Ellie Greenwich, who co-wrote some of pop music's most enduring songs, including “Chapel of Love," “Be My Baby" and “Leader of the Pack," died Wednesday, according to her niece. She was 68. Greenwich died of a heart attack at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, where she had been admitted a few days earlier for treatment of pneumonia, according to her niece, Jessica Weiner. Greenwich, a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, was considered one of pop's most successful songwriters. She had a rich musical partnership with the legendary Phil Spector, whose “wall of sound" technique changed rock music. With Spector, she wrote some of pop's most memorable songs, including “Da Doo Ron Ron" and “River Deep, Mountain High." But Spector wasn't her only collaborator. She also had key hits with her ex-husband Jeff Barry, including the dynamic song “Leader of the Pack" (years later, Broadway would stage a Tony-nominated musical with the same name based on her life).
“He was the first male I could actually harmonize with," she once said. Greenwich was a native of Brooklyn. While she garnered her greatest success as a songwriter, Greenwich started out as a performer. She performed in talent shows as a child, and by the time she was a teen, she had her own group, called The Jivettes. She went to college, where she met Barry, and shortly after graduation, began working for songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, where she got her break. She had her first chart success with the Jay and the Americans song “This Is It," which she wrote with Doc Pomus and Tony Powers. She also had success with Barry as the duo The Raindrops with the songs “What a Guy" and “The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget." Greenwich also worked as an arranger and singer, a role that saw her working with artists including Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. She is also credited with helping Neil Diamond get his start and was a co-producer of early Diamond hits “Cherry, Cherry" and “Kentucky Woman."
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=41660
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Songwriter Ellie Greenwich Dies at 68
Judy Niemack....
"If you want to know what real jazz singing can be (but rarely is), listen to Judy Niemack...She is a musician in the truest sense, having mastered her instrument (a beautiful one), and her chosen language and crafted her own style”
Dan Morgenstern
Throughout her career, Judy Niemack has accomplished a great deal as a singer, educator, lyricist, composer, and inspiration to younger jazz vocalists. Yet with all that she has done thus far, one gets the impression that the best is yet to come. “I love standards and have performed them all of my life but this is a new era and it is time to create new music,” she says. “I’m open to all forms of vocal improv and I’m very interested in mastering the art of music and pushing the art form forward to new places.”
Born and raised in Pasadena, California, Judy gained experience singing in her church choir. She first heard jazz through her mother’s Nancy Wilson records, and discovered that she could easily sing harmonies when she and her sister sang background vocals behind her brother, who played guitar and sang lead. As a child and as a teenager, she sang in a wide variety of settings including musical theatre, rock bands, with folk music groups, and in a jazz vocal quartet.
Judy studied classical singing but the turning point in her young career was when she met the great tenor-saxophonist Warne Marsh, who followed in the footsteps of his teacher pianist Lennie Tristano by becoming an important jazz educator. “I became Warne’s first vocal student. He treated me like a horn player. He assigned me solos by Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge and others to learn. I learned about improvising from him. He called it instant composition.” Judy attended Pasadena City College where she had lessons with alto saxophonist Gary Foster, and studied classical singing at the New England Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute Of Music. When she returned to the Los Angeles area, she continued studying with Marsh and, after moving to New York in 1977, her first important gig was performing at the Village Vanguard for a week with Marsh. She made her recording debut, leading the first of her ten CDs, By Heart for the Sea Breeze label, which documented her association with the saxophonist.
“During that period, I was strictly an improviser, with no thought given to entertaining or paying attention to the audience. But eventually I started focusing on the lyrics, and how to communicate with them, and then I grew as a singer.” Starting in the late 1970s, Judy became a talented composer, and a lyricist who wrote words to such pieces as Clifford Brown’s “Daahoud,” Thelonious Monk’s “Misterioso,” Bill Evans’ “Interplay,” Richie Powell’s “Time” and Duke Jordan’s “Jordu,” and songs by the likes of Lee Konitz, Pat Metheny, Dexter Gordon, Gigi Gryce, Elmo Hope, Kenny Dorham, Curtis Fuller, Bob Brookmeyer, Idrees Sulieman, Richie Beirach, Don Grolnick, Steve Slagle, Mike Stern, Johnny Griffin and many others. One of the driving forces behind her writing is the desire to have lyrics that are more modern and relevant than many that are part of the famous but overly familiar songs of the 1930s and ‘40s.
Due to her beautiful voice, fearless improvising, impressive musicianship and versatility, Judy Niemack has since worked with many of the who’s who of jazz including pianists Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, Cedar Walton, Kenny Barron, Jim McNeely, Steve Kuhn, Kirk Lightsey and Kirk Nurock, saxophonists Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano and James Moody, the great harmonica player Toots Thielemans, flugelhornist Clark Terry, bassists Ray Drummond and Eddie Gomez, drummers Billy Higgins, Joey Baron, Billy Hart and Adam Nussbaum, the New York Voices, the WDR Big Band, and guitarist Jeanfrancois Prins, Judy’s husband who has worked with her since 1992.
Judy Niemack starting teaching jazz singing and improvising in the late 1970s. She has since become one of the most influential educators in jazz, and a pioneer of vocal jazz education in Europe. She taught vocal jazz at the New School For Jazz, William Patterson University, Long Island University, and New York City College and has been part of the staff at the Janice Borla Vocal Jazz Camp since 1990. After moving to Europe, she joined the jazz faculty at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium in 1993, and two years later became the first Professor of Vocal Jazz in Germany. She also teaches at the Musikene Conservatory in San Sebastian, Spain, has taught at conservatories in Holland and Belgium, and leads workshops throughout Europe and the world
“Our generation is probably the first to pass on information to younger singers willingly and very openly. What I love about teaching is being surrounded by music all day long, every day. I love being with singers and helping out younger vocalists, leading people onto the path towards where they want to go.” Judy’s vocal improvisation method book and CD “Hear It And Sing It! – Exploring Modal Jazz” was published by Second Floor Music in 2004, and her “Pro-Vocal Jazz Standards” was published by Hal Leonard in 2008.
As a performer, Judy has thus far recorded ten albums as a leader including her debut My Heart, Blue Bop (Freelance) with Cedar Walton, Long As You’re Living (Freelance), Heart’s Desire (Stash) which is a set of duets with pianist Kenny Barron, Straight Up (Freelance), duets with pianist Mal Waldron called Mingus, Monk and Mal (Freelance), Night And The Music (Freelance), About Time (Sony Jazz) with Lee Konitz and Jeanfrancois Prins, What’s Going On (Temps), and Blue Nights (Blujazz) with Gary Bartz and Jim McNeely. She has also recorded an upcoming CD for Blujazz centering on Summer themes called “Sun Dance”.
“Blue Nights shows off my mainstream traditional side. I recorded it to share a modern take on some of my favorite songs, which I have long loved. And my next CD, Sun Dance, celebrates my favorite season: Summer. Meanwhile I'm working on a recording for Artistshare, about singing something completely new; a project with all of my own lyrics.” Judy Niemack looks forward to the future with optimism and enthusiasm. “I have a new book and CD coming out - “Exploring Blues”, which includes performances not only by me, but also by Sheila Jordan, Mark Murphy and Darmon Meader. I think it will help to raise the bar in vocal jazz education. In general, I hope to continue doing what I’m doing: performing, teaching, writing lyrics, working on new collaborations, and always creating new and interesting music.”
Whatever the future holds, one can be certain that Judy Niemack’s future projects will be inventive, stimulating and full of joyful surprises.
http://www.judyniemack.com/about.aspx
Judy Niemack's Singers' 'class
Judy Niemack teaching the "Singers' Class" at the Jazz Institut Berlin.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Musical Art.net
Brazillian Compny to musical programs, products of events, special projects, promotional CD's and singles, corpporate entertainment.
Doing what we like and working with pleasure in order to offer the best solutions in entertainment. This is the philosophy of Arte Musical. Silvio Fatz, musician, producer, advertiser, and photographer created Arte Musical in September of 1994. Today with over 2,000 accomplished events the agency stands among the best entertaining agencies in Brazil.
“We are an agency of talents which offer the market high quality shows. We organize and care for all the details of our productions: the stage, the transportation, the assembling, the equipments for lighting, sound and much more. We are our clients partners in choosing the entertainment the best adapts to their needs be it popular or classical music, dance, theater, comedy, circus or other cultural performances.
Our clients’ satisfaction is a priority at Arte Musical. We have a team of workers who play together in order to create projects that are unique, original, and effective. For this reason, we are a pro-active agency that provides good service constantly caring for the quality of our production.
Allen Toussaint, Elvis Costello On Piano Jazz
August 26, 2009 - While host Marian McPartland is out, singer-songwriter Elvis Costello sits down with music legend Allen Toussaint in this installment of Piano Jazz. Like Toussaint, Costello has crossed many genres in his career, working with the likes of producer/composer Nick Lowe, trumpet great Chet Baker, legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach and his own wife, jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall.
Toussaint is one of New Orleans' most revered musicians, working since the late 1950s as an arranger-producer while writing songs like "Working in a Coal Mine," "Southern Nights" and "Ride Your Pony." These days, he performs his music around the world, and even joined Costello to record the 2006 album The River in Reverse. In this session, Costello introduces Toussaint as "a living embodiment of the rich musical heritage of the Crescent City."
Here, Toussaint performs "Mother-in-Law," "Fortune Teller" and a very personal version of "Southern Nights," a hit single for country/pop great Glen Campbell. Toussaint takes the song back to its roots, recalling the nights when his father took him to the country to visit "the old Creole people." Then he brings his New Orleans-born rhythmic and harmonic sensibilities to the standards "Singin' the Blues," a song closely associated with Marian McPartland and her late husband, cornetist Jimmy McPartland.
The lively conversation covers early influences on Toussaint's music: jazz, blues, boogie-woogie, church music and "hillbilly music." Talk changes to the great storm Toussaint calls "the booking agent Katrina." It actually helped him move into a rewarding new phase in his career.
In the final selection, the duo plays a medley of piano legend Professor Longhair's "Tipitina" and the Toussaint-Costello song "Ascension Day." Over Toussaint's rolling, bluesy piano, Costello's lyrics paint an anguished picture of the empty streets they found shortly after Katrina, when they came to New Orleans to finish The River in Reverse. There is hope in the song's ending, though: "But I know they will return / Like they've never gone away / Come Ascension Day."
Originally recorded April 17, 2009. Originally aired Aug. 26, 2009.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112183772&ft=1&f=10002
Tadd Dameron with John Coltrane - On a Misty Night
"On a Misty Night" from Tadd Damerons "Mating Call" album.
Composed by Tadd Dameron. Recorded November 30, 1956 in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Musicians:
*John Coltrane: tenor saxophone
*Tadd Dameron: piano
*John Simmons: bass
*Philly Joe Jones: drums
*Rudy Van Gelder: recording engineer
Tadd Dameron
Dameron began his career as a pianist in a Cleveland band, but in 1940 he went to Kansas City to arrange for Harlan Leonard’s Rockets. Two years later he met Dizzy Gillespie who introduced his compositions “Good Bait” and “Our Delight” and in 1948 performed his extended work, “Soulphony,” at Carnegie Hall. Dameron arranged Sarah Vaughan’s hit 1946 session in which she introduced his enduring ballad “If You Could See Me Now,” based on an improvised line of Gillespie’s and with lyrics by Carl Sigman.
In 1947 Esquire magazine named Dameron Best New Jazz Arranger. By this time he was leading his own small group featuring the brilliant trumpeter Fats Navarro, who died prematurely in 1950. Dameron then hired another trumpet genius, Clifford Brown, who died tragically young in a car accident in 1956, the same year that Dameron recorded his landmark album with John Coltrane, Mating Call. Unfortunately Dameron’s narcotics addiction led to his arrest in 1958 and two years in prison. During the ‘60s he wrote for Blue Mitchell, Sonny Stitt, and Milt Jackson.
As a composer Dameron is remembered for his melodic and harmonic strengths in songs such as “Hot House,” “Casbah,” and “Lady Bird,” which have entered the jazz canon. In 1989 Dameronia, a group originally organized by drummer Philly Joe Jones, memorialized Dameron’s work in a Paris concert. A biography of Dameron was published in England by Ian MacDonald, Tadd, The Life and Legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron (ISBN 0953377806 - Out of print but can occasionally be found used).
Sandra Burlingame
iPhone / iPod owners can download a map of Jazz Fest
Detroit jazz fest-goers, your life just got a little easier. If you own an iPhone or iPod/Touch device, you can now download a free iPhone app that will give you a map of concessions, parking, restrooms and a listing of what stage each act is playing, with exact times, for the four-day music festival over Labor Day weekend.
The Detroit Jazz Festival app was developed by jacAPPS, a division of Jacobs Media, the Southfield media, market research and consulting firm. There is also a Google mapping function that gives you directions to and from the location. Detroit Jazz Festival director Terri Pontremoli called the app an "exciting new wrinkle that marries the rich jazz tradition with exciting new technology," on the festival's 30th anniversary.
Advertisement
To download the app, go to itunes.com and type "Detroit jazz festival" in the search box.
Susan Whitall / The Detroit News
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090826/BIZ04/908260312/1001/rss21
Time gap in Jackson death could prove key to case
LOS ANGELES – A key point of contention has emerged in the case investigators are piecing together about the death of Michael Jackson: Exactly when did Dr. Conrad Murray realize that his patient had stopped breathing?
There are currently two accounts of that moment on June 25, and about an hour separates them.
According to police documents, Murray told detectives he put Jackson to sleep with drugs just minutes before he found the singer not breathing around 11 a.m., then let nearly 90 minutes go by — much of that time on his cell phone — before an ambulance was called. But Murray's lawyer says the doctor didn't discover a stricken Jackson until around noon. Investigators have ruled Jackson's death a homicide, based on tests showing he was killed by the combination of the anesthetic propofol with at least two sedatives, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the finding has not been publicly released. The homicide designation does not necessarily mean a crime was committed, though it's a helpful starting point should prosecutors choose to seek criminal charges. Police have said Murray is the target of an investigation into manslaughter, defined as a homicide without malice or premeditation.
Murray told police he spent the morning of June 25 administering various sedatives to Jackson in an attempt to get him to sleep, according to an affidavit for a search warrant served last month on Murray's clinic in Houston. Unsuccessful in inducing rest, the doctor ultimately gave in to the singer's demands for a dose of propofol around 10:40 a.m. By 11 a.m., after a short trip to the bathroom, Murray said he saw Jackson was not breathing and began trying to revive him, both with a "rescue" drug and by performing CPR, according to the documents. An ambulance was not called until 12:21 p.m. and Murray spent much of the intervening time making non-emergency cell phone calls, police say. That timeline is flawed, said Murray's attorney, Edward Chernoff, who was present when investigators spent three hours interviewing the doctor June 27. Chernoff said Murray never told police he found Jackson not breathing at 11 a.m. — instead, it was more like noon.
"Their theory is he came back and wasn't breathing. That's not what Dr. Murray told them," Chernoff said Tuesday. "They are confusing the time Michael Jackson went to sleep with the time he stopped breathing."
Chernoff did not provide additional detail about what Murray had told police.
Home use of propofol is virtually unheard of — safe administration requires lifesaving equipment and a trained anesthesiologist monitoring the patient at all times. While the 25 mg dose Murray said he gave Jackson was relatively small, its combination with the sedatives lorazepam and midazolam proved deadly.
Even if Murray found Jackson around noon, he still waited too long to call an ambulance, said one medical expert, adding that anyone — including doctors — should make calling an ambulance their first priority. "In a situation like that, time is life," said Dr. Douglas Zipes, an Indiana University heart specialist and past president of the American College of Cardiology. "It's got to be immediate or you are going to lose the individual." Phone records show Murray spent 47 minutes between 11:18 and 12:05 making three personal calls. One of the calls was to one of Murray's offices, Chernoff said, adding that the doctor never told investigators about the calls because he wasn't asked about them.
At 12:13 p.m., Murray made a four-second call to Jackson's personal assistant, Michael Amir Williams, pleading for help, Williams' attorney Carl Douglas said. Within two minutes, Williams called Alberto Alvarez, Jackson's bodyguard, with a similar plea. Douglas, who also represents Alvarez, said the bodyguard hurried to the top floor of Jackson's rented mansion, a private sanctum where staff were not normally allowed, and assisted a confused-looking Murray as he frantically tried to revive Jackson. It was Alvarez that placed the 911 call at 12:21 p.m. Douglas said Alvarez might be able to shed some light on Murray's actions but, two months after the death, police investigators had still not formally interviewed his client and had only spoken fleetingly with him at the hospital immediately after Jackson was pronounced dead.
Douglas said he was "dismayed at the seeming haphazard manner investigators have gone about obtaining information." Deputy Police Chief Charlie Beck declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation.
Chernoff did not provide additional detail about what Murray had told police. Early on in the case, the lawyer released a statement saying his client didn't give any drugs that "should have" killed Jackson. Asked to elaborate on the statement, Chernoff said: "I stand by that assertion and I believe that will be borne out in time."
By THOMAS WATKINS, Associated Press Writer Thomas Watkins, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090826/ap_en_mu/us_michael_jackson_investigation
