Stanley William Turrentine was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He began his career playing R&B for Earl Bostic and later soul jazz recording for the Blue Note label from 1960, touched on jazz fusion during a stint on CTI in the 1970s. He was described by critic Steve Huey as "renowned for his distinctively thick, rippling tone [and] earthy grounding in the blues." In the 1960s Turrentine was married to organist Shirley Scott, with whom he frequently recorded, and he was the younger brother of trumpeter Tommy Turrentine.
Roy Anthony Hargrove was an American jazz musician and composer whose principal instruments were the trumpet and flugelhorn. He achieved worldwide acclaim after winning two Grammy Awards for differing styles of jazz in 1998 and in 2002. Hargrove primarily played in the hard bop style for the majority of his albums, but also had a penchant for genre-crossing exploration and collaboration with a variety of hip hop, soul, R&B and alternative rock artists. As Hargrove told one reporter, “I’ve been around all kinds of musicians, and if a cat can play, a cat can play. If it’s gospel, funk, R&B, jazz or hip-hop, if it’s something that gets in your ear and it’s good, that’s what matters.”
Alvester Garnett is an American jazz drummer who, among many other productions, has appeared on Great Performances on PBS in a tribute to Kurt Weill. Garnett has played with Abbey Lincoln, Betty Carter, Regina Carter, Clark Terry, Pharoah Sanders, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Teddy Edwards, James Carter, Cyrus Chestnut, Charenee Wade, Lou Donaldson, Benny Golson, Al Grey, Rodney Jones, and Sherman Irby, among others.
Droppin' Things is a 1990 live album by the American jazz singer Betty Carter.
Terell Stafford is a professional jazz trumpet player and current Director of Jazz Studies at the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University.
The Clifford Brown Jazz Festival is a free jazz music festival held annually in June at Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. The first festival was held in 1989 on the open lawn in the center of the city, and has grown into the largest free jazz festival on the East Coast. The event is held to keep alive the memory of Clifford Brown who died in a traffic accident in 1956 along with pianist Richie Powell. Pieces written by Brown and tribute pieces are often played. Some acts have been staged at the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, where a fee was charged.
Xavier Davis is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, producer, and music educator who leads the Xavier Davis Trio. In addition to performing with the Christian McBride Big Band and other groups as a side man. In 2014 he was appointed Associate Professor of Jazz Piano at Michigan State University. He previously taught at the Juilliard Jazz program at the Juilliard School for six years. He performed on two Grammy-winning albums The Good Feeling, and Bringin' It with the Christian McBride Big Band. Davis was the Musical Director for the Boys Choir of Harlem for the 1999-2000 season. He appeared on the television series Cosby as a pianist.
Rodney Whitaker is an American jazz double bass player and educator.
Neo-bop refers to a style of jazz that gained popularity in the 1980s among musicians who found greater aesthetic affinity for acoustically-based, swinging, melodic forms of jazz than for free jazz and jazz fusion that had gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. It contains elements of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz. As both neo-bop and post-bop categories denote eclectic mixtures of styles from the bebop and post-bebop eras, the standards for separating the two categories are not clear. In the United States neo-bop is associated with Wynton Marsalis and "The Young Lions," although they have also been referred to as post-bop. Neo-bop was also embraced by established musicians who either ignored the avant-garde and fusion movements, or returned to music based on more traditional styles after experimenting with them. The return to more traditionally-based styles earned praise and also criticism. Miles Davis called it "warmed over turkey" and others deemed it to be too dependent on the past. The movement, however, received praise from Time magazine and others who welcomed the return of more accessible forms of jazz. There were also those who deemed it a valid evolution from hard bop.
Casey Benjamin is an American saxophonist, vocoderist, keyboardist, producer, and songwriter. He is a member of the Robert Glasper Experiment which won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album for their album Black Radio. He is one half of the funk pop new wave duo HEAVy with vocalist Nicky Guiland. He was also a member of Stefon Harris' band Blackout and has worked with numerous artists at the intersection of jazz, hip-hop, and R&B, including Roy Hargrove, Betty Carter, Derrick Hodge, Victor Bailey, Kris Bowers, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Q-Tip, Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Busta Rhymes, Diddy, Heavy D, Consequence, DJ Logic, Wyclef Jean, Bilal, Mary J. Blige, John Legend, and Beyonce. He has also worked with rockers Vernon Reid and Melvin Gibbs. In 2011, he was the keyboard/saxophonist for Patrick Stump's live solo project tour.
Urbanus is the seventh album by jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris. It was released in August 2009 on Concord Records, Harris's first release with the label, his previous six releases were on Blue Note Records. The self-produced album was Harris's second with his band Blackout, the first being 2004's Evolution. It reached number 15 on the Billboard Top Traditional Jazz Albums chart and was nominated for the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.
Motéma Music is a jazz and world music record label. The label's catalog spans genres, cultures, and generations and has received Grammy recognition for over twenty-five albums in jazz, Latin-jazz, reggae, and R&B. Founded by label president and recording artist Jana Herzen, it was Motéma that first brought soul/jazz musician Gregory Porter to international attention with his Grammy-nominated first albums, Water and Be Good and his hit song "1960 What?" The label launched international careers for jazz piano star Joey Alexander, modern soul singer Deva Mahal, and Cuban musician Pedrito Martinez, among others. Also in the label’s catalog are recordings by established performers such as Randy Weston, Geri Allen, David Murray, Monty Alexander, and Charnett Moffett, alongside releases by younger players including Donny McCaslin, Mark Guiliana, Jihye Lee, and NEA Jazzmaster Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science, whose much-talked-about Grammy-nominated activist album Waiting Game garnered 2020 Album of the Year, Artist of the Year and Artist of the Year accolades from Downbeat among other awards and recognition.
David Weiss is a jazz trumpeter and the founder of The New Jazz Composers Octet.
New Big Band is a term used to refer to the revivalist movement of 21st Century Jazz artists who are bringing a new form of Big Band music that fuses elements of traditional swing bands of leaders like Duke Ellington and Count Basie whose popularity peaked from the 1930s through the 1950s with the more intense sounds produced by smaller groups of the Bop era of the 1950s and beyond. The distinction between big bands that survived the 1970s and several big bands that have had some success in different parts of the world is that the sporadic big bands between the fall of the Big Band era and 2000 have been more preservationist in nature. The New Big Band movement is developing a new original jazz literature of fresh compositions as well as modern reinterpretations of standards through new arrangements that conform to the new style being presented to the public.
Justin Robinson is an American alto saxophonist. He has performed with artists such as the Harper Brothers, Cecil Brooks III, Abbey Lincoln, Diana Ross, Little Jimmy Scott, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, and the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Band. He is a member of the quintet and big band of trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
Gerald Leon Cannon is an American jazz double bassist and visual artist.
Tarus Mateen, also known as Taurus Mateen and Tarus Dorsey Kinch is an American double-bass and electric bassist, who works in jazz, pop, and R&B idioms.
Charenee Wade is an American jazz, soul and R&B singer, composer, arranger, improvisor, and educator.
Taru Alexander is an American jazz drummer, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is a son of Roland Alexander, an American post-bop jazz tenor saxophone player from Boston, Massachusetts.
