With everything else going on last week, I didn’t have a chance to acknowledge the passing of keyboard legend Chick Corea. Of course, improvisation is what he did best, but he also left his imprint on the classics. Here’s a little Sunday afternoon playlist.
Corea performs Mozart with Friedrich Gulda
The same piece played, live in concert, with Keith Jarrett
Chick putting his own spin on Chopin
The “Corea Concerto”
Corea plays a selection from his “Children’s Songs”
His career spanned over half a century. He was 79 years-old. R.I.P.
Amram, born in Philadelphia on this date in 1930, has always been equally at home in classical music, jazz, folk, and world music. The composer of over 100 orchestral and chamber works, music for Broadway and film (including the scores for “Splendor in the Grass” and “The Manchurian Candidate”), and two operas, he’s also the author of three books: “Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram” (1968), “Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac” (2002), and “Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat” (2007).l;
Amram was raised on a farm in Bucks County. There, he was introduced to classical, jazz, and cantorial music by his father and uncle. He took piano lessons and experimented with instruments of the brass family, finally settling on the French horn. Following a year at Oberlin, he lit out for George Washington University, where he studied history. While there, he performed as a freelance hornist with the National Symphony. He also studied privately with two musicians in the orchestra.
Amram became a pioneer of the jazz French horn, as well as the New York Philharmonic’s first composer-in-residence (designated as such in 1966). He’s worked with artists ranging from Dizzy Gillespie to Bob Dylan to Leonard Bernstein, from Jack Kerouac to Arthur Miller, from Christopher Plummer to Johnny Depp. He’s a musician without boundaries, who has always been open to new experiences.
And he’s still going strong. He was to have appeared with his quintet in Marlboro, NY, today to celebrate his 90th birthday, the first such event of 13 scheduled to take place in the U.S. and abroad. However, like everything else, the celebration has been postponed because of the virus.
In the meantime, he is participating in a free weekly Zoom series, on which he’s been reading from his book, “Offbeat: Collaborating with Jack Kerouac.” More information is posted on his website, davidamram.com.
A note on today’s calendar listing, about the postponed concert, suggests an alternative mode of celebration: “Write him a note, call him or best of all, he requests that you send him an ESP thought-wave-o-gram, be creative yourself and look forward to the new vaccine and new administration making us all healthier than ever in the next year!!!”
Working on my ESP thought-wave-o-gram now. Happy birthday, David Amram!
Trailer for “David Amram: The First 80 Years”:
Amram Horn Concerto:
Amram with Dizzy Gillespie:
Amram jamming at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 2011:
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charlie Parker. Immortalized in jazz history as one of the progenitors of bebop, more to the point for his listeners is the virtuosity, invention, and soul he brought to his playing.
This album was a little bit of a curveball for Bird, but it works marvelously. Here Parker performs with an ensemble made up of members of the NBC Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestras, joined by Stan Freeman (piano), Ray Brown (bass), and Buddy Rich (drums). The arrangements were by Ray Carroll, and the album was produced by Mitch (“Sing Along…”) Miller, who played oboe and English horn.
Jazz legend Ellis Marsalis, pianist and paterfamilias of the famed dynasty of jazz and classical musicians, has died of Coronavirus. Ellis was the father of six sons, including trumpeter Wynton, saxophonist Branford, trombonist Delfeayo, and drummer Jason. He was 85 years-old.
