Tag Archives: Alto Players

Sax Advent Calendar 2019 #7 – Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz was born October 13, 1927. He has performed successfully in a wide range of jazz styles, including bebopcool jazz, and avant-garde jazz. Konitz’s association with the cool jazz movement of the 1940s and 1950s includes participation in Miles Davis‘s Birth of the Cool sessions and his work with pianist Lennie Tristano. He was notable during this era as one of relatively few alto saxophonists to retain a distinctive style when Charlie Parker exerted a massive influence.

Like other students of Tristano, Konitz was noted for improvising long, melodic lines with the rhythmic interest coming from odd accents, or odd note groupings suggestive of the imposition of one time signature over another. Other saxophonists were strongly influenced by Konitz, notably Paul Desmond and Art Pepper.

Check out the playlists and find out more about Lee Konitz here.

Sax Advent Calendar 2019 #4 – Ornette Coleman

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman is a saxophone player who can certainly divide opinion! Born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1930 he was one of the pioneers of the Free Jazz movement of the 1950’s and 60’s. His album The Shape of Jazz to Come still sounds modern and hip some sixty years after it was recorded and released.

One thing I didn’t mention in the video was how Wynton Marsalis urged me to teach more Ornette transcriptions to solos – I found this odd given what a ‘conservative’ reputation Wynton has in jazz circles.

Dan’s Advent Saxophone Calendar #11 – Lou Donaldson

Lou Donaldson is another of those ‘hidden gems’ that you might not have come across before.

Born in 1926 in Badin, North Carolina, Lou Donaldson grew up playing church music.  His father was a minister and his mother a music teacher and it was whilst serving in the Navy during the Second World War that he was introduced to the Be Bop music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

Donaldson is best known now for his soulful, funky 1960s recordings that feature some of the greatest soul jazz players ever to record. These include guitarists Grant Green, Melvin Sparks, Jimmy Ponder and George Benson, organists John Patton, Billy Gardner, Lonnie Smith, Charles Earland and Leon Spencer, Jr., drummers Ben Dixon (one of the great underrated groovers), and Leo Morris/Idris Muhammad, whose work on the kit defined the funky boogaloo soul jazz sound of the late 1960s. Records like Good Gracious (1963, Blue Note), Musty Rusty (1965, Cadet), Alligator Bogaloo [sic], Mr. Shing-a-ling (1967, Blue Note) and Hot Dog (1970, Blue Note), among others, are quintessential examples of the jukebox, funky, soulful 1960s jazz that came to define “rare grooves” in the soul jazz revival period of the 1990s.

He was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame on October 11, 2012.[9] Also in 2012, he was named a NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, United States’ highest honor in jazz music.[10]