Jazz Legends

Cedar Walton

Pianist/composer Cedar Walton (born January 17, 1934) first rose to prominence with drummer Art Blakey’s band and his own groups featured his original compositional voice for decades: fresh original takes on the hard bop style he came up in. Many of his tunes have become jazz standards.

Benny Golson

Saxophonist and jazz composer Benny Golson (born January 25, 1929) was one of jazz’s senior statesmen, passing away last year at the age of 95. He was one of the last surviving subjects of the well known photograph “A Great Day in Harlem”, which was featured in the film “The Terminal” (2004) which also featured a cameo by Golson himself. He penned a number of compositions which have become well loved jazz standards.

Jimmy Van Heusen

Songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen (born Edward Chester Babcock on January 26, 1913) picked his professional name inspired by the shirt company. In the course of his career, he won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for best song. Many of his tunes have become beloved jazz standards over the years. 

Harry Warren

Songwriter Harry Warren (born Salvatore Antonio Guaragna on December 24, 1893) was the first major American songwriter to write primarily for film. In the course of his long career he was nominated for 11 Oscars for Best Song and won three times. In a career that lasted over sixty years, he composed over eight hundred songs and were featured in over three hundred films.

NOLA & Mardi Gras

The band talks about celebrating New Orleans and Mardi Gras and the city’s great musical traditions.

Unchained Melodies

The band is back! This Sunday at the "Unchained Melodies" show, the Evensong Quintet is playing a live recording concert of tunes in the public domain. Many of the best songwriters of the “Tin Pan Alley” era wrote some of their most enduring songs during the late 1920s, and many of these songs fall into public domain this year. Jazz musicians have long favored the work of these giants: George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Fats Waller, Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael to name a few. For generations, big corporations have controlled the performance rights to this material, now these national treasures are free to be performed and recorded without restrictions. 

Christmas Jazz

As they prep for the annual Jazz Family Christmas show, the band talks Christmas tunes and jazz influence in classic favorites. The podcast is taking a break for the holidays and will return next year!
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McCoy Tyner

Pianist/composer McCoy Tyner (born December 11, 1938) was the youngest member of the earth-shattering John Coltrane Quartet and went on to be a major innovator on his instrument, influencing a whole generation of pianists with his rhythmic and harmonically dense approach to the instrument. He has been recognized with an NEA jazz master award and five Grammy awards. His music is as important in many ways as Coltrane’s, and his musical vocabulary has touched virtually every musician that’s come after him.
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Billy Strayhorn

Composer/arranger/pianist Billy Strayhorn (born November 29, 1915) was a true genius in his own right, though often referred to as Duke Ellington’s alter ego, he was so much more than that. A gay man in in an era when that was even more of an onus than it is now, Ellington made it possible for Strayhorn to create and thrive in spite of societal constraints, clearly he recognized Strayhorn’s unique genius, and the two had a symbiotic relationship for most of Strayhorn’s too brief life. His compositions are all a reflection of his personal approach to harmony and melodic development, his early composition Lush Life, for example: written while still a teenager in Pittsburgh, in both words and music showcase a sophistication that staggers the imagination.
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Dave Brubeck & Paul Desmond

Pianist/composer Dave Brubeck and Alto Saxophonist Paul Desmond are enshrined in jazz history as the most prominent voices of the popular Dave Brubeck quartet. This group cast an outsized shadow over the jazz scene of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Desmond’s composition "Take Five" is one of the most beloved jazz compositions of all time and was the biggest hit the quartet ever had. Brubeck incorporated diverse musical influences, including that of French composer Darius Milhaud to fashion a style that incorporated odd rhythmic meters and polytonality into a fusion that predated the “third stream” movement. Desmond is perhaps the most influential voice on his instrument since Charlie Parker, he was famously quoted as saying his lyrical, pure sound on the instrument was a result of his wanting to sound like a “dry martini". His series of recordings with guitarist Jim Hall are masterpieces of melodic inventiveness, a testament to his spare, beautiful voice as both composer and performer.
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