Alarum: (uh-lar-uhm, uh-lahr-) –noun. “A mechanism that produces awareness”. The Melbourne 4 piece progressive metal band have been just that since forming in 1992, and have been expanding that awareness ever since. But it would be unfair to simply lump them into the vague progressive metal genre, as they blend all forms of metal alongside rock, jazz, latin and fusion. After some early line up chan...
Egberto Amin Gismonti (born December 5, 1947 in Carmo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a brazilian composer, guitarist and pianist. Gismonti began his formal music studies at the age of six on piano. After studying classical music for 15 years, he went to Paris to study orchestration and analysis with Nadia Boulanger and the composer Jean Barraqué, a disciple of Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern. After his return to Brazil, Gismonti began to explore other musical genres.
Cassandra Wilson (born 4th December 1955) is a U.S. jazz vocalist and two-time Grammy Award winner from Jackson, Mississippi. Two of her albums, Blue Skies (1988) and New Moon Daughter (1996), have topped the US jazz charts, and the latter also won her a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1997. More recently, Wilson's latest album Loverly (2008) also won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009.
Born and raised in LA to parents very involved in the music business, Paul Brown first began playing drums at the age of five.
Although a very talented musician in has own right, he is best known as a Grammy winning producer / engineer having worked with just about everybody of consequence in the jazz world. These include Norman Brown, Peter White, George Benson,Boney James, Luther Vandross, Euge Groove, Jeffrey Osbourne, Larry Carlton, Al Jarreau, Babby Caldwell, Patti Austin and Kirk Whalum to name but a few !
David Grusin (born June 26, 1934 in Littleton, Colorado) is a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger whose works in films and TV have garnered him numerous awards. Grusin has a filmography of about 100 credits with many awards including an Oscar for best original score for The Milagro Beanfield War, as well as Oscar nominations for The Champ, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Firm, Havana, Heaven Can Wait, and On Golden Pond.
At Present Ulf Wakenius has since 1997 held what may be the most prestigious spot in jazz for a guitarist-membership in the legendary Oscar Peterson Quartet. His predecessors have been such greats as Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, and Joe Pass. He has performed at such classic jazz venues as Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Blue Notes, and recently played sold out shows with Oscar Peterson at the Royal Albert Hall, Chicago Symphony Hall, Palais Des Congres, Wiener Konzerthaus, Massey Hall, Teatro Colon-Buenos Aires, Stravinski Hall-Montreaux and Tokyo International Forum Hall.
Taking inspiration from the great delta players such as Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Son House and Mississippi John Hurt, he combines their raw syncopation with the sounds of Chicago (e.g. Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf) and the modern song writing approach of the likes of Robert Cray welding the whole into a powerful music for the modern day. Equally at home on Acoustic and Electric guitar...
Jim Mullen (born November 26, 1945) is a Glasgow-born jazz guitarist with a distinctive style, like Wes Montgomery before him, picking with the thumb rather than a plectrum. Having played with Brian Auger's Oblivion Express, appearing on the band's first three albums together with future Average White Band drummer Robbie MacIntosh, Mullen then joined Kokomo and later toured with the Average White Band.
Martin Taylor MBE has been hailed as
One of the most original of the jazz-based guitarists to emerge in the 1960s, Pat Martino made a remarkable comeback after brain surgery in 1980 to correct an aneurysm caused him to lose his memory and completely forget how to play. It took years, but he regained his ability, partly by listening to his older records. Martino began playing professionally when he was 15. He worked early on with groups led by Willis Jackson, Red Holloway, and a series of organists, including Don Patterson, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Richard "Groove" Holmes, and Jimmy McGriff.