Benny Golson©Andrea Canter

"Virtually every solo by Golson is a textbook tour de force.” —Bob McCullough, Boston Globe

Known worldwide, Benny Golson has impeccable credentials, not only as a virtuoso tenor player, but also as a composer, arranger, lyricist, producer, and educator. Still growing strong (or stronger?) in his early 80s, Golson brings his quartet to the Dakota on March 7th, featuring Grammy-nominated vocalist Nnnenna Freelon.

Benny Golson

A native of Philadelphia, Benny Golson studied piano, organ, clarinet, and tenor sax as a child. In an All About Jazz interview, Golson recalled, “I started out wanting to be a pianist and as I got into it I fancied that I wanted to be a concert pianist. That got a few chuckles in the ghetto, you know. But at 14, I heard the saxophone and my first influence was Arnett Cobb. I went to the theatre one day and I heard him play “Flying Home” and that changed my life. Then after that, of course, it was Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, and then John Coltrane and I went through the ranks together.” With fellow Philly native Coltrane, Golson played weekends with a local band (“Jimmy Johnson and His Ambassadors”) while still in high school, earning eight dollars per performance.

After attending Howard University in the late 1940s, Golson worked in Bull Moose Jackson's band. He then played with Tadd Dameron, an affiliation that would have considerable impact on Golson’s approach to composition (“I was amazed at what he could do with a small number of instruments...”). After working with Lionel Hampton (1953) and Earl Bostic (1954-56), Golson joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band, building his reputation with his compositions "Stablemates," "Whisper Not," and "I Remember Clifford,” the first of many that became jazz standards. With Gillespie, Golson also developed a solo style inspired by Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins. In the late 1950s, Golson was a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and then the Art Farmer Jazztet, with both ensembles providing fertile ground for his compositions.

Benny Golson©Andrea Canter

As an educator, Golson has lectured at the Lincoln Center through a special series by Wynton Marsalis as well as at numerous universities, and has conducted clinics and workshops for music students all over the world. He received the 1996 American Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts and, in 2001, was honored at Lincoln Center with a concert entitled, "The Magic of Benny Golson."

In the past decade, Golson completed a commissioned “Three Piano Composition” for Chicago’s 2004 Ravinia Festival and an orchestral work for the 100th Anniversary of the Julliard School of Music. His 2004 release, The Terminal (Concord), was noted to be as “expressive and buoyant as anything Golson was doing with Blakey’s Jazz Messengers’ lineup fifty years ago” (E.J. Iannelli, All About Jazz). In 2009, he released the debut recording of his new sextet, New Time, New Tet (Concord).

In October 2007, Golson received the Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award, presented by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center. The same year, he also won the University of Pittsburgh International Academy of Jazz Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award, and was inducted into the Academy’s Hall of Fame in 2009.

In 2012, in addition to touring with Nnenna Freelon, Golson will be featured with the Lynne Arriale Trio during late spring European tour. His cohorts at the Dakota include pianist Sharp Radway, bassist Ray Drummond, and drummer Jason Marsalis. His last appearance in the Twin Cities was at the 2005 Twin Cities Jazz Festival.

Nnenna Freelon

Nnenna Freelon

Although she received mixed reviews (she perhaps sounded too much like Sarah Vaughan), her second Columbia recording (Heritage) met with a much warmer reception. Following one more release, she signed with Concord, gaining more artistic control, garnering her first Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Performance with Shaking Free in 1996. She repeated the feat in 1998 with Maiden Voyage. In 2000, Nnenna turned to acting, appearing in the film What Women Want as well as releasing her first self-produced album, Soulcall; the recording yielded two Grammy nominations, for Best Jazz Vocal Album and for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocal. Another Grammy nomination followed in 2002 for Tales of Wonder: Celebrating Steview Wonder. She elicited some controversy with her bold reinterpretation of Billie Holiday (Blueprint of a Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday) in 2006, but again was honored with a Grammy nomination. In 2008, she appeared as the only vocalist on the Monterey Jazz Festival: 50th Anniversary All-Stars album, fronting a band that starred Benny Green, James Moody, Terence Blanchard, Kendrick Scott, and Derrick Hodge; she also appeared on the Tanglewood episode of Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz. In 2010, Freelon released her seventh Concord album, Homefree.

Over her career, Freelon has appeared with or recorded with Jessye Norman, Herbie Hancock, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Take 6, Al Jarreau, the Count Basie Orchestra and more, performing at such legendary venues as Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Monterey, Newport, Montreaux and Detroit Jazz Festivals. She has also devoted significant time to jazz education, conducting master classes, clinics, and workshops, and teaching technique and life skills to students around the world. Wrote Robert Daniels in Variety, “Nnenna Freelon possesses that rarest of qualities... she makes [standards] sound freshly minted, refreshingly new... her phrasing is original, surprising... she mines the [melodies] for new and hidden meaning... and imaginative spirit that reaches out and bubbles over...” Freelon last appeared at the Dakota in 2005.

The Dakota is located at 1010 Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis; reservations at www.dakotacooks.com or 612-332-5299.

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