Brian Culbertson (born January 12, 1973) is a smooth jazz musician and instrumentalist from Decatur, Illinois, United States. Son of jazz band director and trumpeter Jim Culbertson, Brian's instruments include the keyboard and trombone. Heavily influenced by funk, much of Culbertson's material is funk-based instrumental, but in recent years has called upon vocalists such as Trey Lorenz and Kenny Lattimore to add to his pieces.
Nels Cline (born in Los Angeles in 1956) is an American guitarist and composer. Currently he is the lead guitarist of the rock band Wilco. Nels began to play guitar at age 12 when his twin brother, Alex Cline took up the drums. Cline is not classically trained. This gives him a unique avant-garde style that many other jazz guitarists fail to match, due to their probable conventional training. He is noted for his apt use of effects pedals and looping devices, which enhances his style and gives his approach to guitar and music a distinct sound.
Jaleel Shaw, alto saxophonist grew up in Philadelphia, PA, where he was surrounded by a enormous family of jazz musicians that Philadelphia has to offer. He studied with many of the strong jazz educators there, including Rayburn Wright, Robert Landham, and Lovette Hines – who is largely responsible for having nurtured the talents of Bassist Christian McBride, Organist Joey Defrancesco, Drummers Johnathan Blake & Ari Hoenig, Vocalist Bilal, Trumpeter Daud El-Bakara, and keyboardist Kamal of The Roots through his youth ensemble that is still going strong today.
Mostly Other People Do the Killing is a quartet founded on the idea that not only is Jazz still alive and vibrant, but it can and should be fun, engaging and thoroughly contemporary. Rather than settling into one style or historical period, MOPDTK fuses the entire spectrum of Jazz and the various forms of improvised music it has spawned into a single, seamless melange of Uber-Jass. Each of the four members of MOPDTK is a product of the institutional Jazz Education system with additional influences immediately recognizable.
Edgar Meyer (born November 24, 1960) is a prominent contemporary bassist. His styles include bluegrass, newgrass, jazz, and classical. Meyer has worked as a session musician in Nashville, part of various chamber groups, a composer, and an arranger.
Meyer grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He learned to play the double bass from his father, the late Edgar Meyer, Sr., who directed the string orchestra program for the local public school system. Meyer later went on to Indiana University to study with Stuart Sankey.
Bohren & der Club of Gore are a noir jazz band founded in 1992 in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany by Thorsten Benning (drums), Morten Gass (keys), Reiner Henseleit (guitar), and Robin Rodenberg (upright / double bass). They play a crossover of jazz and ambient, which they self described as an "unholy ambient mixture of slow jazz ballads, Black Sabbath doom and down tuned Autopsy sounds". Over the years they have continously reduced and compressed their music to extremes.
The Orchestre National de Jazz is a French big band, the noted French jazz musician (also a musician living in France) to work in.
1986 was the Orchestre National de Jazz at the initiative of the musicologist Maurice Fleuret under Jack Lang as Minister of Culture founded. The orchestra is funded by the French Republic. The current artistic director, was raised an ensemble together.
Artistic director, were at first for a year, the saxophonist and flutist François Jeanneau, then the saxophonist Antoine Hervé (1987-1989)...
As a virtuoso bassist, versatile composer, and acclaimed bandleader, Marc Johnson has been a major innovator on the jazz scene for the past two decades. Born in Nebraska in 1953, Johnson took up bass at the age of 16, having already studied piano and cello. While completing his formal education in the celebrated music program at the University of North Texas, at age 19, Johnson began performing professionally with the Fort Worth Symphony. In 1977, he was on the road with the Woody Herman Band.
Finding something like Bradford Bahamas reminds me of why I listen to the music. Fear not, I'm not tired and emotional at the end of yet another shit-box of a week, please, hear me out. It's not for the wry, dry, sly lyrics, it's not for the sweetest, most intricate of melodies, it's not for the next level of six-fingered-guitar-wankery. It's for the mentalism and the astonishment that something new can bring.
"Helge Lien, jazz pianist and composer, holds a master degree in music from the Norwegian Academy of Music, where Russian pianist Misha Alperin was an inspiring mentor and teacher of improvisation. The core of Lien