#jon ballantyne

[burlveneer-music]

Mechanoid makeout music by Utopianisti - prog-skronk from Finland

Utopianisti meets Black Motor & Jon Ballantyne (tracks 9-12 + 13): Sami Sippola - tenor saxophone Ville Rauhala - upright bass Simo Laihonen - drums Jon Ballantyne - electric & grand piano Markus Pajakkala - baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, percussion Recorded live at JJ Studio, Tampere August 2nd, 2012 

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Jazziversaries October 8th

Jon Ballantyne  (piano)1963 :: Happy birthday to Jon Ballantyne! Jon is an award-winning pianist and composer who resides in New York City, USA.

After the early years of trying to "cop" his father's blues-based approach to piano, classical piano studies, and a stint in a garage rock band as a young teenager, Jon decided to more thoroughly investigate the art form of jazz. This quest led to his winning of a scholarship to attend North Texas State University. As an honors student there, Ballantyne was asked to play in small group formats with visiting artists Elvin Jones, Ron Carter, Joe Henderson, Nat Adderley, Michael Brecker, Emily Remler, Bob Mintzer and Peter Erskine.

At the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, Jon studied and played with Dave Holland, Dave Liebman, Ed Blackwell, Lee Konitz, Cecil Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, John Abercrombie, Don Thompson, Julian Priester, Karl Berger, Eddie Marshall and Steve Coleman. He also studied in New York with Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, Richie Beirach, Hal Galper and JoAnn Brackeen.

This period of intensive study naturally led to a performance career, and Jon often shared (and shares) the stage or recording studio with some of the world’s finest musicians, including Joe Henderson, Roy Haynes, Dewey Redman, Pepper Adams, Billy Hart, Paul Bley, Gene Jackson, Phil Woods, Gene Perla, Adam Niewood, Ben Street, Devin Grey, Mick Goodrick, Bill Goodwin, Scott Colley, Reid Anderson, Avashai Cohen, Craig Handy, Don Braden, George Garzone, Drew Gress, Doug Weiss, Krister Andersson, Joe LaBarbara, Charles Fambrough, Rich Perry, Phil Dwyer, Benny Wallace, Ray Drummond, Ben Perowsky, Terry Clarke, The Mingus Big Band, Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd, Clark Terry, Al Cohn, Red Mitchell, Jimmy Guiffre, Al Grey, Shorty Rodgers, Buddy DeFranco, Joe Lovano, Jim Rotundi, P.J. Perry, Don Thompson, Jerry Fuller, Neil Swainson, Ed Bickert, Yannick Rieu, Mike Allen and Richard Stoltzman. Traveling often, Jon has performed in eight European countries (including the UK), Japan, Korea, most provinces in Canada, and more than 40 states in the U.S.A.

As a six-year resident of Park Slope, Brooklyn in 1990's, Jon also played countless afternoon jam sessions (he cites this as a creatively fertile time-"the musicians were really intent on experimentation") in his studio apartment with young musicians, most of them neighbors, such as Mark Turner, Seamus Blake, Donny McAslin, Bill Carrothers, Hugh Sicotte, John McKenna, Dave Pietro, Tony Scherr, Johannes Weidenmueller, Marc Miralta, Matt Wilson, Owen Howard, Jay Rosen and Phil Haynes.

Now based in Manhattan, Jon leads a critically acclaimed quartet featuring bassist Boris Kozlov, drummer Jeff Hirshfield and saxophonist/bass clarinetist Douglas Yates.

Pepper Adams (sax, baritone) 1930-1986 :: Park Frederick “Pepper” Adams III was an American jazz baritone saxophonist and composer. He composed 43 pieces, was the leader on eighteen albums spanning 28 years, and participated in 600 sessions as a sideman.

In 1946, Adams moved to Detroit and switched to baritone sax; this proved to be successful, as by 1947 he was playing in Lucky Thompson’s band. In Detroit, Adams also met several jazz musicians who would become future partners, including trumpeter Donald Byrd. He attended Wayne State University. Adams now became interested in Wardell Gray’s approach to the saxophone, later naming Gray and Harry Carney as his influences. He also spent time in a United States Army band, and briefly had a tour of duty in Korea.

He later moved to New York City, where he played on the album Dakar with John Coltrane, played with Lee Morgan on The Cooker, and briefly worked with Benny Goodman’s band in 1958. During this time, Adams also began working with Charles Mingus, performing on one of Mingus’s most acclaimed albums from the period, Blues & Roots. Thereafter, he recorded with Mingus sporadically until the latter’s death in 1979. He later became a founding member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band, with whom he played from 1965 to 1976, and thereafter continued to record Jones’s compositions on many of his own albums. Adams also co-led a quintet with Donald Byrd from 1958 to 1962, with whom he recorded a live date, 10 to 4 at the 5 Spot, featuring Elvin Jones, and a sequence of albums for Blue Note.

In later years, Adams toured England and continental Europe several times, performing there with local rhythm sections, and he performed with a Count Basie tribute band at the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice.

Hal Singer (saxophone) 1919 ::  Many happy returns to Cornbread Hal! Harold Joseph “Hal” Singer, also known as Hal “Cornbread” Singer, is an American R&B and jazz bandleader and saxophonist.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Singer studied violin as a child but, as a teenager, switched to clarinet and then tenor saxophone, which became his instrument of choice. From the late 1930s he began playing in local bands, including Ernie Fields’, before joining Jay McShann’s orchestra in 1943 and then moving to New York. After working in other bands, he joined Oran “Hot Lips” Page's band in 1947 and began working as a session musician with King Records.

In early 1948 he left Page, formed his own small group, and was signed to Mercury Records where he cut his first single “Fine As Wine” with a B side “Rock Around the Clock” (not the same title made famous by Bill Haley), co-written with Sam Theard. For the Savoy label of Newark, New Jersey he recorded the instrumental “Corn Bread,” which made #1 on the R & B charts in September 1948, and gave Singer a new popularity and nickname. His follow-up the following year, “Beef Stew,” was a much smaller hit.

In the early and mid-1950s he recorded with Mercury, toured with R&B artists such as The Orioles and Charles Brown, and increasingly worked as a session musician. In 1958 he began recording with Prestige Records as a jazz soloist and performing at the Metropole Cafe in New York with leading jazz musicians such as Roy Eldridge and Coleman Hawkins.

In 1965, after touring Europe with Earl “Fatha” Hines' band, Singer stayed in France to settle near Paris. He continued to record and also toured extensively around Europe and Africa, performing with various bands including Charlie Watts' and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. His 1969 album, Paris Soul Food, featuring Singer on saxophone and singing; Robin Hemingway, vocals, arrangements and album production; and Manu Dibango, saxophone, organ and arrangements won a French Record Academy award for best international LP in 1969.

In 1974 he went on a State Department tour of Africa with Horace Parlan.

Singer appears on the 1981 live recording Rocket 88 with the UK-based boogie-woogie band Rocket 88. Also in the summer of 1981 Singer visited London, where he recorded two albums for John Stedman’s record label, JSP. The first album, Swing on it (JSP 1028), was recorded with British musicians, including Jim Mullen, Peter King, Mike Carr and Harold Smith, while the second, recorded a day later with the same group, also featured Jimmy Witherspoon (“Big Blues”, JSP 1032).

Singer shares artist billing on a recording made in 1989, along with Al Copley, “Royal Blue”, released on the Black Top label in 1990.

He appeared as an actor in the award-winning 1990 feature film Taxi Blues and, in 1992, was awarded the prestigious title of “Chevalier des Arts” by the French government.

 J.C. Heard  (drums) 1917-1988  :: James Charles Heard, better known as J. C. Heard was an African-American swing, bop, and blues drummer.

Heard was a very supportive drummer, versatile enough to fit comfortably into swing, bop and blues settings. He obtained his first important professional job with Teddy Wilson in 1939 and continued performing into the 1980s. He performed with Lena Horne, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Benny Carter, Cab Calloway, Erroll Garner, Jazz at the Philharmonic, Pete Johnson, Charlie Parker, Sir Charles Thompson, Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Eldridge besides leading his own groups.

In 1946–47, he recorded with top bop musicians, led his own band at Cafe Society, was a member of Erroll Garner’s trio, and toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic. In the years 1953 through 1957, he spent time in Japan as a singer/entertainer, mentoring young Japanese singers and musicians like Yukimura Izumi, George Kawaguchi and Franky Sakai. During 1957–66 he freelanced in New York (playing with the Coleman Hawkins-Roy Eldridge Quintet and with Teddy Wilson’s trio in 1961). In 1966 J.C. Heard moved to Detroit where he worked as a bandleader and a mentor to younger musicians into the mid-1980s. In 1983, he again recorded an album as leader, accompanied by George Benson, pianist Claude Black, and Dave Young on bass. In 1981, JC started a 13 piece big band which played around the state and various festivals often featuring Dizzy Gillespie and other colleagues. This group recorded in 1986 and continued performing regularly until JC’s passing.

 Sonny Igoe (drums) 1923-2012 :: Owen Charles "Sonny" Igoe  was an American jazz drummer and music educator who, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, toured with the orchestras of Tommy Reed (1913–2012), Les Elgart, Ina Ray Hutton, Benny Goodman, and Woody Herman. From the mid-1940s to 1988, he performed on over 79 recordings with bands and artists, including The Buddy Stewart (1922–1950) Quintet, Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, Woody Herman and His Orchestra, Frances Wayne with Neal Hefti and His Orchestra, Rita Moss with the George Williams Orchestra, Charlie Ventura, Tony Bennett, Billy Maxted and His Manhattan Jazz Band, The Chuck Wayne Quintet, The Don Elliott Quintet, Joe Wilder, Phil Napoleon and His Original Memphis Five, Sammy Spear (né Samuel Shapiro; 1909–1975), Pee Wee Erwin, Joe Williams, Marlene Ver Planck (born 1933), Savina (Savina J. Hartwell; 1926–1992), Dick Meldonian (né Richard Anthony Meldonian; born 1930), and Doctor Billy Dodd.

A longtime resident of Emerson, New Jersey, Igoe grew up in Ridgewood and was attending Ridgewood High School when he got his start after winning a Gene Krupa drumming contest.

In the 1960s, Igoe was a member of the NBC Television Orchestra and then the CBS Television Orchestra, where his credits included The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jackie Gleason Show.

Igoe’s playing was initially influenced by Krupa, but he soon drew upon elements of Max Roach and others, which eventually developed into an exuberant and individual style