The 28th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 25, 1986, at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year, 1985. The night's big winner was USA for Africa's "We Are the World", which won four awards, including Song of the Year which went to Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. It marked the first time in their respective careers that they received the Song of the Year Award. For Richie, it was his sixth attempt in eight years. The other three awards for the latter single were given to the song's producer, Quincy Jones.
Wynton Learson Marsalis is an American trumpeter, composer, and music instructor, who is currently the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has been active in promoting classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the only musician to have won a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical categories in the same year.
Yusef Abdul Lateef was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and prominent figure among the Ahmadiyya Community in the United States.
Debra Renee Laws is an American singer and actress from Houston, Texas. She is best known for her 1981 R&B/soul ballad "Very Special". In her music career, she works closely with her siblings, Eloise Laws, Hubert Laws and Ronnie Laws, who are producers.
David Peter Valentin was an American Latin jazz flautist of Puerto Rican descent.
Barbara Ann "Bobbi" Humphrey is an American jazz flautist and singer. She has recorded twelve albums over the course of her career, mostly playing jazz fusion, funk, and soul-jazz. In 1971, she was the first female instrumentalist signed by Blue Note and in 1994, she founded the jazz label Paradise Sounds Records.
Steve Barta is an American Brazilian jazz pianist, author, educator, composer, arranger, producer. Grammy nominated Pianist is a composer, recording artist, producer, author and educator. He has performed his original works as a solo artist, and with jazz ensembles and symphony orchestras. As a member of Herbie Mann and Jasil Brazz featuring Steve Barta, Steve recorded his widely acclaimed Blue River with this New York based ensemble – an original collection of his Brazilian compositions. His discography includes 15 recordings that reflect his many influences, particularly Brazilian, jazz and classical.
Joseph Benjamin Wilder was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.
Ransom Wilson is an American flutist, conductor, and educator.
James Walker is an American flutist and educator. He is the former Principal Flute of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the founder of the jazz quartet Free Flight. Since 1984, he has focused most of his attention on jazz performance and flute pedagogy.
Eloise Laws is an American singer and a member of the Laws family of musicians from Houston, Texas.
The Bob Cole Conservatory of Music is the school of music at California State University, Long Beach. In March 2008, the music department was renamed the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music in honor of an endowment gift of $16.4 million from the estate of Robert "Bob" Cole. Cole, a Long Beach real estate investor, long-time music lover, and amateur pianist, died in 2004. Following its disbursement, the gift will benefit the students of the conservatory in the form of scholarships and other awards.
Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony is an album by Yusef Lateef, released through the record label Rhino Atlantic in 1987. The album, which Billboard described as "an atmospheric four-movement classical/jazz composition", was produced by Lateef, recorded, mixed and mastered by Norman Blain, and remastered by Dennis King. Lateef provided all instrumentation that appears on the album. In 1988, Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony earned Lateef the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album despite having no prior association with the genre.
In the Beginning is a double album by flutist Hubert Laws released on the CTI and recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in 1974. The album was later reissued on CTI as two separate volumes entitled Then There Was Light.
Jazz flute is the use of the flute in jazz music. While flutes were sometimes played in ragtime and early jazz ensembles, the flute became established as a jazz instrument in the 1950s. It is now widely used in ensembles and by soloists. The modern Boehm system transverse concert flute is commonly used in jazz playing; other members of the same family are used, such as the alto flute in G. Ethnic and other flutes, such as bamboo flutes, have also been used in jazz.
Valerie Coleman is an American composer and flutist as well as the creator of the wind quintet Imani Winds. Coleman is a distinguished artist of the century who was named Performance Today's 2020 Classical Woman of the year and was listed as “one of the Top 35 Women Composers” in the Washington Post. In 2019, Coleman's orchestral work, Umoja, Anthem for Unity, was commissioned and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Coleman's Umoja is the first classical work by a living African American woman that the Philadelphia Orchestra has performed.
Spirit of the American Range is a classical music album by the Oregon Symphony under the artistic direction of Carlos Kalmar, released by the Dutch record label Pentatone on February 10, 2015. The album was recorded at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon in April 2013 and January 2014. It contains works by three American 20th-century composers: Walter Piston's ballet suite from The Incredible Flutist, George Antheil's "A Jazz Symphony", and Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3. The recording was the third by the orchestra under Kalmar's leadership, following the highly successful Music for a Time of War (2011) and This England (2012). Spirit of the American Range received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Orchestral Performance, and its producer, Blanton Alspaugh, was nominated for Producer of the Year, Classical.
Romeo and Juliet is an album by flutist Hubert Laws. It was released by Columbia Records and spent several weeks on the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart in 1976.
Hubert Laws is an American flutist and saxophonist with a career spanning over 50 years in jazz, classical, and other music genres. He is one of the most recognized and respected jazz flutists in the history of jazz. Laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhythm-and-blues genres, moving effortlessly from one repertory to another.
Nathalie Joachim is an American vocalist, flutist, and composer born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a Grammy-nominated artist whose music spans a broad range of genres, including indie-rock, pop, and classical. Some of her works include Discourse, "Land Bridge", and Fanm d’Ayiti.
