mick laBriola

R. Prasanna (better known as Guitar Prasanna), is a pioneer in performing Carnatic music on the guitar. He also plays jazz, progressive rock, and world fusion.

Prasanna grew up in Chennai, India and fell in love with the guitar at age of five after hearing his neighbor play. He received his first guitar when he was ten years old and would try to play Tamil and Hindi film songs and imitate the sounds of his sister’s Carnatic singing with the instrument. Prasanna’s interest in Western pop music developed when his father’s colleague gave him some cassette tapes with songs by the Bee Gees, ABBA, Toto, Peaches and Herb, and the Pointer Sisters.

While still in high school he began making a reputation as a guitarist with local band XIth Commandment. During his years studying naval architecture at Indian institute of Technology, Madras(where he also met his wife Shalini), he toured India with his rock bands (The Haze and then Shakuni & the Birds of Prey), covering songs by Santana, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rush, Steely Dan, Jethro Tull, and the Scorpions and compositions like “Peaceful” and “Blues for Saraswati”. Prasanna’s musical development led him to blues and jazz. After working as a software consultant, he gave up a career in engineering and IT and moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music where he majored in Jazz and Classical Composition.

October 2nd 1966. Kenny Rittenhouse received a Bachelor’s Degree in music from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1988 and a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the University of Maryland in 2006. He also did graduate work on trumpet and in jazz at the Eastman School of Music, and at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA where he studied with Roger Sherman of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Mr. Rittenhouse was a member of The United States Army Band (Pershing’s Own) in Washington, DC. from 1990-2020. This is the premier band of the Army. He performed with The U.S. Army Blues Jazz Ensemble. As member of the Army Blues, he has shared the stage alongside Ernie Andrews, Kevin Mahogany, Lou Rawls, Wycliff Gordon, Doc Severinsen, Arturo Sandoval, and Sean Jones.  As a member of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, he has toured nationally and internationally with jazz flutist Hubert Laws and vocalist Kurt Elling. As a past member of the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra led by trumpeter Sean Jones, he has shared the stage with Jazz legends such as Jimmy Heath, Ahmad Jamal, and Freddy Cole.

Mr. Rittenhouse currently holds the Applied Trumpet Instructor position at Morgan State University. Before teaching at Morgan State, he taught Jazz Trumpet at George Mason University for the past 14 years. For over 25 years Mr. Rittenhouse has led his own jazz quartet performing in and around the Washington, DC area with many great jazz artists including Larry Willis, Ralph Peterson, Don Braden, Buck Hill, and Steve Wilson, and Butch Warren. The Kenny Rittenhouse Ensemble is one of the hardest swinging jazz groups in the greater DC metro area.  The group, under the direction of trumpeter Kenny Rittenhouse, was formed several years ago and has appeared in such venues as Blues Alley, Bohemian Caverns, and Twins Jazz Club.  The group recorded their first release (a sextet) in 2006 titled “The Francis Suite”.  Their second release, recorded in February 2013 is titled “New York Suite”.  It’s a hard swinging septet playing mostly original songs highlighting traditional straight ahead jazz with a bit of Funk & R&B in the mix.

Youssou N’Dour (French: [jusu (ɛ)nduʁ]; also known as Youssou Madjiguène Ndour; born 1 October 1959) is a Senegalese singer, songwriter, composer, occasional actor, businessman, and politician. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine described him as, “perhaps the most famous singer alive” in Senegal and much of Africa. From April 2012 to September 2013, he was Senegal’s Minister of Tourism.

N’Dour helped develop a style of popular Senegalese music known by all Senegambians (including the Wolof) as mbalax, a genre that has sacred origins in the Serer music njuup tradition and ndut initiation ceremonies. He is the subject of the award-winning films Return to Gorée (2007) directed by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud and Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love (2008) directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, which were released around the world.

In 2006, N’Dour was cast as Olaudah Equiano in the film Amazing Grace

Dave Holland (born 1 October 1946) is an English jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader who has been performing and recording for five decades. He has lived in the United States for over 40 years.

His work ranges from pieces for solo performance to big band. Holland runs his own independent record label, Dare2, which he launched in 2005.

Born in Wolverhampton, England, Holland taught himself how to play stringed instruments, beginning at four on the ukulele, then graduating to guitar and later bass guitar. He quit school at the age of 15 to pursue his profession in a pop band, but soon gravitated to jazz. After seeing an issue of Down Beat where Ray Brown had won the critics’ poll for best bass player, Holland went to a record store, and bought a couple of LPs featuring Brown backing pianist Oscar Peterson. He also bought two Leroy Vinnegar albums (Leroy Walks! and Leroy Walks Again) because the bassist was posed with his instrument on the cover. Within a week, Holland traded in his bass guitar for a double bass and began practicing with the records. In addition to Brown and Vinnegar, Holland was drawn to the bassists Charles Mingus and Jimmy Garrison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rFcQ213ClU

Albert Gene Drewery, known as Albert Collins and the Ice Man (October 1, 1932 – November 24, 1993), was an American electric blues guitarist and singer with a distinctive guitar style. He was noted for his powerful playing and his use of altered tunings and a capo. His long association with the Fender Telecaster led to the title “The Master of the Telecaster”.

Collins was born in Leona, Texas, on October 1, 1932. He was introduced to the guitar at an early age by his cousin Lightnin’ Hopkins, also a Leona resident, who played at family gatherings. The Collins family relocated to Marquez, Texas, in 1938 and to Houston in 1941, where he attended Jack Yates High School. Collins took piano lessons when he was young, but when his piano tutor was unavailable his cousin Willow Young would lend Albert his guitar and taught him the altered tuning that he used throughout his career. Collins tuned his guitar to an open F-minor chord (FCFAbCF), with a capo at the 5th, 6th or 7th fret. At the age of sixteen, he decided to concentrate on learning the guitar after hearing “Boogie Chillen’” by John Lee Hooker.

“Zapateado” is a flamenco style which belongs to the polyrhythmic group. This is one of the most paradigmatic dances in flamenco art.

Its main feature is the use of tap-dance as percussion. It seems that the origin of “zapateado” is located in the Atlantic cultural exchange, since in many countries in America, there exist some kind of tap dancing, similar to the “zapateo”: in Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba.

“Zapateado” of Cadiz was one of the first to emerge. Flamenco dancer Josefa Vargas might be one of the pioneers of “zapateado”, according to the references of the media in October 1850. The “zapateado” adopted polyrhythm of “tanguillos”, possibly due to the richness of this style.

Nowadays “zapateado” is not a very usual dance. But, the guitar has always been an instrument faithful to this flamenco style, which is found in the guitarist’s repertoire.

Franklin Joseph Lymon (September 30, 1942 – February 27, 1968 Harlem, NY) was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of the New York City-based early rock and roll group The Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid-teens. The original lineup of the Teenagers, an integrated group, included three African-American members, Frankie Lymon, Jimmy Merchant, and Sherman Garnes; and two Puerto Rican members, Joe Negroni and Herman Santiago. The Teenagers’ first single, 1956’s “Why Do Fools Fall in Love“, was also their biggest hit. After Lymon went solo in mid-1957, both his career and that of the Teenagers fell into decline. He was found dead at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother’s bathroom from a heroin overdose. His life was dramatized in the 1998 film Why Do Fools Fall In Love. On February 27, 1968, Lymon was found dead of a heroin overdose at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother’s bathroom with a syringe by his side. Lymon, a Baptist, was buried at Catholic Saint Raymond’s Cemetery in the Throggs Neck section of The Bronx, New York City, New York. “I’m Sorry” and “Seabreeze”, the two songs Lymon had recorded for Big Apple before his death, were released later in 1968.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfN9WTWeUvw&list=RDVfN9WTWeUvw&index=1

Hossein Dehlavi (Persian: حسین دهلوی‎) (September 30, 1927 – October 15, 2019) was an Iranian composer.

Hossein Dehlavi was born in 1927 in Tehran, Iran and started music with his father Moezeddin Emami who was a pupil of master Ali-Akbar Shahnazi. Dehlavi studied composition at the Tehran Conservatory of Music with Hossein Nassehi and Heimo Tauber. He studied Persian music with Abolhasan Saba and, from 1957 to 1967, was the principal conductor of the Persian Fine Arts Administration Orchestra, also known as Saba Orchestra.^[1][3]

Dehlavi started to teach at the Persian National Music Conservatory in Tehran since 1957 and from 1961 until 1950 was the director of this conservatory. The conductor Ali Rahbari was one of his pupils. In 1992, with the cooperation of nearly 70 players of Persian instruments, Dehlavi established the Plectrum Orchestra in Tehran.

His works included several pieces for Persian instruments and orchestra, voice and orchestra, choir and orchestra, and two operas and a ballet. As his contribution to the Year of the Child (1979), he wrote an opera for children called Mana and Mani.

His wife Susan Aslani and his son Houman Dehlavi are also famous musicians.

Oscar Pettiford (September 30, 1922 – September 8, 1960) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom.

Pettiford was born at Okmulgee, Oklahoma. His mother was Choctaw, and his father was half Cherokee and half African American.

He grew up playing in the family band in which he sang and danced before switching to piano at the age of 12, then to double bass when he was 14. He is quoted as saying he did not like the way people were playing the bass so he developed his own way of playing it. Despite being admired by the likes of Milt Hinton at the age of 14, he gave up in 1941 as he did not believe he could make a living. Five months later, he once again met Hinton, who persuaded him to return to music.

Bernard “Buddy” Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time.

Rich was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He discovered his affinity for jazz music at a young age and began drumming at the age of 2. He began playing jazz in 1937, working with acts such as Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James. From 1942 to 1944, Rich served in the U.S. Marines. From 1945 to 1948, he led the Buddy Rich Orchestra. In 1966, he recorded a big-band style arrangement of songs from West Side Story. He found lasting success in 1966 with the formation of the Buddy Rich Big Band, also billed as the Buddy Rich Band and The Big Band Machine.

Rich was known for his virtuoso technique, power, and speed. He was an advocate of the traditional grip, though he occasionally used match gripwhen playing the toms. Despite his commercial success and musical talent, Rich never learned how to read sheet music, preferring to listen to drum parts and play them from memory.