Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz upright bassist, composer, bandleader, pianist, and author. A major proponent of collective improvisation, he is considered to be one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history, with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Eric Dolphy. Mingus's work ranged from advanced bebop and avant-garde jazz with small and midsize ensembles, to pioneering the post-bop style on seminal recordings like Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956) and Mingus Ah Um (1959), and progressive big band experiments such as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963).
The double bass, also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four or five strings.
The flugelhorn, also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B♭, though some are in C. It is a type of valved bugle, developed in Germany in the early 19th century from a traditional English valveless bugle. The first version of a valved bugle was sold by Heinrich Stölzel in Berlin in 1828. The valved bugle provided Adolphe Sax with the inspiration for his B♭ soprano (contralto) saxhorns, on which the modern-day flugelhorn is modelled.
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands.
John Scofield is an American guitarist and composer. His music over a long career has blended jazz, jazz fusion, funk, blues, soul and rock. He first came to mainstream attention as part of the band of Miles Davis; he has toured and recorded with many prominent jazz artists including saxophonists Eddie Harris, Dave Liebman, Joe Henderson, and Joe Lovano; keyboardists George Duke, Joey DeFrancesco, Herbie Hancock, Larry Goldings, and Robert Glasper; fellow guitarists Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie, Pat Martino, and Bill Frisell; bassists Marc Johnson and Jaco Pastorius; and drummers Billy Cobham and Dennis Chambers. Outside the world of jazz, he has collaborated with Phil Lesh, Mavis Staples, John Mayer, Medeski Martin & Wood, and Gov't Mule.
John McLaughlin, also known as Mahavishnu, is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues. After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with drummer Tony Williams's group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.
Paul Laurence Dunbar Chambers Jr. was an American jazz double bassist. A fixture of rhythm sections during the 1950s and 1960s, he has become one of the most widely-known jazz bassists of the hard bop era. He was also known for his bowed solos. Chambers recorded about a dozen albums as a leader or co-leader, and over 100 more as a sideman, especially as the anchor of trumpeter Miles Davis's "first great quintet" (1955–63) and with pianist Wynton Kelly (1963–68).
James Blanton was an American jazz double bassist. Blanton is credited with being the originator of more complex pizzicato and arco bass solos in a jazz context than previous bassists. Nicknamed "Jimmie," Blanton's nickname is usually misspelled as "Jimmy," including by Duke Ellington.
Dianne Elizabeth Reeves is an American jazz singer.
KUVO is a non-profit FM radio station broadcasting mainly jazz music in a public radio format. Licensed to Denver, Colorado, KUVO is owned by Rocky Mountain Public Media Inc. KUVO's mission is to "provide distinctive music, news and informational programming reflecting the values and cultural diversity of their listener community."
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player, composer, guitarist, and mandolinist whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and was a member of three influential musical ensembles: the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers.
While Denver may not be as recognized for historical musical prominence like such cities as Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago or New York City, it still manages to have a very active popular, jazz, and classical music scene, which has nurtured many artists and genres to regional, national, and even international attention. Though nearby Boulder, Colorado has its own very distinct music scene, they are intertwined and often artists based there also play in Denver.
Five Points is one of Denver, Colorado's oldest neighborhoods. It is now one of the fastest growing in terms of both redevelopment and population. Much of this growth is taking place in the River North Arts District, or "RiNo", which is often considered by locals a neighborhood of its own; although it is officially within the Five Points neighborhood in addition to parts of neighboring Globeville and Elyria-Swansea.
Rony Barrak is a Lebanese darbouka player and composer. He began playing the darbouka at four.
Reed Mathis is a bassist, producer, singer, and guitarist who is best known for his 15-year stint as co-leader of the Tulsa progressive jazz band Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. The Bay Area rooted player has also notably worked with Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann. He played with Steve Kimock Band, and is a former member of Tea Leaf Green.
Vincent LeRoy Beyer, known professionally as Verne Byers or Vern Byers, was an American jazz bandleader, double bass player, promoter, and nightclub owner. He brought The Beatles to Denver when they performed at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on August 26, 1964.
Karl E. H. Seigfried is a German–American jazz, rock, and classical bassist, guitarist, composer, bandleader, writer and educator based in Chicago.
Larry Gray is a Chicago musician known for his compositions and skill on the double bass and cello. His primary teachers were Joseph Guastafeste, longtime principal bassist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and cellist Karl Fruh.
Charles Curtis Berghofer is an American double bassist and electric bassist, who has worked in jazz and as a session musician in the film industry for more than 60 years, including working on more than 400 movie soundtracks.
Conni Ellisor is a contemporary American composer and violinist. She was trained at The Juilliard School and the University of Denver's University of Denver, Lamont School of Music, and rose to prominence as Composer-in-Residence of the Nashville Chamber Orchestra in the late 1990s. As a violinist, she has served as a member of the Denver Symphony, concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic, first violin in the Athena Quartet, and is now a top-call studio musician and member of the Nashville String Machine.
