Bess Bonnier (born 26 May 1928 in Detroit; died 6 October 2011 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan) was an American jazz pianist, composer and music educator. [1]
Bonnier, who was blind from birth, had classical piano lessons as a child. After graduating from Southeastern High School, she studied music and English at Wayne State University, but had to interrupt her studies to raise her three children as a single mother. In the 1960s, she earned a master's degree in English. She taught jazz piano for many years and performed at the Detroit Institute of Arts, at the Detroit International Jazz Festival and other local venues.
Bonnier presented a series of albums under her own name; in 1958 her debut album appeared on the Chicago label Argo. [2] Her other albums include Suite William (1999), a jazz cantata with texts by William Shakespeare, and Bess Bonnier and Other Jazz Birds (1985), in which she played with guest musicians including Roland Hanna and Pepper Adams. [3] In 1981 she performed with her longtime friends Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris and Roland Hanna at the Detroit Piano Summit in a New York church. [3]
In the 1960s she worked with the vibraphonist Jack Brokensha; their collaboration is documented on the album Xmazz, including their composition "Christmas Rag". [4] She was also an Artist in Residence for many years, in addition to working as a music teacher at schools in the Detroit area. [3]
Porgy and Bess is an English-language opera by American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author DuBose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward's play Porgy, itself an adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy.
Benny Golson was an American bebop and hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launching his solo career. Golson was known for co-founding and co-leading The Jazztet with trumpeter Art Farmer in 1959. From the late 1960s through the 1970s Golson was in demand as an arranger for film and television and thus was less active as a performer, but he and Farmer re-formed the Jazztet in 1982.
William Thomas Strayhorn was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger who collaborated with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington for nearly three decades. His compositions include "Take the 'A' Train", "Chelsea Bridge", "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing", and "Lush Life".
Peter Gunn is an American private eye television series, starring Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn with Lola Albright as his girlfriend, lounge singer Edie Hart. The series was broadcast by NBC from September 22, 1958, to 1960 and by ABC in 1960–61. The series was created by Blake Edwards, who, on occasion, was also writer and director.
Margaret Marian McPartland OBE, was an English–American jazz pianist, composer, and writer. She was the host of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011.
Sonny Stitt was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. Known for his warm tone, he was one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording more than 100 albums. He was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern because of his tendency to rarely work with the same musicians for long despite his relentless touring and devotion to the craft. Stitt was sometimes viewed as a Charlie Parker mimic, especially earlier in his career, but gradually came to develop his own sound and style, particularly when performing on tenor saxophone and even occasionally baritone saxophone.
Sippie Wallace was an American blues singer, pianist and songwriter. Her early career in tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale". Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by her or her brothers, George and Hersal Thomas. Her accompanists included Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, and Clarence Williams. Among the top female blues vocalists of her era, Wallace ranked with Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, and Bessie Smith.
Billy Taylor was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Betty Carter was an American jazz singer known for her improvisational technique, scatting and other complex musical abilities that demonstrated her vocal talent and imaginative interpretation of lyrics and melodies. Vocalist Carmen McRae once remarked: "There's really only one jazz singer—only one: Betty Carter."
Dorothy Jeanne Thompson, better known as Dorothy Ashby, was an American jazz harpist, singer and composer. Hailed as one of the most "unjustly under loved jazz greats of the 1950s" and the "most accomplished modern jazz harpist," Ashby established the harp as an improvising jazz instrument, beyond earlier use as a novelty or background orchestral instrument, proving the harp could play bebop as adeptly as the instruments commonly associated with jazz, such as the saxophone or piano.
Barry Doyle Harris was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, composer, arranger, and educator. He was an exponent of the bebop style. Influenced by Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, Harris in turn influenced and mentored bebop musicians including Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Curtis Fuller, Joe Henderson, Charles McPherson, and Michael Weiss.
Carmen Mercedes McRae was an American jazz singer. She is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century and is remembered for her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretation of lyrics.
Roland Pembroke Hanna was an American jazz pianist, composer, and teacher.
Gene M. Roland was an American jazz composer and musician. He played many instruments during his career, but was most significant as an arranger/composer and for his association with Stan Kenton. Roland was one of only two arrangers to write for Kenton, in all four decades of the band's existence, the other being Ken Hanna.
Patti Bown was an American jazz pianist, composer, and singer.
Sam Sadigursky is a clarinetist, saxophonist, flutist and composer.
Terry Pollard was an American jazz pianist and vibraphonist active in the Detroit jazz scene of the 1940s and 1950s. She has been described as a "major player who was inexplicably overlooked."
George Franklin Benson Jr. was an American jazz musician and educator.
Jean DuShon was an African American jazz and R&B singer, and stage actor. She was best known for her recordings in the 1960s, including the first released recording of the song "For Once in My Life" in 1966, although many had not heard her version, and assumed the original recording was by Stevie Wonder
Sacred jazz is jazz composed and performed with religious intent.