This is a list of notable events in music that took place in 1981.
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.
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.
Diana Jean Krall is a Canadian jazz pianist and singer known for her contralto vocals. She has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, including over six million in the US. On December 11, 2009, Billboard magazine named her the second greatest jazz artist of the decade (2000–2009), establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her time.
Charles Edward Haden was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than 50 years. Building on the work of predecessors such as Jimmy Blanton and Charles Mingus, Haden helped to revolutionize the harmonic concept of bass playing in jazz, evolving a style that sometimes complemented the soloist, and other times moved independently, liberating bassists from a strictly accompanying role, to allow more direct participation in group improvisation.
Samuel Carthorne Rivers was an American jazz musician and composer. Though most famously a tenor saxophonist, he also performed on soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica, piano and viola.
Hiromi Uehara, known professionally as Hiromi, is a Japanese jazz composer and pianist. She is known for her virtuosic technique, energetic live performances and blending of musical genres such as stride, post-bop, progressive rock, classical, nu jazz and fusion in her compositions.
Dee Dee Bridgewater is an American jazz singer and actress. She is a three-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award-winning stage actress. For 23 years, she was the host of National Public Radio's syndicated radio show JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater. She is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Diane Joan Schuur, nicknamed "Deedles", is an American jazz singer and pianist. As of 2015, Schuur had released 23 albums, and had extended her jazz repertoire to include essences of Latin, gospel, pop and country music. Her most successful album is Diane Schuur & the Count Basie Orchestra, which remained number one on the Billboard Jazz Charts for 33 weeks. She won Grammy Awards for best female jazz vocal performance in both 1986 and 1987 and has had three other Grammy nominations.
"What a Diff'rence a Day Made", also recorded as "What a Difference a Day Makes", is a popular song originally written in Spanish by María Grever, a Mexican songwriter, in 1934 with the title "Cuando vuelva a tu lado" and first recorded by Orquesta Pedro Vía that same year. A popular version in Spanish was later recorded by trio Los Panchos with Eydie Gormé in 1964.
Carola Christina Standertskjöld-Liemola, professionally known as Carola, was a Finnish jazz and pop singer. Her style was partially inspired by American singers of the 1950s. Simultaneously, it was in the spirit of the modal jazz scene going down in Europe in the 1960s. Mostly, Carola's jazz repertoire consisted in idiosyncratic versions of American songs in English, while her most famous jazz track "The Flame" was an original composition by Esa Pethman and the lyrics by the singer herself. As the vocalist for Esa Pethman's quartet and Hazy Osterwald's sextet in the early 1960s, Carola made fame in Finland and Sweden, and toured Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland. Her most significant recording is a session with the Heikki Sarmanto Trio from 1966, which the Finnish Music Information Centre considers among the original blueprints of Finnish jazz. Carola's recordings have been credited for the accosting tone of her contralto voice and her phrasing. The singer also co-produced the groovy approach of her supporting orchestras. In late 1960s and early 1970s, she performed in nine languages and a wide variety of styles, including chanson, schlager, Latin, rock'n'roll, and soul. After her death of Alzheimer's disease in 1997, Carola's music was revived in 2004 with two Best of albums and Carola & Heikki Sarmanto Trio reaching the Finnish charts.
Jeff Hamilton is an American jazz drummer and co-leader of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. A former member of the L.A. Four, Hamilton has played with jazz pianist Monty Alexander, bandleader Woody Herman, and singer Rosemary Clooney, and has worked extensively with singer Diana Krall.
Ann Richards was an American pop and jazz singer. She was the second wife of bandleader Stan Kenton. She had a short career in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Lucy Woodward is an English-American singer-songwriter. She has recorded for Atlantic, Verve, and GroundUP and has sung background vocals for Rod Stewart, Barbra Streisand, Snarky Puppy, Celine Dion, Pink Martini, Gavin DeGraw, Joe Cocker, Chaka Khan, Nikka Costa, and Randy Jackson. She co-wrote Stacie Orrico's Top 40 hit "(There's Gotta Be) More to Life".
Good Lovelies are a Canadian folk/country harmony trio, consisting of Caroline Brooks, Kerri Ough and Sue Passmore. At their core they can be described as a country/folk trio, with tinges of pop, roots, jazz and sometimes hip-hop mixed in.
Grace Kelly is an American jazz musician, composer, and arranger. Kelly has produced and released recordings of her own, scored soundtracks, and tours with her band. She was named one of Glamour magazine's Top 10 College Women in 2011; and she has been featured on CNN.com and on the NPR radio shows Piano Jazz with both Marian McPartland and Jon Weber, as well as on WBGO's JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater.
Elin Rosseland is a singer, bandleader, and composer who studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music and is known from collaborations with Vigleik Storaas, Johannes Eick, Sidsel Endresen, Eldbjørg Raknes, Christian Wallumrød, and Johannes Eick.
İlhan Erşahin is a Swedish–Turkish musician and bar owner, raised in Stockholm and based in New York City since 1990. As a musician, Ersahin has performed and recorded with various musicians as well as his own projects/bands, Wax Poetic, Love Trio, Our Theory, I Led Three Lives, Wonderland and Istanbul Sessions.
Hannah Welton is an American drummer from Louisville, Kentucky.
Donna Grantis is a Canadian guitarist, best known for performing and recording with Prince & 3rdeyegirl. On September 30, 2014, Prince and 3rdeyegirl released their debut album, Plectrumelectrum, which reached #1 on the Billboard Rock chart. The album's title track, "Plectrumelectrum", was originally written by Grantis and later arranged by Prince. Since 2013, Grantis has been a member of Prince's funk supergroup, The New Power Generation. On November 16, 2018, Grantis released two new songs, “Trashformer” and “Violetta,” featuring Hall of Fame Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, as a limited edition 7” via his vinyl label HockeyTalkter Records. The tracks appear on Grantis’ debut album, Diamonds & Dynamite, released March 22, 2019, via eOne Music. The album and lead track reached #1 on iTunes Canada for top jazz album and top jazz song.
