Mary D. Watkins (born 1939, Denver, Colorado) is an American composer and pianist in jazz and classical music.
Watkins graduated from Howard University in 1972 and began performing in jazz ensembles in Washington, D.C. shortly after. [1] Watkins released several full-length albums and composed commissioned works for jazz ensembles, including a score for the play Lady Lester Sings the Blues and a jazz version of The Nutcracker ballet. [1]
The 37th Annual Grammy Awards were presented on March 1, 1995, at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Bruce Springsteen was the night's biggest winner with 4 awards, including Song of the Year while opening the show with his Grammy nominated hit.
Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music.
Roscoe Mitchell is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator, known for being "a technically superb – if idiosyncratic – saxophonist". The Penguin Guide to Jazz described him as "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz; All About Jazz stated in 2004 that he had been "at the forefront of modern music" for more than 35 years. Critic Jon Pareles in The New York Times has mentioned that Mitchell "qualifies as an iconoclast". In addition to his own work as a bandleader, Mitchell is known for cofounding the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator. His career includes more than fifty recordings as a leader and more than 500 published compositions. His ensembles include the Dave Douglas Quintet; Sound Prints, a quintet co-led with saxophonist Joe Lovano; Uplift, a sextet with bassist Bill Laswell; Present Joys with pianist Uri Caine and Andrew Cyrille; High Risk, an electronic ensemble with Shigeto, Jonathan Aaron, and Ian Chang; and Engage, a sextet with Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, Anna Webber, Nick Dunston, and Kate Gentile.
Lester Bowie was an American jazz trumpet player and composer. He was a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and co-founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC was a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. from the 1950s onwards.
Marty Ehrlich is a multi-instrumentalist and is considered one of the leading figures in avant-garde jazz.
Frank Benjamin Foster III was an American tenor and soprano saxophonist, flautist, arranger, and composer. Foster collaborated frequently with Count Basie and worked as a bandleader from the early 1950s. In 1998, Howard University awarded Frank Foster with the Benny Golson Jazz Master Award.
Robert Michael Watson Jr., known professionally as Bobby Watson, is an American saxophonist, composer, and educator.
Julius Watkins was an American jazz musician who played French horn. Described by AllMusic as "virtually the father of the jazz French horn", Watkins won the Down Beat critics poll in 1960 and 1961 for Miscellaneous Instrument.
Vijay Iyer is an American composer, pianist, bandleader, producer and writer based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway". Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. He was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat magazine international critics' polls in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2018. In 2014, he received a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he was jointly appointed in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.
Joseph Bowie is an American jazz trombonist and vocalist. The brother of trumpeter Lester Bowie, Joseph is known for leading the jazz-punk group Defunkt and for membership in the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble.
Vincent Chancey is an American jazz hornist.
Linda "Tui" Tillery is an American singer, percussionist, producer, songwriter, and music arranger. She began her professional singing career at age 19 with the Bay Area rock band The Loading Zone. She is recognized as a pioneer in Women's music, with her second solo album titled Linda Tillery released on Olivia Records in 1977. In addition to performing, she was the producer on three of Olivia's first eight albums. Within the women's music genre, she has collaborated with June Millington, Deidre McCalla, Barbara Higbie, Holly Near, Margie Adam, and others. Tillery was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best Musical Album for Children.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
James Emery is an American jazz guitarist. He grew up in Willoughby, Ohio and Shaker Heights, Ohio. Emery plays archtop guitar, semi-acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and soprano guitar.
While the French horn is primarily used in classical music pieces, in the mid-20th century it broke into the jazz world. While the instrument remains relatively rare, the role of the French horn in jazz has developed from its beginnings in the 1940s through to the 2010s. Note that the expression "horns" in jazz is often used colloquially to refer to all wind instruments used in jazz
Derek Roy Watkins was an English jazz, pop, and classical trumpeter. Best known for his lead trumpet work on the soundtracks of James Bond films, Watkins recorded with British jazz bandleaders as well as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and The Beatles. Dizzy Gillespie called him "Mr. Lead".
Kobie Watkins is an American drummer and percussionist in Jazz, Latin, and Gospel music genres, and a music educator.
Sacred jazz is jazz composed and performed with religious intent.