductor/pianist for the Woody Allen films Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Broadway Danny Rose, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says 'I Love You', Sweet and Lowdown, The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion and Melinda and Melinda.

Other movie scores have included Moonstruck, Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime, The Lemon Sisters, and Alan and Naomi. His music has also been heard in The Mask, Billy Bathgate, Two Weeks Notice, and other films. Hyman has been music director of the production The Movie Music of Woody Allen, which premiered at the Hollywood Bowl. In addition to his activities in the jazz and concert worlds, Mr. Hyman has had a prolific career in New York as a studio musician and won seven Most Valuable Player Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

He acted as music director for such television programs as Benny Goodman's final appearance (on PBS) and for In Performance at the White House. He received an Emmy for his original score for Sunshine's on the Way, a daytime drama, and another for musical direction of a PBS Special on Eubie Blake. He is a member of the Jazz Hall of Fame of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the New Jersey Jazz Society. In 2004, after serving as artistic director for the acclaimed Jazz in July series at New York's 92nd Street Y for twenty years, he stepped down, as he has from a similar role in the annual Oregon Festival of American Music. He continues his Jazz Piano at the Y series in New York.

Eddie Higgins was a fixture on the local jazz scene for decades. He lived and worked in both south Florida and in the Cape Cod area. Born and raised in New England, Eddie (Haydn) Higgins started his professional career in Chicago, while studying at the Northwestern University Music School. For twenty years Eddie worked at some of Chicago's best known jazz clubs, including the Brass Rail, Preview Lounge, Blue Note, Cloister Inn and Jazz Ltd.

His longest and most memorable job was at the London House, where he led the house trio for twelve years, playing opposite the biggest jazz stars of the 50's and 60's, including Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Errol Garner, George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans and many others. In 1970, Eddie moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and began spending winters in Florida and summers on Cape Cod, where he played local clubs. Since the early 1980's, Eddie traveled widely on the jazz festival circuit and performed frequently in Europe and Japan. His releases on the Japanese "Venus" label earned him the label of the jazz superstar in Japan with number one in jazz CD sales on more than one album. In 1988, Eddie and jazz singer/pianist/artist Meredith d'Ambrosio married and became a popular team at clubs and festivals, as well as recording for Sunnyside Records.
Go online http://www.goldcoastjazz.org/  for more information about the Gold Coast Jazz Society or call 954-524-0805.
http://jazz-bluesflorida.blogspot.com/2009/11/gold-coast-jazz-pays-tribute-to-local.html

Eddie (Haydn) Higgins....

by Bill Gallagher
Born and raised in New England, Eddie (Haydn) Higgins started his professional career in Chicago, while studying at the Northwestern University Music School. For twenty years Eddie worked at some of Chicago's best known jazz clubs, including the Brass Rail, Preview Lounge, Blue Note, Cloister Inn and Jazz Ltd. His longest and most memorable job was at the London House, where he led the house trio for twelve years, playing opposite the biggest jazz stars of the 50's and 60's, including Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Errol Garner, George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans and many others.

During his stay in Chicago, Eddie recorded a number of albums under his auspices and many more as a sideman with a wide variety of musicians, ranging in style from Coleman Hawkins to Wayne Shorter, Don Goldie to Freddie Hubbard, Jack Teagarden to Al Grey. Eddie's versatility is well-known: he has backed singers, done studio work as both pianist and arranger and worked in every jazz medium from Dixieland to Modern Jazz.

In 1970, Eddie moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and began spending winters in Florida and summers on Cape Cod, where he plays local clubs and enjoys sailing and tennis. Since the early 1980's, Eddie has traveled widely on the jazz festival circuit and has performed frequently in Europe and Japan. His releases on the Japanese "Venus" label have earned him number one in jazz sales on more than one album. In 1988, Eddie and jazz singer/pianist/artist Meredith d'Ambrosio were married and have become a popular team at clubs and festivals, as well as recording for Sunnyside Records.

In recent years, Eddie's recording activity has become even more prolific and attention to his play has grown to be more widely recognized. He has received praise from such as Nat Hentoff and Gary Giddons. Attempts to describe his style are exemplified by the following:
"....Higgins' style is relaxed and swinging, with an easy delicacy about it that reminds one of Hank Jones or Bill Evans." Herb Nolan, Down Beat
"....Brilliant, fully developed piano sets....plays piano with a master's touch....a dazzling dynamic range." Sam Lesner, Chicago Daily News
"....Hearing this piano for the first time, you would say 'good taste and a sensitive touch.' Like Hank Jones and the late Nat 'King' Cole, he's an orderly player whether romping with the blues or delineating a tender waltz." Owen Cordle, Raleigh News And Observer

To these tributes, I would add that Eddie's play can be extraordinarily moving. Listen to his treatment of Brazilian themes on "Speaking of Jobim" and solo work on the album "Time On My Hands," the latter which achieves an almost unparalleled marriage of style, composition and audio fidelity. You would think it was being played in a cathedral.
http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Artists/Higgins/

Dear Old Stockholm - Eddie Higgins Trio

Eddie Higgins (pf)
Jay Leonhart (b)
Joe Ascione (ds)
Recorded at at Avator Studios,NYC. on Sep. 24 & 25, 2002
Venus Records, Japan,

Eddie Higgins, Sac. Jazz Jubilee - "America the Beautiful"

"It's a prettier tune, and it's a lot easier to sing." That's how Eddie Higgins introduces this version of "America the Beautiful," explaining why he thinks it should be our national anthem. Eddie performed this at the 2007 Sacramento Jazz Jubilee as a member of Vince Bartels' all-star band called the Migrant Jazz Workers. Vince refers to Eddie as a "national treasure"; that he is, indeed! (Has he got a left hand, or what?!?)
Thank you, Eddie, for being -- and expressing -- your wonderful self!
The Sac. Jazz Jubilee takes place annually during Memorial Day Weekend.
http://www.migrantjazzworkers.com
http://www.sacjazz.com
This venue, the Sheraton Grand Nave Ballroom, was sponsored by Bank of the West
http://www.bankofthewest.com/

Eddie Higgins Dies at 77

By Lee Mergner
The versatile pianist Eddie Higgins died Aug. 31 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He was 77 years old. The cause of death was cancer. Higgins was born and raised in Cambridge, Mass., and started playing piano when he was just 4 years old. After attending Andover Prep where his father taught, Higgins left for Chicago to attend Northwestern University. He proceeded to spend his formative years as a professional musician in that city, working with a veritable who’s who of mainstream jazz.
For one span of more than 10 years, Higgins and his trio served as the house band at the London House in Chicago, frequently playing on bills with the greats of jazz, such as Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and many others. During his time in Chicago he also recorded as a sideman on various recordings led by jazz players of nearly every style, including Cannonball Adderley, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Al Grey and Jack Teagarden. A quintessential sideman, Higgins recorded sporadically in the ’60s as a leader for small labels like Vee-Jay, Replica and Atlantic. Moving back to the New England area in 1970, Higgins settled in Cape Cod and gigged as a solo pianist and bandleader. He later formed a partnership, both personal and professional, with the singer Meredith D’Ambrosio, whom he married in 1988. Over the years, the two recorded both together and separately for Sunnyside, as well as Venus, generally releasing about one CD per year since 1990, including Christmas CDs in 2004, 2005 and 2008.

In a review for JazzTimes in 1997, Doug Ramsey called Higgins’ third album for Sunnyside, Portrait in Black and White, “one of the most impressive piano trio albums in recent memory.” And, he added, “Higgins is less a stylist than a brilliant generalist who ranges through the history of the music, selecting, winnowing and refining. He has long since melded his touch, voicings, relaxation, inventiveness and natural swing into an approach that draws from all eras of jazz piano without being tied to any of them. Rather than blandness, his eclecticism brings to his improvisations focus, definition and purpose.” D’Ambrosio and Higgins became staples of the mainstream jazz parties, as well as the jazz cruises. In fact, the couple wintered in the Ft. Lauderdale area, not far from the embarkation point of many of the cruises. In 2006, The Jazz Cruise inducted Higgins into their Hall of Fame. A very literate man, Higgins sometimes wrote his own liner notes in a wry, self-effacing style.
Higgins’ ashes will be spread by his home in Cape Cod, Mass
http://jazztimes.com/sections/news/articles/25040-eddie-higgins-dies-at-77