Tag: educator

After Hours featuring Emmet Cohen, air date Feb. 22, 2023

On By Charles BinghamIn composer, educator, Featured guest, Keyboards, PianoLeave a comment

Join me for the Feb. 22, 2023, edition of After Hours on KRBD Rainbird Radio as I’m joined in conversation with jazz pianist Emmet Cohen.

A multifaceted American jazz pianist and composer, Cohen is one of his generation’s pivotal figures in music and the related arts.

Leader of the Emmet Cohen Trio and creator of the Masters Legacy Series, he is an internationally acclaimed jazz artist, a dedicated educator, the winner of the 2019 American Pianists Awards, and a finalist in the 2011 Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition.

Cohen headlines regularly at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Village Vanguard, and  Birdland, and has appeared at the Newport, Monterey, and North Sea jazz festivals. His artistry has taken him to venues and festivals in more than 30 countries. Cohen’s entrepreneurial energies led to his developing “Live From Emmet’s Place,” a live-streamed “Harlem rent party” that unites a worldwide audience via tens of millions of internet views.

Cohen has released more than 10 albums as leader and has performed or recorded with Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Jimmy Cobb, George Coleman, Jimmy Heath, Tootie Heath, Houston Person, Christian McBride, and Kurt Elling.

Click this link to go to Emmet’s personal website.

After Hours featuring Don Stiernberg, air date Nov. 16, 2020

On By Charles BinghamIn educator, Featured guest, MandolinLeave a comment

Join me on the Nov. 16, 2020, edition of After Hours on KCAW-Raven Radio as I’m joined in musical conversation with leading jazz mandolin player and educator Don Stiernberg.

Don Stiernberg recently began his fifth decade as a working musician. Along the way he has been involved in many musical activities: performing, writing, recording, producing, and teaching, but is best known for his mandolin playing. Born and still based in Chicago, the mandolin found Don as he grew up “out in the woods” in the nearly-rural suburb of Wauconda, Ill. A desire to make music with his banjo- and guitar-playing brother led Don to appropriate a mandolin that had been given to him. Things came into focus both mandolin- and life-wise when his parents sent Don to study with Jethro Burns, famous comedian (Homer and Jethro) and the greatest mandolinist of his time. From the very first lesson, Burns was more than a teacher. He was role model, hero, mentor, and friend, and Stiernberg was hooked and hooked bad on the mandolin. His earliest professional experience was in a bluegrass band with his brother (The Morgan Bros.) and a bit later in The Jethro Burns Quartet.

Currently Don is regarded as a leading exponent of jazz mandolin style, and a respected teacher. The most recent of his nine recording projects is “Good Numbers”, a collection of standards and jazz tunes played by his working band, The Don Stiernberg Trio. Also released in 2016 were three online video instructional courses for Soundslice.com. The trio has performed coast to coast as well as in Germany and Brazil. Don also conveys his love of the mandolin and music at events such as The Mandolin Symposium (CA), The Swannanoa Gathering (NC), Django in June (MA), Mandolin and Guitar Camp North (MA), Steve Kaufman Acoustic Camp (TN), River of the West Mandolin Camp (OR), Cape Cod Mandolin Camp (MA), Ashokan Swing Week (NY), Accademia Internacionale di Mandolino (Italy), European Mandoline Akademy (Germany) and Momento Rio Bandolim (Brazil).

Click this link to listen to the After Hours show featuring Don Stiernberg, originally broadcast on Nov. 16, 2020. Click here to visit Don’s personal website.

After Hours featuring Giacomo Gates, air date June 1, 2020

On By Charles BinghamIn educator, Featured guest, VocalsLeave a comment

Join me for the June 1, 2020, edition of After Hours on KCAW Raven Radio as I’m joined for an uplifting and stirring conversation with bebop jazz vocalist and educator Giacomo Gates.

Without a question, Giacomo’s life experience is unlike any other jazz artist that may come to mind. He didn’t really step into the limelight until 1990 when he was 40. That came after a blue-collar career that included a three-year stint in the 1970s working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and 14 years in Alaska where he drove a school buses, 18-wheelers and cattle transporters, operating bulldozers, scrapers and other heavy equipment, pounding in railway spikes, and moonlighting as a bouncer at Fairbanks night clubs. Giacomo had been exposed to music when he was young, singing and playing guitar, and he sometimes left Alaska to perform in Washington State or Tucson, Ariz. Eventually he moved back to his childhood home of Connecticut so he could devote more time to music.

Blessed with a full-bodied and mellifluous voice, extraordinary rhythmic precision and an unerring sense of lyricism, Giacomo’s total command of the vernacular, boundless creativity and exuberant passion set him apart from nearly every other vocalist on the scene today. His performing style is heavily steeped in the traditions of the original vocal improvisers from Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald through their modern counterparts Betty Carter and Leon Thomas, Giacomo’s own approach draws most heavily from the bebop-rooted masters like Jon Hendricks, Babs Gonzales, King Pleasure and most of all, Eddie Jefferson. Giacomo teaches at Wesleyan University and Sacred Heart University, and has conducted workshops and residencies at numerous educational institutions all over the U.S.

Click this link to listen to the After Hours show featuring Giacomo Gates, originally broadcast on June 1, 2020. Click here to visit Giacomo’s personal website.

After Hours featuring Lori Williams, air date Dec. 30, 2019

On By Charles BinghamIn Actor/Actress, educator, Featured guest, Producer, Songwriter, VocalsLeave a comment

Join me for the Dec. 30, 2019, edition of After Hours on KCAW Raven Radio in Sitka, Alaska, when I was joined in conversation with “out-of-the-box” jazz vocalist Lori Williams

Lori blends straight ahead, contemporary, soul, inspirational, and urban, creating a truly unique smooth mix of sound. She also is an educator, songwriter, producer, support vocalist, and musical theater actress with five well-received CDs to her credit (a sixth is scheduled for release in 2020) — all of which she self-produced.

As an educator for more than 25 years, Lori has received many honors including Outstanding Music Teacher in the October 2000 issue of Teaching Music, the 2007 Superintendent’s Arts Teacher of the Year Award, and the 2010 Vincent E. Reed Teacher of the Year. As a performing artist, Lori was nominated for a 2014 Helen Hayes Award as an Outstanding Lead Actress in a Resident Musical for her role as Ella Fitzgerald in “Ladies Swing the Blues: A Jazz Fable” (directed by Thomas W. Jones). Lori has received letters of recognition for her performances by Vice President Joseph Biden, former Speaker of the House John Boehner, and Maryland Senator C. Anthony Muse.

Click this link to listen to the KCAW After Hours show featuring Lori Williams, originally broadcast on Dec. 30, 2019. Click here to visit Lori’s personal website.